I think dhir should read everyhting that is posted before commenting in future.
Dear Malik, you don't even give me a good laugh.
The reason I asked whether this report is an old one is because I saw a similar one about 6-8 months back and I couldn't confirm the date from this thread as we need to register to open the link and the cut-paste provided by Jagga does not give a date.
Anyway, keep trying. One day you will be good at leg pulling, if not humour.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by dhir: *
Dear Malik, you don't even give me a good laugh.
[/QUOTE]
But somehow I managed to get you to reply to this thread, after you have spent the last 5 days hiding elsewhere once Jagga showed you up. Excuses, excuses. :)
Dell cancels Call Center in India
Dell cancels Indian tech support
Tuesday, November 25, 2003 Posted: 10:03 AM EST (1503 GMT)
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – After an onslaught of complaints, computer maker Dell Inc. has stopped using a technical support center in India to handle calls from its corporate customers.
Some U.S. customers have complained that the Indian technical-support representatives are difficult to communicate with because of thick accents and scripted responses.
Tech support for corporate customers with Optiplex desktop and Latitude notebook computers will instead be handled from call centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee, Dell spokesman Jon Weisblatt said Monday.
Calls from some home PC owners will continue to be handled by the technical support center in Bangalore, India, and Weisblatt said Dell has no plans to scale back the operation there.
“Customers weren’t satisfied with the level of support they were receiving, so we’re moving some calls around to make sure they don’t feel that way anymore,” Weisblatt said. He would not discuss the nature of the dissatisfaction with the call center in Bangalore.
Not all is well in India. Though many call centers have been moved to India, at least one is coming back. I am sure as more people file their complaints against other companies’ centers in India for “accent” and “scripted” responses more call centers will move back to US from India.
Hm! What’s the real story? They’re denying it.
Dell India denies shifting tech support to US
“No, we are not shifting the work. Dell is committed to India and is growing,” a spokesperson for the Bangalore-headquartered Dell India operations said.
The spokesperson said Dell had over 2,000 people working at its customer support centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad .
…
About 54 per cent of Dell’s 44,300 employees are overseas.
Dell pulls most calls from center in India after customer complaints
Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas - After an onslaught of complaints, direct-sales computer king Dell has stopped routing corporate customers to a technical-support call center in Bangalore, India.
Tech support for Optiplex desktop and Latitude notebook computers will be handled from call centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee, Dell spokesman Jon Weisblatt told The Associated Press yesterday.
“Customers weren’t satisfied with the level of support they were receiving, so we’re moving some calls around to make sure they don’t feel that way anymore,” Weisblatt said.
The development was first reported Saturday by the Austin American-Statesman.
Weisblatt would not discuss the nature of the dissatisfaction, but some U.S. customers have complained that Indian support operators are difficult to communicate with because of thick accents and scripted responses.
Dell is one of a number of high-tech companies that have in recent years moved jobs to India and other developing nations for the cheaper labor, which in Dell’s case helps to keep down the cost of providing round-the-clock support. Weisblatt said Dell has no plans to scale back resources at the Bangalore call center or change employment plans in the United States, although he would not comment on specifics. Worldwide, Dell employs about 44,300 people. About 54 percent of them are located abroad.
Corporate customers account for about 85 percent of Dell’s business, with only 15 percent coming from the consumer market.
Consumer callers won’t see a change in technical support, Weisblatt said.
Among Dell consumers who are dissatisfied with the company’s use of overseas labor is Ronald Kronk, a Presbyterian minister in Rochester, Pa., who has spent the past four months trying to resolve a miscommunication that has resulted in his being billed for two computers.
The problem, he says, is that the Dell call center is in India.
“They’re extremely polite, but I call it sponge listening — they just soak it in and say, ‘I can understand why you’re angry’ but nothing happens,” Kronk said.
Kronk has been credited for the second computer, but still faces late charges on a balance he said he never owed.
“Every time I see a Dell commercial on TV, I just cringe. They make it sound so easy and it’s been a nightmare,” Kronk said.
"I even said to them once that I’d like to speak to someone in the U.S. They gave me a number, but it’s a recording and I can’t speak to a human being.
One is from CNN and one is from India Times, guess who would be more accurate… nah, not India Times 
I think shifting call centres was a ridiculous idea to begin with. There are too many cultural variations and disparities. Within the next couple of years, most of the call centre business will be out of SA...
The Rise Of India
Growth is only just starting, but the country’s brainpower is already reshaping Corporate America
http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_49/b3861001_mz001.htm
Pulling into General Electric’s (GE ) John F. Welch Technology Center, a uniformed guard waves you through an iron gate. Once inside, you leave the dusty, traffic-clogged streets of Bangalore and enter a leafy campus of low buildings that gleam in the sun. Bright hallways lined with plants and abstract art – “it encourages creativity,” explains a manager – lead through laboratories where physicists, chemists, metallurgists, and computer engineers huddle over gurgling beakers, electron microscopes, and spectrophotometers. Except for the female engineers wearing saris and the soothing Hindi pop music wafting through the open-air dining pavilion, this could be GE’s giant research-and-development facility in the upstate New York town of Niskayuna.
Advertisment
It’s more like Niskayuna than you might think. The center’s 1,800 engineers – a quarter of them have PhDs – are engaged in fundamental research for most of GE’s 13 divisions. In one lab, they tweak the aerodynamic designs of turbine-engine blades. In another, they’re scrutinizing the molecular structure of materials to be used in DVDs for short-term use in which the movie is automatically erased after a few days. In another, technicians have rigged up a working model of a GE plastics plant in Spain and devised a way to boost output there by 20%. Patents? Engineers here have filed for 95 in the U.S. since the center opened in 2000.
Pretty impressive for a place that just four years ago was a fallow plot of land. Even more impressive, the Bangalore operation has become vital to the future of one of America’s biggest, most profitable companies. “The game here really isn’t about saving costs but to speed innovation and generate growth for the company,” explains Bolivian-born Managing Director Guillermo Wille, one of the center’s few non-Indians.
The Welch center is at the vanguard of one of the biggest mind-melds in history. Plenty of Americans know of India’s inexpensive software writers and have figured out that the nice clerk who booked their air ticket is in Delhi. But these are just superficial signs of India’s capabilities. Quietly but with breathtaking speed, India and its millions of world-class engineering, business, and medical graduates are becoming enmeshed in America’s New Economy in ways most of us barely imagine. “India has always had brilliant, educated people,” says tech-trend forecaster Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. “Now Indians are taking the lead in colonizing cyberspace.”
This techno take-off is wonderful for India – but terrifying for many Americans. In fact, India’s emergence is fast turning into the latest Rorschach test on globalization. Many see India’s digital workers as bearers of new prosperity to a deserving nation and vital partners of Corporate America. Others see them as shock troops in the final assault on good-paying jobs. Howard Rubin, executive vice-president of Meta Group Inc., a Stamford (Conn.) information-technology consultant, notes that big U.S. companies are shedding 500 to 2,000 IT staffers at a time. “These people won’t get reabsorbed into the workforce until they get the right skills,” he says. Even Indian execs see the problem. “What happened in manufacturing is happening in services,” says Azim H. Premji, chairman of IT supplier Wipro Ltd. “That raises a lot of social issues for the U.S.”
No wonder India is at the center of a brewing storm in America, where politicians are starting to view offshore outsourcing as the root of the jobless recovery in tech and services. An outcry in Indiana recently prompted the state to cancel a $15 million IT contract with India’s Tata Consulting. The telecom workers’ union is up in arms, and Congress is probing whether the security of financial and medical records is at risk. As hiring explodes in India, the jobless rate among U.S. software engineers has more than doubled, to 4.6%, in three years. The rate is 6.7% for electrical engineers and 7.7% for network administrators. In all, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 234,000 IT professionals are unemployed.
The biggest cause of job losses, of course, has been the U.S. economic downturn. Still, there’s little denying that the offshore shift is a factor. By some estimates, there are more IT engineers in Bangalore (150,000) than in Silicon Valley (120,000). Meta figures at least one-third of new IT development work for big U.S. companies is done overseas, with India the biggest site. And India could start grabbing jobs from other sectors. A.T. Kearney Inc. predicts that 500,000 financial-services jobs will go offshore by 2008. Indiana notwithstanding, U.S. governments are increasingly using India to manage everything from accounting to their food-stamp programs. Even the U.S. Postal Service is taking work there. Auto engineering and drug research could be next.
More Science in Schools
Tech luminary Andrew S. Grove, CEO of Intel Corp. (INTC ), warns that “it’s a very valid question” to ask whether America could eventually lose its overwhelming dominance in IT, just as it did in electronics manufacturing. Plunging global telecom costs, lower engineering wages abroad, and new interactive-design software are driving revolutionary change, Grove said at a software conference in October. “From a technical and productivity standpoint, the engineer sitting 6,000 miles away might as well be in the next cubicle and on the local area network.” To maintain America’s edge, he said, Washington and U.S. industry must double software productivity through more R&D investment and science education.
But there’s also a far more positive view – that harnessing Indian brainpower will greatly boost American tech and services leadership by filling a big projected shortfall in skilled labor as baby boomers retire. That’s especially possible with smarter U.S. policy. Companies from GE Medical Systems (GE ) to Cummins (CUM ) to Microsoft (MSFT ) to enterprise-software firm PeopleSoft (PSFT ) that are hiring in India say they aren’t laying off any U.S. engineers. Instead, by augmenting their U.S. R&D teams with the 260,000 engineers pumped out by Indian schools each year, they can afford to throw many more brains at a task and speed up product launches, develop more prototypes, and upgrade quality. A top electrical or chemical engineering grad from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITS) earns about $10,000 a year – roughly one-eighth of U.S. starting pay. Says Rajat Gupta, an IIT-Delhi grad and senior partner at consulting firm McKinsey & Co.: “Offshoring work will spur innovation, job creation, and dramatic increases in productivity that will be passed on to the consumer.”
Re: Dell cancels Call Center in India
you cant completely depend of fdi it can be take away for various
reasons
China and India have pursued radically different development strategies. India is not outperforming China overall, but it is doing better in certain key areas. That success may enable it to catch up with and perhaps even overtake China. Should that prove to be the case, it will not only demonstrate the importance of homegrown entrepreneurship to long-term economic development; it will also show the limits of the FDI-dependent approach China is pursuing
hahahahahhah… Outy yaar…buss ab ChoRdey…man… burp
Call centers refer just not to simply one process. Companies that shift call centers eventually ramp to include other processes. SA doesn;t have the brain power or the volumes. Also, who are they going to staff it with? Aids patients? With the expected life span spiraling towards 31 yrs of age by year 2020. SA, is a good destination for Clinical trials processes not for call centers.
Dell which does not have any storefronts embarked on taking a mission critical process, customer support (the only client interaction) offshore. The problem with shifting the mission critical process is the idiocy shown by dell. This strategy would have failed in SA or Phillipines or the moon.
gettin' a little too jumpy matsui. SA== South Asia specifically India and Pakistan. Although, your analogy of aids patients could be applied just as fairly to India, considering the worsening situation there.
There maybe a bubble growth goin' on at the moment, but I doubt that anyone is there for a long haul. Mark my words :)
**Want quality? Go ‘Made in India’ **](Want quality? Go 'Made in India' - Times of India)
NEW DELHI: Move over China. With five desi companies bagging the globally-acclaimed Deming prize, India has emerged as the new destination for quality manufacturing.
This prize is given to an organisation for rigorous total quality management (TQM) practices. China is yet to get such an honour. Eight more Indian companies are preparing for the 2004 Deming recognition.
In addition, the Japanese Institute of Plant Management has rewarded 18 manufacturing plants in 10 Indian companies for excelling in Total Productive Maintenance this year. World renowned TQM expert Prof Yasutoshi Washio predicts that Indian manufacturing quality will overtake Japan in 2013. So, are we in for a brand new success story?
While IT has helped India to achieve global recognition, two million trained engineers in the country are infusing vibrancy in manufacturing companies many of them growing at 40 per cent. “India is on the same journey towards good quality that Japan was after World War II,” says CII president and M&M vice chairman Anand Mahindra.
Suresh Krisha, chairman, Sundaram Fastners says, "The tidal wave is just building up. The interest shown by global manufacturing companies is on the rise.
Is it any wonder then that the US, Europe and Japan are seeking outsourcing opportunities through manufacturing supply chains from India? Toyota is establishing India as a source for transmission parts. Ford is sourcing engines from Hindustan Motors. Yamaha and Mitsubishi have announced plans to make India a global sourcing hub for 125 cc motorcycles.
Volvo, Renault and Mack Truck want to develop Indian vendors for their global requirements.
US retail chain Walmart, through its global outsourcing office in Bangalore, will increase outsourcing from India from the current $1 billion to $10 billion in the next couple of years. It is looking at sourcing paints, automotive, sport goods, lawn and garden equipment and hardware among others.
Honeywell, a $22 billion technology and manufacturing company, is finalising its outsourcing strategy for aerospace products and services. Siemens has committed to make $500 million investments soon.
But there’s some advice from global consultancy firm AT Kearney CEO designate Heinz Ludwig Klein. “India will have to bring down cost to improve its manufacturing competitiveness.”
let's see what how the Indian economy is doing, -Mumbai is now home to at least three dozen American companies including Kodak, Heinz, Monsanto, Warner Bros, Federal Express, Bank of America, Bankers Trust, Parke Davis, Intel, JP Morgan, Kellogg, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, American Int’l Group, Exxon-Mobil, Delta and Boston Consulting.
Delhi has AT&T, GE, General Motors, Oracle, Pepsi, Unocal, Xerox, Lockheed, Raytheon, Rockwell, Honeywell, Adobe, AES, Alcoa, American Express, Northrop, McKinsey, Amway, Polaroid and Coca Cola. Bangalore has Caterpillar, Dell, Sun, Texas Instruments, NCR, Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Lucent, IBM, Novell, Ingersoll-Rand, American Data and MetLife. Hyderabad has Microsoft, Cognizant, Chip Engines and Brigade. Chennai has Ford, Caltex, Tenneco, Covansys, Diebold, Citibank, Ernst & Young and Price Waterhouse.
A large majority of US corporate giants are now dependent on Tata Consultancy, Infosys Technologies, Wipro, Satyam Computer Services, HCL Technologies, Patni Computer Systems, Silverline Technologies, Mahindra, Pentasoft, Mascot, Mascom, Mastek, Polaris, L&T and Hexaware (all Indian software giants).”
The list goes on and on – in fact, now at least 77 MNCs produce intellectual property (not sweat shops) in R&D labs in India. The following facts (which are just part of the success story) would be relevant here: -
Fact #1. "Citing the 18.05 per cent rise in exports, Jaitley said, with this India share in the world exports in merchandise goods has increased from 0.4 per cent in 1992-93 to 0.7 per cent in 2001-02 and 0.8 per cent in 2003. If the present trend is maintained, we might even reach one per cent share in world exports before the target year of 2007," he said." – IE
Fact #2. “Despite an overall sluggish growth, many sectors in the economy are growing. And, growing at very handsome rates too. According to an ET Intelligence Group study, a large number of industries are growing at rates over 10%. Iraq or not, and SARS be damned. Compared to the growth rate of the real economy, that’s stupendous” – TNN
Fact #3. “During … 1995-99 China’s value added per worker stood lower at $2,885 per year against India’s $3,118.” – Business Standard
Fact #4. “A.T. Kearney ranks India as the preferred country overall for offshore business processing, followed by Canada, Brazil … Australia, Russia and China.” – atkearny.com
Fact #5. “Auto part exports to rise over 100% to $2bn in 2 years” – ET
Fact #6. “Today, Bharat Forge has cemented its position as one of the world's largest axle-component manufacturers, with a 50% market share in the U.S.” – Business Week
Fact #7. “General Atlantic Partners’ $107 million investment in Mumbai-based Patni Computer Systems last year has emerged as the biggest private equity deal in the Asia Pacific region in 2002. India clocked the second highest funding in the region at $ 406 million after Australia, which pulled in $ 450 million. China ranked fifth down the order ($ 162 million).” – ET
Fact #8. “India’s services sector has emerged among the top-five fastest growing in the world during 1990-2001, surpassing its track record in the 1980s. According to the World Development Indicators, 2003, …India’s services sector clocked an average 7.9% growth per annum between 1990 and 2001, against 6.9% between 1980 and 1990, beating the global rate of 3.1%.” – ET
Fact #9. “Agricultural and processed food exports rose … 23% during April-October 2002” – ET
Fact #10. “Steel exports to US zoom 13 fold. …while India exported 70,000 tonnes of steel to the US during April-December 2001, it exported close to a million tonnes during April-December 2002 “ – ET
Fact #11. “Electronics components' exports have posted a 20.35 per cent rise in 2001-02 to Rs 2200 crore compared to Rs 1,828 crore in 2000-01, according to an estimate by Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council.” – ET
Fact #12. “India is fast emerging as the growth engine for multinational companies. Indian subsidiaries of MNCs are clocking better growth rates than their global parents both in terms of sales and net income … ABB, Nestle, LG, Samsung, Philips, Goodyear, Pfizer, Whirlpool, Siemens are all beating their global headquarters in performance scales and some of them are clocking double-digit growth …” – ET
Right road to be the ‘best thing’
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/nov27/n2.asp
India to set up second Antarctican base
To be set up within the 11th plan period at a cost of 15 crore, the second base will play a key role in the experiments in understanding the chances of major earthquakes in the Himalayas, which is also important for town planning in the hills, Dr Harsh Gupta, secretary in the Department of Ocean Development said.
The first Indian station, Dakshin Gangotri, was set up on the icy shelf in 1983 which was later dismantled to establish the permanent base Maitri in 1988-89 in the Schirmarcher Oasis region. Maitri houses living facilities for 25 people and several laboratories.
2003 was such a good year for India (mostly). A few developments of the year. (star-rating for the impact of each development.)
Missile related developments
9-May-03 First Astra test *****
Four (3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th) Brahmos tests (from INS Rajput, from a mobile complex) *****
Space related developments
15-Aug-03 Moon campaign launched ***
8-May-03 GSLV-D2 successful launch puts GSAT-2 in orbit *****
10-Apr-03 INSAT-3A launched by Ariane **
28-Sep-03 INSAT-3E successfully launched by Ariane **
31-Oct-03 PSLV-C5 successfully puts Resourcesat (IRS-P6) in orbit **
Navy related developments
Talwar inducted ??
Trishul inducted ??
Airforce related developments
7-Mar-03 IJT first flight ***
1-Aug-03 LCA-TD1 goes supersonic ****
4-Feb-03 Saras rollout **
25-Nov-03 LCA-PV1 flies ****
27-Nov-03 LCA-TD2 goes supersonic **
Phalcon deal *****
Hawk Deal ***
Infrastructure/Economy related
Another stretch of Delhi metro opened ***
10,000 Kms four-laning assigned to NHAI in addition to NHDP *****
Sagar-mala project to upgrade ports launched *****
GSM/CDMA mess sorted out. Unified licensing introduced ****
Developments awaited before the end of the year
Saras first flight.
Jammu-Udhampur railway section to be commissioned in December
Wait for more......
That’s something :
Want quality? Go ‘Made in India’
Quote:
" US retail chain Walmart, through its global outsourcing office in Bangalore, will increase outsourcing from India from the **current $1 billion to $10 billion **in the next couple of years. It is looking at sourcing paints, automotive, sport goods, lawn and garden equipment and hardware among others. "
quality award winners.
http://www.juse.or.jp/e/deming/pdf/04_listofwinners.pdf
indian winners
sundaram clayton brakes division 1998
sundaram brake linings 2001
TVS motor company 2002
Brakes india Foundry division 2003
Mahindra farm equipment 2003
Rane brake linings 2003
quality control award for factories
hi-tech carbon GMPD 2002
birla celluosic unit 2003
japan quality medal
sundaram clayton brakes division 2002
other than japanese cos., a couple in taiwan and
some thailand cos, india is only other on list.
Re: Re: Dell cancels Call Center in India
If India can turn into a fast-growth economy, it will be the first developing nation that used its brainpower, not natural resources or the raw muscle of factory labor, as the catalyst.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by outlaw: *
gettin' a little too jumpy matsui. SA== South Asia specifically India and Pakistan. Although, your analogy of aids patients could be applied just as fairly to India, considering the worsening situation there.
There maybe a bubble growth goin' on at the moment, but I doubt that anyone is there for a long haul. Mark my words :)
[/QUOTE]
what's your definition of long haul? 3 years, 5 years, 10 years?
with the current momentum in services, manufacturing and investments, it doesn't take too much education to figure out no particular line item will be too super critical ..the one and only super critical factor is to avoid some insanity from across the border.