
Originally Posted by
twitterah
These are just the sort of jobs that the USA should retain. We have so much talent unemployed right here. Also, many older Americans who need to work past what were traditionally retirement years so "sit down" type jobs are well-suited for them.
And of course, no one likes a scripted response to a difficult technical issue.
Still one must be careful in making assumptions....
Once, after speaking with endless support people who were not anywhere near up to the task of addressing a tough Windows issue, I had grown quite frustrated.
On about the 5th call, I decided to first grill the gentleman who answered the call about his knowledge level before proceeding, asking tough Windows Registry questions, etc. He gave great, textbook responses and ended up solving the problem in short order.
While thanking him, I mentioned how it made all the difference in the world to speak with someone in the US who could communicate easily when dealing with a support issue at this level. The fellow mentioned then that he was in Manila afterward.
Fortunately, he couldn't see my red face as I amended my statement to "It makes all the difference in the world to speak with someone fluent in English *either* in America or The Philippines"
The moral, I suppose, is that if we utilize the reach of the WWW to get the folks best suited for customer service/support and let the chips fall where they may, we'll probably have mostly Americans best qualified for these jobs.
But not always as I found!