It’s a concept that experts say is essential to keep the U.S. economy growing. Others call it a main contributor to the death of our economy as we know it. It is outsourcing, the business practice of farming out the production of goods and services to contractors.
The detractors of outsourcing become particularly upset when it’s done offshore; that is, the operations are moved to foreign countries. It’s usually done to save on labor costs. The bottom line: Americans lose their jobs.
Niagara County has seen what the short-term effects of outsourcing can do. The near-death experience of the Delphi plants in Lockport and the demise of the electrochemical manufacturing business in Niagara Falls are two of the biggest examples.
My latest brush with offshore outsourcing is trivial by comparison. But it shows how basic changes in the way we do things can affect us in matters big and small.
It involves a wireless telephone with prepaid service. I won’t mention the name of the company, but it rhymes with “Crackphone.”
Anyhow, the phone was working fine: Great service, clear connection, the works. My wife uses it if she has an emergency on the road. It gets very little daily use but you want it to work is and when you need it.
Suddenly, it stopped working. Now, when you turn it on, it shows a message “Insert SIM” on the screen. A SIM is a small card containing information that operates the phone. But there was already the existing card that, up until that point, had been working just fine.
So, I called the customer service number. Here’s where the offshore outsourcing comes in. A very polite woman answers the phone. She speaks in an accent that’s barely understandable. She says her name is Veronica. Right. Her name is Veronica like my name is Sanjay.
Forty minutes later, after being put on hold numerous times, she says I need a new SIM card and it will arrive in three to five business days.
It arrives.
Now I call back. Another polite but somewhat difficult-to-understand representative is befuddled when the new SIM card does not work. One hour later, I hang up with a promise of yet another SIM card in three to five business days.
It arrives.
Another call to my phone buddies halfway around the world. This latest SIM card: No cigar. Yet another hour later, we finally agree that perhaps it’s the phone that malfunctioned, not the cards. The friendly sales representative promised a new phone would arrive this week.
It has yet to arrive. We’ll see how that works out.
To add it all up: My wife is without a cell phone for some three weeks, I lose nearly three hours of my life on the phone, mostly on hold or trying to decipher English spoken with a decided accent and still, no phone service.
Would the problem have been solved more quickly had it been handled by a customer service operation in North America? Perhaps.
But the extra aggravation in dealing with contact people who don’t speak the American version of English just adds stress to an already difficult situation. And if customers begin to abandon companies that send their customer service offshore, the loss of business just might outweigh the labor savings offered by the Third World.
Then, we might start talking more with Bob in Niagara Falls than with Veronica in who-knows-where.
Dick Lucinski is the managing editor of the Niagara Gazette.
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