If you have any respect for your customers at all, then you won't put your
TECH SUPPORT IN INDIA!

Enough is quite simply enough.

When I say this, I am quite simply speaking of many companies who have taken their tech support operations out of this country and moved them to India. Before I found tech support in India to be a common occurence, I remember reading an article in some magazine about EDS moving their tech support centers to India. I well recall the stark contrast of high-rising EDS buildings sitting in amidst the squalor and poverty that seemed so prevalent on the street below the buildings.

Now don't get me wrong here--I have absolutely nothing against India or the Indian people, but I feel it is very crude of the companies who have chosen to place their technical support centers there, as they know full good and well why they are doing so--they simply do not have to pay the Indian people the same as they would pay an American worker.

I guess I don't really have a problem with this practice, but I have found there are two very serious things to be wrong with India-based tech support operations:

  1. The support representatives always seem very condescending and do not take you for your word. I had one where the computer was suffering from a stalled out fan and making a bad ("hot") smell when it warmed up. This was explained to the tech on the phone. Nevertheless I still had to go through running system setup, booting into XP and a whole bunch of rigamarole before the tech would believe a thing I said. By that time the system had already experienced other damage from the overheating.
  2. The English spoken at a great number of these call centers is at least heavily accented and (for me) very hard to understand. I have also found it to be badly butchered at times.

With these two factors fresh in mind, I think you can clearly understand why I end up getting so, well, pissed off and driven to the point of wanting to scream at the bozo who moved the call centers out of this country.

What troubles me even more is that despite the general attitude (mine included) that this practice of hiring people who are impolite, condescending and hard, if not impossible to understand, is at all acceptable.

It does not really matter what money you save by outsourcing your tech support. The best you can hope for is a slower demise of your company when customers find out how they are being treated.

Therefore I very strongly suggest not doing business with companies that don't (or have not as of yet) outsourced their tech support. Make sure they know this is why you choose to do business with them. It may be difficult, but try not to do business with companies that do outsource their tech support, or write them a letter and express your concerns over their tech support outsourcing policy.

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