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| Dante's call centre |
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| Monday, 07 June 2004 | |
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Moving
call centre operations to offshore locations has become an emotive
issue in western nations. This can be filed under 'no need to panic'…
It's hard to find too many nice things to say about the burgeoning and all-pervasive call centre industry. Its key attributes of mindless jobs, low pay, high staff churn and an endless stream of new applicants to fill each recurring vacancy add up to a 21st century 'mill' of the darkest and most satanic variety. Indeed, there is no shortage of vivid metaphors which can be applied to the nauseating dynamics of most call centres: human battery farms in which 'agents' must ask permission to go to the toilet and otherwise spend their days 'smiling and dialling' on cold-calling campaigns or adopting a telephonic rictus grin in the face of a concerted barrage of customer complaints. Anyone who has ever visited a call centre leaves with the strong stench of 'there but for the grace of God…' in their nostrils. Anyone who has ever had cause to call these people gets the same stinky impression via the telephone. Only in my backyard (OIMBY) And yet, any talk of removing these accursed jobs reduces the communities involved to a state of gob-smacked indignation. 'They may be the worst jobs in the world… but at least they are our [worst] jobs [in the world]', runs the communitarian mantra. To put it another way: 'better a wage slave than an unwaged slave'. In Europe and the US, the location of indigenous call centres tells the tale. Depressed areas, typically the former homes to smokestack industries, have been the natural repositories for the earliest call centres. Blessed (?) with a pool of 'cheap' labour, often backed by government-funded regeneration schemes designed to throw money at anything which resembled 'meaningful' employment, the seismic surge in demand for call centres was destined to find its epicentre in these blighted regions. All it takes is a cardboard warehouse connected to the global telecom/IT network, stuffed full of computers and telephones along with the human cannon-fodder needed to staff them. While it is not hard to see how such an abomination would in fact be welcomed in, say, a former mining community, there is a post-modern irony here to which even Michael Moore would struggle to do justice. Originally, utilities and financial services companies wanted to handle or hold customers. Just about any other merchant or con-merchant then clambered on for the ride. How much deeper the irony, therefore, when William Wilberforce – in the guise of the globalised market economy – comes to free these indentured call centre slaves from this abysmal tyranny. The shift from First World to Third is accomplished with remarkable ease: technology - in the shape of the PSTN, the PC and the Internet – sees to that. And, suddenly, everyone is up in arms. What one analyst famously described as 'piss-jobs' are in demand and deemed worthy or ring-fence protection. 'Offshoring' is the key here: another example of one of those ugly 'newspeak' verb forms, designed to make the sinister sound progressive, which nonetheless says exactly what it purports to say. The relentless pressure on most service companies to drive down costs – the very phenomenon which led them to locate call centres in the poorest regions of their own countries in the first place – inexorably drives them to seek yet cheaper alternatives abroad. Speak now… Language has a great deal to do with it. UK and US companies – or their workforce representatives – bemoan the ubiquity of English as a first or second language and its leading to the transfer of jobs to alternative centres such as India. This anglo-centric view ignores the fact that Spanish-speaking call centres are moving to the Philippines, Portuguese operations are moving to Brazil, Japanese call centres can be shipped to Korea or China - and just about everyone else is moving to linguistically-multiskilled bases such as Ireland, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. And of course, Scandinavian call centre operations are moving to the Baltic States. The reason why these shifts in workflow are so constant can be attributed to technology rather than culture. Call centres – inbound (typically CRM) or outbound (typically sales) – are truly location-independent thanks to today's technology. This is quite different from the offshoring of functions such as data processing an IT management, where the cost:capability ratio is easily improved and simple to demonstrate. English-speaking IT professionals in, say, Malaysia, will typically be of graduate calibre while being employable at rates below even the dole in the UK or the US. Lax employment regulations mean that these witting fools are also willing flotsam in the drift from West to East, North to South, First World to Third. …or forever hold your… Such IT and DP outsourcing is a far cry from the current and controversial shift in call centre deployment. Three reasons stand out. Firstly, call centres are deemed 'non-strategic'. Yes, I would have thought that was pretty stupid given that most service companies exist solely to win customers, to keep customers, or to maximise the profitability of customers: but you do not argue with capitalism in its red tooth/claw phase. Any CRM saving is a cost saving. Maybe the next ceo will pick up the pieces. Secondly, offshore call centre agents are often forced to battle against nuances of language – even if a fortune is being spent to correct this – which almost immediately renders the exercise useless. You might, therefore, permit somebody who you cannot quite understand to explain how to reboot your computer, but you are less likely to accept their instructions when it comes to remortgaging you house or buying a BMW. Thirdly, low-grade call centre positions were never a route to sustainable economic development in even the most blighted communities. They should be waved goodbye to at the same time as economic regions such as the European Union usher in more connected (and efficient) business modalities for their service industries. …peace? Students of 'globalisation', that oft-used pentasyllabic word which is guaranteed to change the course of conversation during most dinner parties, may see offshore call centres as the thin edge of some decisive, wrecking, wedge. These chattering classes would do well to shut up and think - even if fanatics are incapable of doing the two things at once, if at all. Think about the way that 'products' reach or 'entice' the bedrock of 'consumers'. Cheap offshore labour will lower the cost of routine transactions but it is unlikely to convert sales leads into big ticket sales. So, just like some people say that the UK car industry is dead – while developments in the F1 arena generate millions of dollars for the UK's economy – one might be tempted to write off the active handling of the service sector. Big mistake. Things stay 'offshore' for just as long as it takes the tide to roll back once more - as it always does, without fail. At the gateway to his 'Inferno', Dante recorded the inscription, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". Well, whether you are reading this in Mumbai or Morpeth, that would be an extreme and pessimistic route to take. Jim Chalmers |
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