Dear offshore call centre client,
I don’t mean to sound gruff, but outsourcing your important client and prospect contact work to a company who is based overseas, uses staff who don’t have a good understanding of the target market (and its language) and uses very laggy VOIP or dodgy international calls is just plain rude.
To me, you’re saying you don’t mind my inconvenience of having to pronounce myself three times, nor do you mind my waiting for long 4-6 second pauses between sentences. In fact, the argumentative tone taken by a few recent callers to my home, makes me think you want me to actively boycott your products and/or services.
Companies like yours (read: Optus, National Australia Bank, ANZ and Coles Myer, amongst others*) are showing us Australians how much you respect trying to provide jobs and local economy considerations when you are happy to oursource it to countries paying their staff a pittance compared to ours.
I’m all for a global economy, and as a business owner, I appreciate the idea of profits, but there’s profit and then there’s profit at other peoples expense. To me, offshore call centres fit the latter and you are profiting at Australia’s expense.
Photo: Davis running through bubbles in our backyard.
Entrepreneur, 
29 January 2007 at 12:33 pm
Several very valid points – though I am sure many people would like to believe that globalization has resulted in an economic lift for the Indian economy, it has in fact merely resulted in a short-term boom that will surely be quickly overcome by rising inflation in India, as Indian consumer prices rise 10% p/a. The economic boom in question is due to the injection of capitalist corporations into the Indian economy (several of which are named in this blog) and is not a reflection of improvements to general living standards.
Plus, the overseas telemarketing calls are annoying!Though I sympathesize with these people, I will continue to refuse to speak to any representative of a corporation too cheap to hire Australian workers! Economic nationalism is dead, but my customer service expectations are not!