When you work as a customer service representative, you run the danger of having your job outsourced to another country, usually India. As a result, you may decide that you don�t want to work in a field that may be outsourced at any moment.
However, it is important to understand why things are outsourced, and the relative job security you have as a customer service representative.
First of all, outsourcing is a relatively new phenomenon, only arising recently, around 1990, when the thought of sending things like call centers overseas first came about. However, once one company did it and other companies began to see the benefits of sending call centers elsewhere in the world, then the drive was on to get the cheapest labor for the quickest buck.
India, which has a highly skilled workforce, also has high unemployment so the call centers were welcome as savors by many who wanted jobs as call center representatives.
The trend continues even today, with every company from HP to Microsoft outsourcing call centers to other countries where they can pay the customer service representatives there much less than they are paid in the United States.
Now, with all this talk of losing jobs to India, do not let it bother you, because there is a backlash brewing in India as many have decided not to work in call centers and are instead choosing other work and fields to go into.
As a result, some companies are choosing to remain in the United States and hire locally.
If you are looking for a job in the customer service field as a customer service representative, then perhaps to ensure job security, look at where a company has its call centers and determine how often they send departments overseas to places like India. Doing this will allow you to either avoid companies that do not have a problem cutting customer service departments, or find a company that is committed to keeping jobs in America.
As well, just because your own department is moved to India, that does not mean you will suffer from losing your job. In fact, many companies will simply move you to another department where you will train in another form of customer service, while retaining your job as customer service representative.
If that happens, then your skill set will actually increase and you will find yourself become more and more skilled based on the different departments you work in for the company. So, if the time comes where you do lose your customer service representative job to a place like India, you have several skills to fall back on and you can probably attain a job somewhere in your area using those skills.
Outsourcing can be a stressful factor of a customer service representatives job, but it does not have to be. You cannot control what the executives decide and as a result you simply have to go with the flow and save your money for a rainy day.
One good thing to remember is that there are many different customer service representatives out there, so don’t worry!
