YES To Offshore BPO

US President-elect Obama have explicitly said in his speeches about his being against the offshore BPO industry. He view the industry to be anti-American as it provides employment opportunities to other countries instead of keeping it within the US soil. This pronouncements have sent ripples throughout the outsourcing world, especially in India, and have earned varying reactions ranging from concerns to affirmations.

For the past few weeks, I have been monitoring the situation and particularly am after the response of companies who outsource some aspects of their business offshore. None of them have issued a statement regarding Obama's apparent plan to give tax holidays only to companies who keep all their businesses and human resource needs within the US only. With the current economic condition of the United States, it is quite vague how the government can offer tax holidays; yet it still is something to ponder upon for those companies trying to project an image of being patriotic of sorts.

Well, tax holiday is not that big a break compared to how much these companies can save by outsourcing offshore. Definitely that is a huge factor to consider-- it is known that outsourcing offshore saves these companies at least half the cost of what they otherwise have to spend if they are to stay within the United States for the same services. The Obama administration will have to shell out something more than just tax holidays to entice these companies to return using services from within the US, such as lowering the minimum wage to compete with those offered in BPO giant India, or even the Philippines.

Another question to consider is will Americans be amenable to taking up such kinds of jobs, which they otherwise consider to be less desirable? Whether these companies admit it or not, the main attraction of outsourcing countries are that the human resource are more hospitable than Americans. Americans regards highly of themselves and would not take flak from say a customer raging about a service that was not much to their liking. Filipinos exudes in patience that they will try and continue working with a customer who's impossible to reason with even if the latter themselves have caused the trouble to begin with. Many Americans do consider working in a call center below their threshold, which on the other hand is the exact opposite here in the Philippines. Or at least this is the case for now.

Another thing that'll be hard to compete with offshore for the Americans is the persistence in the case of telemarketing services-- I have read somewhere that the main difference between American and Indian telemarketers is that it is hard to teach the former to at least give one rebuttal and the latter to stop after the third rebuttal. Teaching a certain demographic something it is not accustomed to can cost time and money as it can be likened to learning a new language, or even new culture altogether. It wouldn't be a good thing to invest to knowing that afterwards you still have to cover for higher salary standards.

All in all it boils down to that BPO caters to businesses, and business could only be mixed with so much politics and patriotism-- it still has to survive and be able to generate income. On top of priority of any business is to be able to operate at lesser cost and more returns. Such could not be sustained right now by opting to be inshore, it simply follows the logic of "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush"-- the infrastructure and skills are already set and running offshore, why risk on something you're not too sure about?

*picture taken from http://www.cca.com.ph/