In one of the oddest actions I ever remember seeing at the FCC, the agency plans to vote on rules later this month that will curtail the use of overseas customer service by companies regulated by the FCC. I describe this as odd because it’s not clear to me that the FCC has the authority to tell ISPs, cellular carriers, and cable companies how to operate their day-to-day business. The FCC press release refers to customer service, but I assume this also applies to overseas technical support.
The FCC is considering the following changes:
- Onshoring Incentives. The FCC will encourage carriers to return call-center jobs to the U.S.
- English Proficiency Standards. They are considering a requirement that foreign-based customer service agents must be proficient in American Standard English.
- Location Disclosure. Companies must disclose to customers if an agent is located overseas.
- Right to Transfer. Customers must be given an option to transfer to a U.S.-based agent.
- Call Volume Caps. The FCC wants to limit the percentage of calls that can be handled by foreign agents.
The FCC says its proposed action is for security purposes since foreign call centers present a higher risk of not protecting customers’ personal data. The FCC insinuates that overseas call centers have been linked to the rise of robocalls and fraud, which may be true, but I’ve never heard of this before. The FCC says the changes are also intended to create U.S. job growth.
A quick review of the biggest carriers shows that Charter already uses 100% U.S.-based customer service agents. The FCC made the company agree to onshore customer service for its merger with Cox, but that was something the company had already promised when it first announced the Cox merger. Verizon mostly uses U.S. agents but has some limited overseas customer service. The big companies that will impacted the most are Comcast, AT&T, and T-Mobile, each of which uses a lot of overseas customer service agents. I’ll be curious to find out how smaller ISPs send this work overseas.
There is little doubt that this will be popular with many in the public. It’s not hard to find complaints on the web of customers who don’t like talking to somebody overseas. However, there are also a lot of online complaints about big companies like Charter, which uses U.S.-based customer service. I’ve always wondered how much people dislike overseas agents compared to the degree that they don’t like talking to any agents who use prepared scripts to answer questions.
One of the first things that came to mind when I read this is that it might provide an incentive for the big carriers that use overseas agents to transition to AI customer service. That would eliminate overseas workers, but it might also eliminate U.S. jobs. My gut feeling is that we are still not close to a day when a company can safely hand customer service completely to AI, but that doesn’t mean that some companies won’t try it. I suspect the public will hate talking to AI even more than talking to a live person, here or overseas.
The biggest question that will have to be answered is whether the FCC has the authority to order this. I can’t think of any section of the FCC code that would give the agency the authority to mandate the manner in which ISPs and carriers conduct day-to-day business. It will be interesting to see if anybody challenges them on this.
I also find it curious that this doesn’t feel like the light-touch regulation that was promised by the current FCC Chairman. This seems like new regulations that will add a lot to the cost of regulatory compliance. As I said at the beginning of the blog, it’s an odd idea on many fronts.
During my college days, I had the opportunity to work with Capital One for a year, and another 12 months with Virgin (UK). As you are aware, the latter is a phone, TV, and broadband supplier. This was between 2006 and 2009. Yet, I clearly remember we had English Proficiency Standards, Location Disclosure, and the Right to Transfer. If customers insisted, we used to transfer them to an on-site agent.
And you are right again. The public will hate talking to AI. Here in India, some companies have replaced basic-level customer service with bots. AI (as it is still in the early stages of development) ruins the overall experience and wastes a lot of time.
I guess, these days, Americans and Europeans do not appreciate interacting with Indias due to a lot of those phone call scams. The Indian government must find and shutdown these call centers to regain the trust.
Visiting with people from different areas with their varied accents is actually quite enjoyable. I love that. Troubleshooting a $10,000 monthly service that isn’t working with someone that doesn’t share my version of English is head-ache inducing.
I really struggle to believe that this administration would do absolutely anything to inconvenience large monopolies like Comcast, AT&T, and Charter. And I suspect you’re right that this is about providing cover for mass AI layoffs under the banner of populist patriotism.
I care about 2 things here
1- the wages paid are dramatically lower than in the US, that makes it nearly impossible to compete with in the US. I grew up with young people having local call centers they could start their careers in and gain skills to move up in sales and service. Offshoring labor when we have a lack of entry level jobs just doesn’t seem right.
2-often the people on the other end of the line have very strong accents and lack of context. If you’re troubleshooting a router it’s mostly an accent issue, but many things the people on the other side just don’t understand beyond the script. Order a pizza from a Philipines call center, it’s a bit of a contextual struggle.
I put these in order of importance for me. I’ve been to a number of these remote places and even toured call centers. I have nothing against the people. They are being paid a tiny fraction of the ‘savings’ and someone else is profiting to an extreme degree. There’s exploitation in it.
The foreign country certainly likes having the economic boost which is that labor, but I’d like to see standards in place for wages and profits to exclude the exploitation as well as remedy the unfair wage descrepancy for US workers.