JACKSON - When American CEOs are berated for outsourcing call center jobs to Asia, most simply retort that their companies are chasing cheap labor.
But companies may decide the price of that cheap labor is too high if they read a new book by a University of Southern Mississippi professor who studied the call center industry for eight years.
David Butler's "Bottom-line Call Center Management" is a rare examination of an occupation that employs 7 percent of the American work force.
And it hits print just as credit card giant Capital One Financial Corp. canceled a contract last Thursday with a New Delhi-based firm to outsource a 250-seat call center.
"What CEOs don't tell reporters is that outsourcing is still experimental and the experiment may not be working," said Butler, who heads the Hattiesburg-based university's international economic development doctoral program. "Overseas call centers can cost more in customer goodwill than they save in staff salaries."
Many corporate executives who outsourced call centers to Asia confided to Butler that they are plotting discreet moves back to U.S. soil. They don't want to lose face by admitting an error. But they don't want to lose American clients who resent having calls to customer service answered by someone on the other side of the world.
"The current political climate and terrible jobless numbers have made outsourcing a hot button issue even for white collar professionals," Butler said. "Airlines, brokerage firms, banks and manufacturers need to look at call centers as part of brand imaging. Call centers are the continuous bond customers have with companies. Call center staff calm panicky customers with detailed advice. They help them choose new products. They create empathy."
Butler cited a notable example of "call center repatriation" from last year. Dell Inc. moved its call center support for corporate business from India into Texas, Iowa and Tennessee. Dell clients had complained that some Indian staffers spoke with indecipherable accents and responded to technical questions with generic answers.
Much of Butler's data is anecdotal because the U.S. Commerce Department doesn't track call center employment statistics. The jobs are lumped into larger categories like banking.
But in Mississippi, local governments know from experience that a call center can be a jackpot for residents.
Cingular Wireless transformed an abandoned Wal-Mart in Ocean Springs into a call center with almost 800 workers. "In Mississippi, a worker could support himself on a call center wage of $8 to $10 per hour - and the jobs come with health benefits," said Jackson County Economic Development Foundation executive director George Freeland.
"It's elitist for economists to be dismissive of jobs lost from call center outsourcing," Freeland said. "Ocean Springs went from a big box retail center generating zero jobs to an employer who gave livelihoods to over 700 residents, including displaced workers and former military personnel."
According to the Mississippi Development Authority, the state currently has 3,470 call center employees. The mega-centers employing hundreds are in Jackson, Hattiesburg, Ocean Springs and Starkville. But Mississippi lags far behind Florida, Texas and Nebraska in call center jobs. MDA marketing bureau manager Mickey Milligan hopes Mississippi will target call centers with glitzy economic incentive packages used to recruit manufacturers. "Currently, it's up to municipalities to create incentives at the local level," Milligan said. Ocean Springs romanced Cingular with a decade-long property tax exemption for the center.
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