Bingo! It is all in the training and how much you are willing to pay. Call centers for top-notch Indian companies like Jet Airways and the Indian operations of Orange are **excellent** -- some of the best I have seen anywhere. Fluent English, proactive, knowledgeable, and helpful. Clearly these companies are paying to attract the right profile of staff, and are investing in training. What BA, American Express, Dell, etc appear to be doing is taking the cheapest bidders and not providing enough training. Even in India, if you pay peanuts, you get what you pay for -- University-educated or not.
(Edited to add): I just read a report saying Wipro, which is just one of the major Indian BPO / Call Center operators, is hiring 1,500 people a month to man its call centers! Even in India, it is not easy to maintian quality control and get the right people if hiring in such large quantities. I think it is greed -- both on the customer side (BA, Amex, etc) and the Indian call center side (Wipro etc) that is leading to such disappointing results in terms of customer service.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by WHBM:
The problem with outsourced call centres overseas, whether phone or e-mail, is that the staff only get trained to respond to the say 438 questions that someone reckons is all they need to know.
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[This message has been edited by Montys_Mayhem (edited Dec 21, 2003).]