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Divhon88:I worked for a while in a call center for AT&T when I was still in Manila. Most of the clients in the BPO outsourcing there and even now is for US or Canada so hearing UK & AU is hard enough.
The NZ accent is also completely different then throw-in the Kiwi slang it will also be a Night and Day to a typical Filipino, Indians and even to US and Canada english native users. So that is just on the language barrier side.
A voice call center support person is only as good as how a company trains them and provide resources for them.
In a typical work station in Manila one would be working their ass off every second of their shift with endless wave of calls is this the same in a NZ based call centre?
The level to which your support staff are committed (or overcommitted) is going to be directly related to several factors, including the reliability of the service, the role the callcentre has (general customer service vs technical support / escalation tiers), and the ratio they have of customers:support staff... which you will run closer and closer to the margins if you're trying to squeeze every last buck out of your service, vs focus on your customers.
A New Zealand company who chooses to offshore their callcentre is doing so strictly for economic reasons, it's unlikely in most cases that their customers will experience better service through people who aren't aware of local conditions, familiar with local slang and so-on.
If a callcentre deals with constant waves of calls to the point where the calltakers are constantly working their asses off, their under-resourced (IMO) and this will lead to staff burnout, poorer retention and thus less experience on the floor and a worse experience for the customer.
When I worked in a callcentre my primary role was technical support, and not just on the phone - I was also dealing with raised tickets via email, making outbound (callback) support calls and (occasionally) dealing with walk-up customers. I had enough time between 'waves' to generate pro-active content (documentation) which made our jobs easier by providing references for other team members, and also to get some exposure to the sysadmins/engineers (which aided in my professional development).
You don't get these benefits in an outsource arrangement because you're being held to a contracted set of outcomes and most other things are out-of-scope.
Even in the Xtra/Teletech days (some 20 years ago now, argh) we worked to develop a relationship between Xtra (internal tier 2/3) and Teletech (outsourced tier 1/2) because that led to better outcomes for customers and for a career development / recruitment pathway from Teletech to Xtra.
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