Customer Service Centers

Lloyd’s Bank in the UK recently announced it is closing its “call centre” in India. Many companies in the UK are returning customer service either to domestic central phone banks, or even (gasp!) allowing patrons to call their neighborhood office. NPR (National Public Radio) reported a couple of weeks ago that the trend of outsourcing customer service to overseas locations from the USA may be slowing, and that research suggests some services are more efficiently provided by Americans here at home.

Some American workers provide call center services on pay scales similar to those overseas: people employed in prisons, like the Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario, Oregon. USA Today reported in “Inmates vs. Outsourcing” in 2004:

“About a dozen states — Oregon, Arizona, California and Iowa, among others — have call centers in state and federal prisons, underscoring a push to employ inmates in telemarketing jobs that might otherwise go to low-wage countries such as India and the Philippines. Arizona prisoners make business calls, as do inmates in Oklahoma. A call center for the DMV is run out of an all-female prison in Oregon. Other companies are keeping manufacturing jobs in the USA. More than 150 inmates in a Virginia federal prison build car parts for Delco Remy International. Previously, some of those jobs were overseas.”

“At least 2,000 inmates nationwide work in call centers, and that number is rising as companies seek cheap labor without incurring the wrath of politicians and unions. At the same time, prison populations are ballooning, offering U.S. companies another way to slash costs.”

“The pay isn’t great — $120 to $185 a month — but for 80 Snake River inmates, it’s their first job and a diversion from life in this medium-security prison of 2,900.”

“Convicts work for two companies in the Oregon facility. About 60 pitch Perry Johnson consulting services to American businesses. A group of 20 inmates work for Timlin Industries, an Oregon company that sells promotional items to small businesses.”

“The center opened last year [2003] after a yearlong push by the Oregon Department of Corrections to recruit businesses that would otherwise move offshore. The program reduces by 24% recidivism, the frequency in which released prisoners violate the law and wind up back in jail, and teaches prisoners to work together.”

I enjoy talking with customer service representatives located in India and Pakistan. I’m awed by their expertise in both English and whatever technical problem I need help with, and their accents remind me fondly of the parents of immigrant students during my school years (the young people rapidly gained Yorkshire accents for use at school, just as I spoke with a northern accent with my buddies and switched to “proper” English at home for my south-speaking mother). But I’m happy that inmates in Oregon’s prisons are providing call center services close to home, learning marketable (and marketing) skills that will help them find jobs after finishing their sentences.