When the concept of outsourcing is brought up, many people quickly think about products that are manufactured internationally and then brought here to the US.
However, customer service is outsourced far more often than products are. This is for a lot of reasons, but the primary one being that customer service requires no shipping like physical products do, therefore it is extremely cost effective to perform customer service in low-cost labor nations since it just relies on the internet and phone.
How do you think the outsourcing of customer service has impacted general service levels here in the US?
Do you think that customer service has diminished or increased in quality overall in the past 10 years?
Do you think it is obvious when you are speaking with a non-US customer service rep or is it hidden well? Finally, do you prefer speaking to US customer service reps, non-US customer service reps, or their biggest competition, automated telephone customer service that uses pre-recorded voices and prompts? Why?