Outsourcing is killing the economy

I was thinking the other day about how, in these awful economic times, outsourcing is affecting the economy.  I'm not referring to manufacturing because frankly if the defect rate & cost is lower and the time to market is not significantly impacted, that decision is a no brainer.

I'm referring to the companies who have chosen to outsource, for example, their call centers.  The benefits of cost and 24/7 availability is clear.  However level of service and revenue generation are at most worse than the US, in most cases putrid. 

But the killer is that hundreds of thousands of jobs that would normally pay between $10-20 are gone.  I think those types of jobs are the ones that provide the foundation for our economy.  Those jobs are fuel for car purchases, mortgage payments, etc.

The # of jobs that it would bring back are not equal to what's been outsourced, but there is an opportunity to monetize the move.

I worked at a company where our head of sales (who is an absolute superstar) had a wild proposition:

• Provide world class service looking out for the best interests of the customer first (i.e., don't "jam" offers down their throats)
• The revenue will follow

He was right.  He's done on a smaller scale and a huge scale.  It can be done but most companies don't do it or worse don't even believe it can be done.

In the meantime, our economy keeps sucking wind and when it comes back, we still won't have the valuable foundation that these types of jobs provide.

Comments

[Chris Yeh]

I think the headline is a bit deceptive. It's not that outsourcing is killing the economy, it's that great service is a competitive advantage.

If you could outsource great customer service, your arguments wouldn't hold water. It just happens to be that most people who outsource customer service do so to reduce costs without thinking about the consequences.

[Tim Taylor]

I completely agree that if great service were outsourced, the argument fails.

Part of what I'm implying I guess is that the service that was outsourced was ok and got much worse.