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Call centers and bpo

by Errant

  • Writing Level Star

Business Process Outsourcing is the equivalent of tofu. It'll take on the taste of anything you flavor it with but you'll know you're still eating the byproduct of soybeans. It's a messy business but lucrative. When a large company no longer wishes to hire in house and pay someone a decent wage for taking calls all day, it'll outsource the work to a BPO.

These call centers are located where the cost of living is much lower and the unemployment rate is so high that it'll guarantee the bodies necessary to power this soul sucking machination. India, Canada, Mexico. These are examples of where these jobs go. It can be done for cheap and it can be put into place within three weeks from scratch. They are worse than tofu, they are Instant Tofu.

So the large companies pay a BPO less than what they stood to lose hiring their own people to do. In turn the BPO stands to make money by having centers in place where unemployment is high and the cost of living is cheaper. They then cut it even further and place the hiring wage two dollars higher than the local minimum wage.

By most common worker to budget ratios, it takes three calls an hour for an agent to make their pay. A tenth extra pays off their supervisor for an hour. This is under a profit based ratio which is highly flawed. Depending on the country the call center is in, it can take a tenth of a call to pay for both worker and supervisor during that hour. So where does the extra money go? Obviously the money is spent on destroying the economy of the next city where they plan on setting up another call center.

So what of the problem that's been dubbed, "Lost in Translation"? Unless the paying company specifies the BPO not to, the majority of the workforce will be based in India and Mexico. That's where labor to cost ratio is at its' most mouth watering to a Capitalist Pig. To offset what might be customer service nightmares, they'll throw in some Canadians; about 30% of the time; with their quaint accents which at least are easier to understand. Why is this done? The majority of people who call into a call center are close minded. If a person has an accent it's equated to the lack of intelligence. Of course they don't speak English perfectly; it's not their first language. How many languages do the overfed, uneducated masses know? They barely know one!

Work in a call center consists of sitting on your duff all day taking calls. There is no labor involved higher than prostituting one's self like Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion and getting by on the sound of your voice. In essence, Instant Tofu people are the hookers of the Call Center world.

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