Indian Call Centers

I was surprised to see this cartoon in the newspaper recently. I would have agreed with this before 2005, but not now. A few years ago, when Indian call centers were new, many folks in the US were annoyed with the accent, fictitious names, and obsequiousness of the staff. I understood the reason for their frustration as I had similar experience when I called HP tech support (call transferred to Chennai) for trouble shooting my desktop.

But I noticed a remarkable improvement in service late last year (when I called for resolving issues with my laptop). I was really impressed by interpersonal and technical skills of the young staff. In fact, on receiving service, I made sure that I reached their supervisors and put in a good word.

My only concern with these folks is, as call center staff work in a pretty stressful environment, they try to (as they are forced to?) close cases ASAP. Recently we bought a Dell desktop (as HP conked off) and I had to call the tech support (which was transferred to Delhi) for help, as the machine was acting up. On listening to my problem, their repeated response was, "let's format the hard drive". I was trying to avoid it, as reloading software takes forever. But they kept insisting that it was the only way to fix problems. However, I spent a few hours online and I was able to fix the problem w/o much hassle. But I feel that these call centers handle most of the (non-complex) calls professionally and efficiently.