Dilip is an Indian worker who lives in Bangalore. He woks at a call centre in Bangalore that provides a service for a company based in the UK to support his family. He has decided to change his name to David; he has done this because British people recognise the name David more as it is common in the UK. This factor immediately affects the conversation between Dilip and the caller. Most people get the stereotypical view of an Indian call centre worker in their head once they know his name, which immediately sets the conversation off on the wrong foot because the caller may refuse to continue the call, feeling that an Indian person is unlikely to understand them.
If, however Dilip changes his name to David it is likely that a lot more people will feel less different from him and so will probably listen to what he has to say and are less likely to think that it is an Indian call centre.
Many call centres in the UK have been outsourced to places such as India. If something has been outsourced it means that it has been moved to somewhere else where it will use different resources. In this case it is mainly because buildings in India cost much less to buy or rent than in the UK, because prices of buildings in general are less in India which means it is cheaper for the companies to get the buildings where the call centres will be. Also in India workers don’t require/need as much pay as people in England because basic things such as food cost less due to the country being poorer in general.
Another reason why companies might want to set u call centres in India is because in India there are more people who need work and who are prepared to work longer hours than people in the UK.
There are advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing for both countries
The advantages and disadvantages of the for the Indian economy are:
* if more people are working then it will mean that the Indian government get more money from taxes
* if the Indian government get more money it will mean that they can improve things which need to be improve in India and so they will have a better quality of life
* however people will still have jobs that don’t have good pay so the economy would only be able to grow to a certain point
The advantages and disadvantages of this for the UK’s economy and for customers in the UK are that:
* there wont be loads of people working in badly paid jobs in call centres and it is hard to get people working in them anyway, because they aren’t particularly desirable jobs.
* People who need to speak to someone at a call centre are more likely to be able to because it is easy for companies to set them up in India and so to provide a service.
* It also means however that Less people in the U.K. have jobs so there are less taxes available for the government
* This means taxes for people who do work are higher which means a lower quality of life
In Conclusion i think that it is a good idea for companies to out source call centres because people in places such as India need work much more than most people in the UK, it is also a good idea to do this because it will help to close the gap between more economically developed countries (MEDCs) and less economically developed countries (LEDCs). This is because if the UK has less call centres it will mean slightly less jobs, which will decrease the UK’s economy. It will also significantly increase India’s economy because of all the extra jobs (as i explained before). However it wouldn’t be a good idea to outsource many other things from the UK because it would be very bad for the UK economy.
I think that the economies of MEDCs and LEDCs are definitely connected because neither would be able to survive well without the other, not just because of call centres (obviously) but because of all the other things that we rely on from LEDCs such as food and cars and lots of things used in everyday life.