Say goodbye to US support reps from lenovo...

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/21/lenovo-laying-off-1-400-employees-looking-overseas/

Outsourcing...great...

 

so what they are giving us positions to other countries?

 

what they doing with existing support staff?

 

They said most of the cuts are made in the Raleigh-Durham area, which is mostly R&D. I was pretty sure the tech support staff were located in Atlanta. Can anyone verify this?

 

Well, as the article states, they're laying off 1400 of them. Not trying to be a smart ass or anything...

 

If I recall correctly, Dell has outsourced their Support positions to India--which was about 3 yrs ago.

This does not surprise me.

 

True, but one reason I went with lenovo was in case I had to call them up, I wouldn't have to try to decipher what kumar said... like I've had to do with Linksys (literally to a guy named kumar)

 

Hope the Atlanta tech support stays where it is for USA customers. About 2 months ago when I bought my new Thinkpad, I had a serious issue concerning the wireless internet function. The guy from Atlanta spent about an hour with me deleting files and reconfiguring the hard drive with the latest drivers in order to get the wireless mode working. I would hate to have to experience that work session with someone with limited English skills.

With lower market margins, I can understand why companies would farm tech support out to lower paid employees from 3rd world companies, but in doing so, they should be prepared for greater equipment returns due to crappy tech support. I'm certainly not going to waste my time trying to get some product to work IF I have to talk to someone in India that I can't understand. I'll just send it back for a full return.

 

Dell also pulled their support for Lattitude notebooks back to the US after complaints from business customers, their bread and butter. I personally don't care where support is located as llong as they can help and I can can understand them.

 

Just FYI, HP actually has several support centers located around the world. i believe when I called them they said something about when you call their toll free number you are randomly redirected to one of like... 10 different countries... US... india... phillipines... canada...

crazy.

 

As long as I can understand them I could care less. I have talked to american support reps that I have to ask to repeat multiple times to understand what they are saying, and I have had indian rep's that sound like my neighbors. It all depends on the level of training they get.

For most of my business classes we have been studying outsourcing and the main training facilities that many companies build in India. Many of the big places these days have classes to train pronunciations of key words, and can basically get them to talk like any american from any region. It was pretty crazy with them showing different people at stages through the year long training. In the beginning they sounded like an "average taxi driver" at best, then they started to sound more and more southern or midwestern depending on the area they trained for.

 

It doesn't bother me if their English is accented. Hell, I speak accented English too. I appreciate local support staff because they have a better understanding of local cultures and are always willing to go the extra mile to satisfy the customer. Overseas call centre staff can't do that because I find them very inflexible, perhaps to to their terms of contract or a lack of understanding of local cultures. They're like androids, basically.

 

The problem with overseas support centers is that half of the time you have no idea what they are talking about. The other half of the time is that they have no idea what you are talking about.

 

Not to mention that when you both understand eachother the guy at the other end have no idea what to do. The training usually only (seems to anyway) cover the basics which means that you can count on being transffered and wait quite a bit more after you actually get through...