Financial Physician’s Daily RX
From Outsourcing to Homesourcing: A Return of Customer Service Jobs to American Soil Could Help Jump-Start a Poor Economy
More and more customer complaints could help reverse the popular trend of outsourcing customer service positions to developing countries, where agents work for much lower wages.
Angela Selden is the CEO of Arise Virtual Solutions. She tells Fox News, “In the last 10 years, over one-million jobs have been sent to India or the Philippines, in the customer service call center space alone. What companies discovered was that while it was great from a cost perspective, what they were losing was the connection with the customer.”
As a result, Sheldon’s company plans to nearly double their 18,000 American customer-service agents for clients in the United States.
The process of bringing jobs back to American soil, often referred to as “reverse outsourcing” or “homesourcing,” is inevitable, according to Sheldon. Agents more familiar with the customs, dialect, local culture and American business are more credible for clients than someone who speaks broken English and resides on the other side of the globe.
Customer service agents often work from home as independent contractors and their pay can range from $8 per hour to as much as $25 for commission sales agents.
A return of just half the outsourced customer-service jobs to American soil, could put a wide variety of unemployed Americans back to work. The workforce could include workers from college students to retiree’s, plus more technical minded individuals like out of work IT professionals and travel experts.
The flexible hours and work from home advantage could also allow stay at home moms, the physically challenged and the serial unemployed an opportunity to earn additional money, and may help relieve the burden of some social programs.
Furthermore, although the rate per minute to hire a customer-service professional in India may be less than hiring one in the US, there is no doubt that without a language barrier, with a better understanding of American culture and consumerism, bringing customer service jobs back to our soil will mean more efficient and complete customer service interactions, ultimately converting to shorter call times and more satisfied customers.
Two things we all need to do are:
1) Refuse to buy anything made in China.
2) Refuse to talk with anyone on the phone who is obviously not in the US. Tell them you need to speak to a representative in the USA.
Just seems like doing these two things consistently could make a big difference.