Culture and Globalization

Have you ever experienced culture through globalization? Have you ever called your credit card company and got a phone agent in the Philippines? Have you called for technical support and been helped by a representative in India? Have you tried to make plane reservations and spoken to a reservation specialist in South Africa? If you have, you have experienced the new world of off-shore customer support.

I worked for a number of years in the customer care industry. The company I worked for focuses on taking care of other companies’ customers. The company provides services in three major areas: technical support, customer service, and employee care.

For example in the technical support arena, they provide technical support for major software and hardware manufacturers like Microsoft, Dell, and Cisco Systems.

In the customer service arena they provide outsource customer service for major companies, for example, utility companies, credit card companies, and food manufacturers.

In the employee care arena, they provide human resources for other companies. Much of this work is provided through inbound and outbound call centers.

Over the last five years, technology has improved enough that some of this work is done off-shore. With a large English speaking population, India is an area where our company has set up several call centers.

In 2003, my company sent me to help launch a new account in Gurgaon, India, a suburb of New Delhi. This blog includes a collection of emails and journal entries that I wrote while there. Many of them highlight the surprising, and sometimes humorous cultural differences between our countries.

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