I know Biden won't do anything on this and this particular issue has exploded under Biden. I'm at my whits end because of it. In my business, I am constantly ordering products from various online vendors. It's become a necessity in this age of technology, time efficiency and spend. Of the last two I mentioned there: time efficiency and spend... one might be prone to believe expenditure is the most pressing concern. While I agree, especially in this time of rampant inflation, that spending must be controlled to maintain a profitable business, I would argue time efficiency is king. I'm sure some of you would agree. So, if I spend 20% more on something that will happen in half the time, it may or may not prove to be a more profitable move to go the expedited route and pay the additional cost. All that said, here is my beef. I am not an expert on international trade or tariffs, but in my opinion, this problem was bad before Biden, but it has metastasized 3x at least under the Biden regime. It's customer service. Most companies, including financial institutions, you can tell they make it intentionally difficult to get a live human on the phone. Aggravating enough to say the least, but the most excruciating part is that when you finally do get a live human on the line, they are almost always inevitably offshore. These representatives are likely doing the best with what they've been given, but the annoying greeting (that often makes no sense and feels woefully indifferent most of the time), followed by the scripted and even more annoying responses to any question or concern you bring. Then, once they seem to grasp your reason for calling, the inevitable "can I place you on a brief hold for 1 to 2 minutes while I research this matter?" (or some other canned variation). The continued scripting NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY TO THEM. When they do return to the line, they are still clueless about what you've called for, no matter how slow-spoken and well-articulated your description was up front. I've noticed this lately with banks. I'm often left wondering if my banking information is really safe in Moldova where this call center is likely located. The voices and the feedback are always so canned and annoying. Like you're having a conversation with a robot. Generally speaking, I'm not annoyed by people with foreign accents, because most people I meet in my business with foreign accents are genuinely attempting a conversation with me and not reading from a script. So many large American firms and companies have gone to this now. I suppose that is a byproduct of inflation. Every company is trying to make that quarterly look better for the shareholders. I get it, but it's gone too far. If you want to protect the American consumer, please start by ending offshore customer support for account holders. I shouldn't be speaking to someone in the Philippines about my bank account. Or the online order I made for business supplies. It's a nightmare.
Well then you missed the boat on stuff like this, when liberals wanted “protections” against Indian call centers and foreign tech visas. I can imagine maybe some businesses pissing off high profile clients and drawing the line. But for most customers there is no going back. If anything AI hype and evolving technology is going to push this even further (previous businesses that still have real people are going to be like, “you will talk to a robot and you’ll like it”). I have a credit union and it’s easy to talk to real people. Wouldn’t be surprising to see even organizations like that buy into the AI hype to take over for customer service. Honestly I can see why they do this at this point, esp with the technology getting pretty solid. Almost don’t even need that foreign call center. Most people are morons and 99% of questions can be helped with an AI CSR *if* the AI is good and the interface is good. Whether the 1% is worth it is a cost-benefit decision.
Not a tariff issue. It would require legal or regulatory reform to change this and if the Dems were to try it, they'd get nailed with the catchall "socialism" pitchforks coming out from the right. BTW, I have to work with a team of these "offshore" employees at my job and all they do is screw up left and right.
I'm not yet sold on AI. Still too many kinks and in many cases, I might as well be speaking to someone in El Salvador who lacks a formal education. Perhaps AI will meet all the expectations, but the issue is it takes humans to code the AI and humans too often take shortcuts (especially when they are under budget and time constraints from greedy corporates), so the AI ends up sucking donkey balls.
I am not an expert in international trade, as stated, but rest assured, if Trump creates such a tariff or protection, your friends at MSNBC will tell us he's a xenophobe.
Tariffs are taxes levied against imported goods, so I'm struggling to understand how Trump would put a tariff on outsourced customer service centers.* What exactly are they going to tax? The service costs to the businesses that hire these overseas centers? I'm not sure that's feasible. *I'm not struggling to understand that Trump will totally say that he did it, or MAGA mouth breathers will completely believe him that he actually did something real.
I'm assuming the same as they would tariff any other product that was offshored by an American company. The tax levied on the import, in this case, the yes, the service costs that corporations pay these call centers in India as they import the "customer service" back to Americans. To be clear, these are targeted tariffs I'm advocating to specifically keep call centers on shore.
That’s the problem with stuff like this. I remember liberals and labor activists wanting to put a stop to all the H1B1 shenanigans in the early 2000’s. It was bs to have American workers literally train their foreign replacements. I always thought that should get them heavy fines, particularly when it was blatantly rediculous (and technically illegal) like that scenario where they made it so obvious what was happening. But there was a certain reality that if they didn’t import those H1B1 workers here, the corporations could always set up a tech center or call center overseas and build their operations that way. There was no stopping the overall trend. What is the govt going to do? Cut off communications? Cut off the flow of information in private business? Sounds like something a full commie would do.
Again, I'm not sure that's feasible. Banks and other companies aren't going to eat that cost, and they don't have an easy mechanism to pass that expense on to consumers (which is what happens with tariffs). So there's no way in hell they would ever support politicians enacting anything like that. Trump is no more likely to go against the banks on this measure than any other politician.
Perhaps OP wasn't alive when George Bush 2 was in office. During that time the Republicans talked about the benefits of outsourcing. The Democrats fought hard against it and try to pass an anti-outsourcing bill, but of course lost. If the Democrats tried to push for it again the right wing would be all over it saying that the left is the thing but a group of socialists. Biden should be the last person that OP is upset with
Im with the old school republicans here. Protectionism never works. Heck, even with all the outsourcing of IT over the years we haven’t run high IT unemployment, the opposite actually. Call centers went over seas and will now go to AI.. good thing we dont have lots of call centers anymore. We have record low unemployment and a shortage of workers. High paid skilled manual factory labor was a dying industry. High paid skilled manual services and repair labor is a growing industry. It all shifts around to balance out in our extremely flexible economy. We have a pretty good system if people would organize their labor together for better negotiations. Other than that… protecting old ways of working seems unAmerican. Maybe I am wrong though.
Wouldn't that be a good thing? Getting a good start on unemployment on the reservations? They would proba.... wait, you were speaking about India the country right?
I work in IT and I feel your pain. Trying to get product support over the phone is a nightmare. I dread it. Use the online chat feature where possible.
They opened a call center in DeLand and staffed it with about 500 employees pre Covid. It closed it seems that the problem wasn’t the location of the call center it’s that people wanted the call center to actually be able to help and that never happened.
