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Microsoft's call-center business in India gets an American accent

Time: 00:26 EST/05:26 GMT | News Source: Seattle Times | Posted By: Robert Stein

Indians working at Microsoft's new call center in Bangalore may sound a bit like they're from Seattle. For the past year, the center's 350 employees have been taught to speak more like Americans by Seattleite Andrea Koehler, a former University of Washington language instructor, who is part of Microsoft's training team.

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#1 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at Tuesday, August 17, 2004 12:32:31 PM

There is a balance that needs to be maintained. We could outsource all the jobs out of the US, but then who would buy US products?

I think what's disappointing is that American companies didn't look seriously at placing call centers in rural parts of the US. This would have dramatically improved the quality of life here.

On the other hand, a real part of the problem is that Americans have stopped valuing education, learning, or intelligence. So it's not at all surprising that business leaders would look around and realize that they can hire incompetent people overseas a lot cheaper than in the US. Of course the prime example of this decay in American values currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

#2 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at Tuesday, August 17, 2004 03:42:06 PM

The 'Buy US' mantra is rather dumb, and pretty confused...

Toyota and Honda automobiles are built in the US using US labor. At least that is the case with the Corolla and Camry, and the Civic and Accord... their most popular models.

On top of that many cars built by the Big Three are manufactured in Canada or Mexico. Oh, GM in fact sells a whole series of small cars which are really nothing more than rebadged Toyota's, Suzuki's and Isuzus.

Halcyon is right in that for US companies to compete they have to create innovative products that people want to buy. It's not entirely about cost. Clearly BMW is quite competitive and profitable even though they aren't the lowest price car.

Wal-Mart is actually struggling somewhat lately. Meanwhile Costco which is a similar concept to Sam's Club but sells higher quality(and higher priced) goods is expanding like gang busters. Costco also pays their employees more, gives them benefits and as a result has higher morale and a lower turnover rate than Wal-Mart's rock bottom kick them in the groin and tell them to like it employment practices.

#3 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at Tuesday, August 17, 2004 06:19:19 PM

Halcyon - "Also the US exports a lot of product"

I'm looking for figures on trade. I do know our trade deficit is running at record levels right now, and it just keeps getting worse each month.

As for Wal-Mart. You know, I don't know. I haven't shopped there in years because I find the stores dirty and unappealing. When I used to shop there, I never found the prices particularly low. I always get the impression that part of their appeal is encouraging people to buy crap they don't need.

Maybe that's the real way to save money... not buying crap you don't need in which case Wal-Mart isn't the answer. That would probably lower our trade deficit and increase our savings rate. Not a bad idea.

#4 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at Wednesday, August 18, 2004 12:01:37 AM

Why Wal-Mart is dangerous:

Adding to the above - we do a ton of transaction based customer segmentation analysis - literally hundreds of millions of transactions are processed on our systems each day.

RFID, while it has a ton of potential supporting dynamic supply chain management, and none of the risks that people assume - it is no less dangerous and all because of Wal-Mart. See, Wal-Mart, not one we process for, forces its vendors to use RFID. The costs associated with this have all but killed off smaller suppliers who join others, or begin simple re-distribution operations for larger distributors. Wal-Mart is assumed to be dangerous to smaller businesses, but for the wrong reasons. They have attacked both ends of the bridge at once and really cut deeply into any boutique distributors left out there. This pressure has destroyed "the buyer" - in this context, people who really know what people want and work to get it to them and retail stores for the best price. If that goes away and it is, all we end up with are the same products - just on different stores' shelves until Wal-Mart kills these, too - kills them by leveraging the same large distributors as Home Depot did to Home Quarters and Hechingers [SP?] - forcing them out "if they still wanted to sell though them." This is the reason we built a full-up ERP and EDI solution in .NET for under 50K [inclusive of all hardware and public components] - to give back to smaller boutique distributors/buyers the ability to have tiny numbers of people provide superior service to retailers. I'm telling you, "these guys scare the daylights out of me" http://www.ultimatedistributors.com is our first deployed example and we have vowed to give it away to help off-set what we are seeing out here.
Looking at Wal-Mart transactionally is even more disturbing - yes, cheaper on high-volume junk, that lures people into buying slower turning items where they kick people in the head on largely dated product. The only way this will stop is of people re-define the modern American mainstreet. We need to be careful and "demand" more from retailers - just always ask for what you want - it works.

#5 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at Wednesday, August 18, 2004 11:49:30 AM

lketchum - Good point on Wal-Mart's business practices destroying smaller suppliers. I was actually fairly disgusted at Home Depot the one day I went in there looking for a specific screw. I needed to fix a knob on a piece of European furniture I had. So the screw was metric threaded. Guess what? Home Depot didn't have little screws like that, and when I asked I was told to go visit the Ace Hardware store. Well since Home Depot has virtually run most of those stores out of business, the closest one was 20 miles away. :-(

I've gotten to the point on a lot of things like that just not even trying to find them locally, but order them from Internet retailers. Might cost me $5 for shipping on a 20 cent screw, but I save a lot of time not driving all over the country.

If I can add to RFID... I work in the mortgage industry, and so we end up with thousands of file folders running about our building. The folders are copies of the original documents which are being used to process the loan in our systems.

But sometimes folders get lost. You don't know where the file for loan 812345 is. So we're now looking at RFID tags and a building monitoring system which could be used to locate a file based on it's file number.

We've also been looking at document imaging, but that presents another set of problems.

Anyway, just interesting how technology can solve problems.

#6 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at Wednesday, August 18, 2004 01:48:31 PM

The threat to privacy posed by RFID is limited by the technolofy itself. For example, RFID tags cannot emit on their own - they emit only when power by another transmission, which has an effect LOS range of only a few inches. One would have to be inside of your car and using an RFID emitter to actually track you. They are by design, passive devices and any implementation to the contrary would not be accepted. The real danger they pose is in distribution, where offers can become more limited and controlled by the largest retailers.

Funny, or not...God always got the supply right, and we always seem to hose up the distribution - hence we are all trying to diet, while many in the world go hungry. The same is true in major retailing, but this time it is the consumer left hungry.

Ever notice that Best Buy only carries a very limited number of new items? Most are very dated items re-sold from the palette markets. Same is true of much that is sold through Wal-Mart. Decentralized; however, centralized distribution fixes this - meaning, many small warehosues working as one under one system and managed by as few people as one desires - delivering exactly what "Buyers" understand that people want and sold through much higher touch retail and service stores of smaller size - "The Modern American Mainstreet"
Through this system one can reward people through the same system - by providing a 10% discount back to the customer on all items sold through such a coalition of tradining partners.
The money - 4.25% cash to the customer comes back at the point of sale, 6.75% goes into an interest earning account in the customer's name - after 15 years of normal spending [at lower costs, I might add], the customer gets 1 million is cash. [based upon average household spending]. We call it the million dollar cup of coffee. Lower prices, lower advertising costs, and far better off families who save just by buying what they normally would. This is what is behind our UDE application - designed to build value at the expense of the monster controllers of goods and services. Doubt it? Watch how fast Wal-Mart moves into both the gas and convenience space at the Super-Centers, or how fast they grow small CVS, Rite-Aid and Walgreens corner stores. They'll use their own super-centers as points of distribution and anchors for these small stores and kill avery small "jobber" in the market. They scare me about as much as John Kerry does.

#7 By 25069 (68.252.56.14) at Monday, August 23, 2004 02:04:00 AM

It's about time some of these companies teach these people to speak "American" english. I called my ISP for technical help, but couldn't understand the person. I called Linksys for technical help with my router but ended up asking for someone else to give me help understanding the person I was talking to.

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