My wife has been working in India for the past few months as a contractor for Microsoft. Microsoft has a new telephone support center in Bangalore and she is helping setup an internal program to improve the English language skills of the telephone support personnel. The interesting thing about this project is that the center primarily handles calls from the U.S.

The motivation for putting support centers in India is to reduce costs. Obviously, the amount of money that needs to be paid to employees in India is much less than what would need to be paid in the U.S. This is especially true of technically proficient employees. India has a highly educated population and a large base of technically skilled people.

However, there are problems, as Dell has discovered [Fox News]. Dell has pulled all their technical support out of India due to a high level of complaints.

The language barrier can be very difficult to overcome. This is compounded by the difficulties that many people already face when discussing technical problems. Throw in the simple communication failures that are common when people from different cultures try to talk and you are setting yourself up for customer dissatisfaction problems.

My wife is helping Microsoft establish an English language program designed to lessen the communication failures of Microsoft's India based telephone support employees. By focusing on accent and cultural language issues, they hope to bridge the communication gap between their Indian employees and American customers. 10:55:53 AM    comment []