- So charged have the politics of offshoring become that
reports that Dell might move a handful of tasks from its call centers in
India back to America have quickly escalated into a diplomatic incident.
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- Indignant Indians are fuming at the suggestion that it
was their ''thick accents'' and ''scripted responses'' that persuaded Texas-based
Dell to move some customer-service jobs for its corporate customers back
to America.
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- In America, protectionist pressure groups are claiming
the first victory in a long campaign to bring jobs back home. Even Dell
seems divided by the issue. Different statements from different company
officials have left outsiders wondering what, exactly, the company plans
to do.
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- On Nov. 22, the Austin American-Statesman ran a story
claiming that Dell would be moving some technical-support jobs from India
back to its call centers in Texas. Two days later, the Associated Press
confirmed the story.
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- The reason for the move, according to a Dell spokesman
quoted by the AP, was that ''customers weren't satisfied with the level
of support they were receiving.''
-
- The following day, a brusque-sounding official at Dell
India in Bangalore denied the story. ''No, we are not shifting the work,''
the spokesperson told PTI, an Indian news agency. As the mystery deepened,
further reports suggested Dell's ''full commitment'' to India, where it
employs 2,000 people, and explained all job shifts (if indeed there had
been any) as ''part of Dell's normal business operations.''
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- Dell laid off 5,700 workers during the recent tech recession,
most of them support staff in Texas. Most of the growth in its work force
since then has been overseas. It may be that its customer service has become
genuinely poorer as a result --- though multiregional, multiracial America
has its fair share of accents, too.
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- Dell may be the victim of well-organized e-mail and bulletin-board
campaigns by pressure groups and customers who have allowed their politics
to cloud their judgment. Which customers, after all, can claim happy experiences
with Texas call centers? By using Indian ones, Dell does at least keep
its computers cheap --- which is the main point about its products.
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- Those Indians who are not now desperately practicing
their Texan drawl, meanwhile, have begun to plot their revenge. ''Imagine
what would happen if we moved our techies out of the U.S. back into India,''
wonders Arunava Sinha, in a column for the Economic Times of India. ''Oops.
There went Silicon Valley.''
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- http://www.ajc.com/sunday/content/epaper/editions/sunday/issue_f39c95b684e052ff0075.html
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