Chris,
There are several things to consider when thinking about Indian call centers.
First, when you compare the average education and experience Indian call agents have vs. their american counterparts. The average is a high school diploma for US centers and Indian centers usually have degreed people. Since the wages are lower, they can afford to stock the seats with more educated and qualified people.
Second, most of the Indian call centers spend months in training their staff on everything from languages skills to american customer service concepts to semantics.
Third, there is a perception and unfortunately a few bad apples have ruined the bunch when looking at business ethics and honesty. We have run into situations where a center lies about their setup and capabilities to get the business. They then use our contracts to leverage a loan to actually implement what they said they had. The owners of these centers are definately in this to make a buck, but I can see little difference in this or the first point in differentiating from a US business. Tell me that US call centers don’t overstate their capabilities and look at how to make the fastest buck. Sounds like good old fashioned capitalism to me.
One thing I have learned in this business is that we Americans do not like seeing our own business tactics flaunted in our faces by other countries. Give the Indian call centers a chance to weed out the bad people and they will be a great resource for us in the coming years