Service Desk outsourced to India, what do you think is the outcome?

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avenster@reddit

They quite possibly went with the cheapest firm they could find.

I'd say let it crash and burn until they eventually realise quality needs to be paid for.

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I will always remember having to contact a printer vender for support way back in the day. It stopped pulling paper from the tray. Took the tray out and there was a part of the feed mech laying in the tray. Contacted their support and 100% no shit the clown shoe said I was required to re-install the drivers to see if that resolved the issue before he could continue. I told them the piece was laying in the tray and sent them a pic of it. No dice and he wouldn't budge, so out of spite a put him on hold, ate my lunch, went to the restroom, came back and told him no change and the part that fell out of it was still sitting next to me. Then proceeded to send me an entire replacement printer which I guess was okay but still wasted lifespan on that call.

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GinnyJr@reddit

Just watch it fall apart and enjoy

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sadisticamichaels@reddit

Just do the needful.

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Duck_Diddler@reddit

It’s trash. I hope the entire outsourced tech field in India collapses. Bring it back to where the local resources are.

You can ask for native English speakers. I do it any time I call vendors like Dell or Broadcom. Stop using their Indian resources. Major projects? Ask for a native language speaker based in your country. It’s your right as the customer.

Sorry, I’m really passionate about this failure in our industry.

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GuessSecure4640@reddit

I've been called racist for having this same opinion

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IngrownToenailsHurt@reddit

Yep. We're a Dell VxBlock shop but have been an EMC customer for years before Dell bought EMC. Dell outsourced to India so much I rarely get an American or native English speaking support person anymore. Used to only get India during the day but now they run all three shifts so almost always get an Indian. Most of the time you can't understand them over voice and the ones that know they are difficult to understand use chat instead of voice but their written English is still bad. Even when you get one that has good English skills they really don't know anything beyond the script in front of them.

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Duck_Diddler@reddit

I’m not gonna give you all the details but we’re in a similar shop on rails.

You are allowed to ask for native English speakers with Dell. I don’t even give them a chance anymore, as soon as I cannot understand you, you’re gonezo

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BluebirdExpress6279@reddit

Make sure to document how bad it is and ensure that when it falls apart it is ALWAYS on the outsourced call center. They made their bed let them sleep in it.

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steelbeamsdankmemes@reddit

I worked at Thomas-Reuters as a desktop tech contractor as they were in the process of deciding to outsource or not. They did, so helpdesk was now all overseas. Our tickets skyrocketed since basic issues weren't solved and escalated to us. Morale sank, work overloaded, but since I was a contractor, I only did 40 a week.

I remember talking to an employee I was helping, and she said "I thought helpdesk was supposed to get better?" Yeeeeah no.

All the other desktop support techs, who were there 20+ years, were then also "outsourced" into IBM managed services. I jumped ship shortly after.

PS, fuck Lotus Notes.

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No_Cartoonist981@reddit

Been round in these circles a few times, in house investment on ‘2nd line’ slowly just becomes default 1.5 line

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Aless-dc@reddit

Let it fall apart

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kerosene31@reddit

Sad but true. I learned the hard way that the higher ups don't listen to people. They have to figure it out on their own.

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BamBam-BamBam@reddit

But here's the deal. They dont care, as long as it looks good on the balance sheet.

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warpurlgis@reddit

If people can't do their jobs becuase of poor support that balance sheet will soon reflect that.

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BamBam-BamBam@reddit

Nah, end-users tend to mostly just suffer in silence unless it's major or has irritated them for a long time. They dont have the same sense of outrage that tech-types get when something doesn't work as expected. They'll just muddle on.

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OneVast3433@reddit

Probably the truest comment in this thread.

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whythehellnote@reddit

Not soon enough.

First report will show the large savings and any worsened service is not reflected in financial numbers and will be explained as "teething troubles"

By the time the inertia is overcome and there are real financial issues, the people who made the decision are long gone, having collected their bonus and reference and moved to the next company

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SystemsDefenestrator@reddit

Been a while since I've seen a three envelopes reference

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daverapp@reddit

I've not seen the reference before. Care to eli5?

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Pioneer1111@reddit

https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/

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GlobalCurry@reddit

They'll use it as an excuse to offshore level 3+ support next.

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diablette@reddit

Time to get a remote job working for an Indian firm for 1/4 the pay. /s

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Apotheosis29@reddit

And by the time that surfaces, most of the execs who made that bad decision will collect their bonus and already be on their way to fix/fuck up the next company

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castamara@reddit

Prepare 3 envelopes

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lurker_bee@reddit

Rinse and repeat!

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Evil-Bosse@reddit

It is also extremely important that C-levels need to use the outsourced IT for all their issues, get it in writing that all employees must go that way, no direct lines to on-site staff.

Only way for people to see how bad their decisions are is if try are affected by them, and C-levels love to be coddled in a VIP lane. If they demand one make sure the process of adding people to it lets you add everybody.

Make sure to log statistics, and market it as every forwarded ticket is a failed delivery.

Get customer satisfaction metrics on internal team vs outsourced one.

Get a proper routine of sending gibberish/incomplete/documented tasks back to the outsourcees, with logging how many get sent back, if a kitchen had 30% dishes sent back it would be catastrophic.

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Magic_Neil@reddit

In particular forcing the C-suite to take a bite out of the sh*t-sandwich they make helps a lot. Of course they’ll still shoulder tap people or demand a VIP team.

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Outside-Banana4928@reddit

Yes. This is very good.

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INSPECTOR99@reddit

BUT, BUT, BUT, when the IT SYSTEM crashes does not the balance sheet also CRASH ! ! ! ? ? ? :-)

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justice_works@reddit

And whoever is doing this is gone in 3 yrs to another company.

Guess whi have to oick uo the pieces.

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1z1z2x2x3c3c4v4v@reddit

Why should they care otherwise? If there is no performance hit, then everything is working fine.

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BamBam-BamBam@reddit

Oh, there will be a performance hit, at least to any issue that's outside the norm. It'll just never matter or bubble-up to senior management.

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kerosene31@reddit

They don't care what IT says, but eventually some big order will get missed or some other screwup over a basic technical problem. Then the higher ups will come up with a "new" idea to move support in house to better support the business... until next year when they get sold the same line again.

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tdhuck@reddit

Initially it will look good, but the unfortunate part is that management decisions typically take 2-3 years for the crap to float to the top.

I would continue to be a team player, but let it fall apart is the right approach. The more anyone does to help lessen the blow of crappy l1-l2 support will only mean more work for that person.

That being said, our HD techs are extremely nice, I can't stress that enough, but they lack troubleshooting skills and common sense.

Last month I had a HD tech come up to me an was 'annoyed' that the micro PC and wall mount kit didn't come with instructions. They were very confused and didn't know how to put it together. The box had the mount and 6 screws. 4 of the 6 screws were the same size (for the PC) and the two other screws were specifically for the mount. They looked like a deer in headlights.

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the901@reddit

And their resume.

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pdp10@reddit

The market can stay irrational, longer than you can stay solvent.

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HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit

Yeah everyone saying "let it burn, they'll figure it out" is skipping the part where, unless this support team is grossly incompetent to the point it brings everything to a standstill, it will be years before the actual hard damage shows up in a measurable enough way. By then you'll have likely lost your job too.

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1z1z2x2x3c3c4v4v@reddit

It's not that they don't listen, but if there is no measurable performance hit, then everything IS fine.

Tell people to stop working extra hours and covering for the substandard work, and management will see there is a problem.

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HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit

What eventually got out heads to accept the failure of the outsourcing was, several years later, the constant reports from employees about how long it took the remote team to resolve the issues. They would literally be connected to the other person's computer for hours without actually solving the issue.

Because they're incompetent and barely comprehend what the issue is when the user explains it to them in plain English.

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pakman82@reddit

Had to support that. They sucked then they got better. But we found out a middle manager was having them use his credentials to address issues, instead of there own. They had low level techs reuse their high level techs credentials to work extra tickets, inflate their performance. For a medical information / insurance processing company. Security found out. Got that shut down. Got the shady middle managers fired that encouraged it. Got them to hire a different company. And it was garbage .. then CoVID hit, and the company almost collapsed. All the ppl that where trying to keep it secure left. All the new middle managers left, en-mass. And they brought back the middle managers that supported password sharing and dumb stuff.

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trs21219@reddit

Man AI is gonna completely wipe out these low talent outsourcing companies and I'm here for it.

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gethelptdavid@reddit

Me too, but we are a very talented US based outsourcing org. I always say I want AI to solve 99% of the issues for our cleints, we will take the other 1%.

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IdiosyncraticBond@reddit

"Please do the needful"

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CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit

This, let it burn.

Sometimes, people who implement a decision must be the ones to experience the failure of that decision. If people express frustration with the situation, refer them to the people who said “it is great”.

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LakeVermilionDreams@reddit

Why are C-level employees so ignorant of this? They are intelligent people, surely they understand the game they are playing as well as we talk about how well we understand our part in it.

Go higher with the blame. Above the c-suite. No, above the Board of Directors, above the stockholders.

Put blame squarely on the source of all of the: capitalist greed.

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diablette@reddit

Because they value profits over employee satisfaction and productivity. Tech support costs them money instead of making them money in a typical evaluation, so it makes sense that they're trying to push it to AI and offshoring.

What we need is some MBAs to quantify the actual loss of productivity, increase in unresolved or delayed tickets, and decrease in employee satisfaction scores. These people only speak in terms of money and all of this can be spun into a story for them.

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HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit

They are intelligent people

They have situational and very narrow intelligence relating to their field. They're also confident that any issues that result from their decision will be dealt with at the time.

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Kichigai@reddit

Pain is the best teacher. It seems to be human nature. Take, for example, grocery bags. Target gives you a 5¢/bag discount for using reusable bags. Aldi charges you 5¢/bag for every paper bag you use. Guess which one has greater adoption of reusable bags.

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theolentangy@reddit

Watched it happen as a contractor for a large tech company. They swapped vendors to an Indian one, ported some of us over to help transition. They had no idea how to actually do the support work, or what the team they supported did. Boy did they love their little internal WBRs where they patted each other on the back after announcing they closed all of the quarters tickets. They did not mention they decided to close them without resolving so their KPIs looked good.

I was let go soon after(unsurprising for the few who hopped over, most of us just wanted more time to job hunt). Three months of severance in exchange for my knowledge wasn’t bad. I wonder how many quarters got through before anyone caught wind…

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unruly_fans@reddit

My company switched ~9 years ago. Tier 1-2 are still ass. My guess is the outcome/cost ratio has no bottom.

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andynzor@reddit

Management will only react when it is too late. It took four months to fire a contractor company after I made it very clear we cannot work with them and they will not deliver. We're four months behind schedule because we had to start over ourselves.

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Pyroechidna1@reddit

I’m doing this right now!

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the_real_MBAPROF@reddit

Agree!

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Adept_Strategy_9545@reddit

Hi, let’s stop being racist. Thanks.

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Hangikjot@reddit

on-prem team replaced with offshore, C suite is praised on saving money, gets bonus and leaves.
offshore team fails and will be replaced with MSP in country, the new C suite who will be praised, gets bonus and leaves.
MSP will fail and be replaced with New inhouse IT. the new C suite is praised gets bonus and leaves.
repeat each step in the cycle is about 3 years.
Bonus: You were made redundant somewhere in there.

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BullfrogCustard@reddit

Did we work at the same place?

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Hangikjot@reddit

the speed at with C suite move between companies we might as well. we probably shared a few bosses at this point.

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oakfan52@reddit

C Suite step brothers?

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sriracharade@reddit

Add a step now for some version of 'agentic' AI in there.

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lazyfck@reddit

This guy corporates.

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Exalting_Peasant@reddit

They all create problems for eachother to solve, and they all get praise for it. Genius really.

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sanbaba@reddit

I mean those trust fund babies aren't going to fire each other..!

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voiping@reddit

Gotta pay it forward!

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ChabotJ@reddit

C suite is just a revolving door circle jerk

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223454@reddit

Non profit does this too.

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BamBam-BamBam@reddit

Mostly the people that TCS or Anderson India hire speak passable with no other qualifications.

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udsd007@reddit

Amen to that. Saw it for 44 years before I retired. C-suite turnover is also about 3 years, and they go up in salary each time until they take their golden parachute.

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xampl9@reddit

Sad but true.

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BoysenberryDue3637@reddit

Wash rinse repeat.

I've seen this shitshow and you got it exactly right. Senior management on an 12-18 month rotation to the next job.

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Loki-L@reddit

The quality of Indian IT support doesn't have to be bad. There are plenty of people and companies there that are capable.

However if a company decides to outsource to cut costs, they aren't going with the premium version. They are going with the cheapest option possible and you get what you pay for.

What is liable to happen is that the outsourced company will work strictly towards metrics in the contract. If that contract was written by an idiot, you will get support that ticks all the boxes agreed upon, but delivers absolute garbage.

Their numbers will look good on paper, but you will get less efficient.

End users will get upset about the longer time it takes to solve their problems and start looking for other ways.

This includes contacting technicians directly instead of hoping their tickets will result in anything.

It may also lead to a rise of undocumented informal IT and shadow IT.

In a few years new management might decide to reverse the decision.

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Mr_ToDo@reddit

Nice to see that here

Outsourcing doesn't have to be painful. But if the motivation is money they're not going to use their A grade material

I can't remember where I hear this one. But there was a call centre involved in an outsourcing, and the suits thought that it was just a rough initial patch and that as they learned more, and more about us they'd start providing better results. The problem is that the outsourcing centre knew what they had. The cheap tier is their filter for new employees. Once they get skilled enough they migrate to the higher cost division. So in the end it was a perpetual breaking in period

And I guess it makes sense. It doesn't matter the country. If you're paying T1 prices, you're not getting T3 results

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argefox@reddit

Welcome to the shit show. Do not, for the sake of doing what we do, intervene in local issues. Avoid users at all costs, let them complain about the new service, not about you not answering their calls.

I had a team of 4 that tripled India incidents management and resolution, but still it was a lost fight, i suggest you consider looking for another job.

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BuffaloGarbagePlate@reddit

Seconding this. My team became the new level 1 and 2 because the users got sick of their stuff not getting done. They were people who cared and wanted help but Because they responded the higher ups didn’t see a problem.

My team started to burn out, some left. When we stopped supporting India you could say stuff hit the fan we all got blamed. Some higher ups got very mad about simple things constantly failing. At the end of the day they just cleaned house and blamed IT as a whole.

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AvgReddit0rino@reddit

Do the needful

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Wraith_9912@reddit (OP)

one of them actually said that to someone yesterday!!

what is this, is that a regular thing

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picardo85@reddit

Expect emails to start with "Greetings of the day u/Wraith_9912 " as well.

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CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit

And “Have a pleasant time ahead” to end them.

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picardo85@reddit

Oh, and if he EVER gives out instructions, he will learn VERY quickly that they are followed to the literal letter. These people are NOT paid to think.

If it's not exactly described what he wants done in every miniscule step, it won't get done the way he hopes for.

My wife worked with a company in India who did photo editing for them, and her writing the instructions on what needed fixing in each photo basically took longer than it would have taken for her to photoshop the stuff herself.

Because she couldn't say "fix this and align with the all of the other pictures" but she needed to say each and every damn picture what needed fixing.

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T_chronicles@reddit

Perhaps the ones you worked with are the low skilled employees who would work for that wage. There are incredible photographers and videographers in India and highly skilled IT people as well. It's surprising companies think they'll get anything but poor quality if they hire for low wages. Most of these are fresh graduates who take any job and are trying to make ends meet and eventually move on when they gain skills.

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Kichigai@reddit

There are incredible photographers and videographers in India and highly skilled IT people as well.

It's not that they're Indian that is the problem (though the clash of colloquialisms is a contributing factor, which could be solved with better training, but who's gonna pay for that‽) it's that they're an outside firm providing a largely genericized service at rock bottom prices which is possible because they don't really train their people or provide them with adequate instructions.

Most of these are fresh graduates who take any job and are trying to make ends meet and eventually move on when they gain skills.

Hell, I don't even think it's that. As I mentioned in another comment, I know someone who works in a hospital, and they have a bulk of employees who are not medically trained, but are somewhat connected to medical treatment of patients. Receptionists taking medical histories, people who stock and clean exam rooms, people who route messages for doctors, people who handle patient billing and insurance, jobs that are largely routine and don't require medical training to execute 99% of the time, when provided instructions from someone with medical training.

I think a lot of them, especially L1, aren't really trained at all, they're just folks off the street looking to keep food on the table. Because let's face it, it doesn't take a bachelor's degree to reset someone's password or unlock an account, which is probably 50% of what they do. L2 might be the graduates, but the untrained (and lower paid) L1 are swatting down most of the trivial stuff.

The problem is we're the ones who know our problems are beyond L1, and there's no way to leapfrog to L2. Then we get trapped in the quagmire of their inadequate training/documentation.

There's also the push-pull of conflicting priorities and incentives. Our priority is to get the damn problem fixed. They are incentivized to achieve certain performance metrics to either get a bonus or not be fired. This makes their priority processing a certain number of tickets per hour, which leads to rushing and making mistakes, but their numbers look good, so everything looks good to management!

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_Mamas_Kumquat_@reddit

on my SD we have both the "kindly revert to concern team" with no critical thinking and the incredibly smart capable individuals.

it isn't racism

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buendia_aureliano@reddit

Finally, someone talks sense. The racism in this comment section is unbelievable.

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Exalting_Peasant@reddit

Is the racism in the room with us?

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buendia_aureliano@reddit

Oh yeah, and it's no surprise that you're not noticing it.

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LakeVermilionDreams@reddit

Jesus Christ the fact that only one comment so far is willing to call out the xenophobia on display on this thread is a heartbreaking!

Thank you for redirecting the problem to it's source: capitalist greed. The greed to chase ever-increasing profits that drive decisions to abuse workers for the lowest possible pay rates and squeeze profit from them like the vampires they are. There's no money for training. India has billions of people and everybody is replaceable to our corporate owners. The individual does not matter. So when they offer peanuts for pay, they are going to get the lowest skilled, most desperate applicants, and none of them are offered any training at all.

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Kichigai@reddit

These people are NOT paid to think.

That's probably exactly what they are told to do. Don't think, don't expend effort, just do exactly what you are told. This way tickets are processed as expediently as possible, and if the end result isn't what you wanted, they can blame you for providing insufficiently clear instructions. Give it the old GIGO defense.

I know someone who works in a hospital, and this is exactly how they handle medically untrained people.

You follow your instructions exactly. If something goes wrong you are not liable because you followed instructions.

If you feel instructions are inappropriate, you escalate to your lead (who then escalates further if necessary). If something goes wrong you are not liable because you followed the instructions of your lead.

This way liability goes up the chain until you get someone who is qualified to make a decision and has appropriate insurance coverage if they make a mistake.

Probably the same thing here. This way the company is always meeting its contractual obligations and meets performance metrics, and if anything goes wrong it's due to factors outside their control.

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Sunsparc@reddit

Found this out too. If there is any minuscule deviation from the provided instruction, they just shut down completely. No critical thinking at all.

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Resident-Condition-2@reddit

This is my experience with MSPs as well.

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lenswipe@reddit

or to be addressed as "dear"

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Jaegermeiste@reddit

FYIP. I have had a doubt. Please advise, kindly do the needful, and revert today itself.

Gentle reminder that we will prepone the review meeting to discuss about the upgradation of the system also. Please let me know your convenient time. It will take 15 minutes only, and I will be out of station after that as I will be having fever and gone to home itself.

Warm regards

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MISPAGHET@reddit

I can't say much. I once told someone I was going to shit out their laptop the next day

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Jaegermeiste@reddit

Lol. Indianisms are definitely annoying, but the tone is at least polite.

I can just imagine the venomous contempt as you told the user you'd shit out their laptop, lol.

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ByGollie@reddit

12" or 16" screen?

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Mindestiny@reddit

Watch out for "revert" too. It does not mean to them what it does in English. They mean to respond or reply to you, not to undo what work was done.

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typiskt_fan@reddit

I did this on purpose once back in the day.

"Please unlock my account and revert back the same."

"I have unlocked your account, and locked it again base on your request."

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rmftrmft@reddit

Savage, lol

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glirette@reddit

Yes they do say it a lot it's wild.

Meaning please do whatever it takes or "just handle it"

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BamBam-BamBam@reddit

Yes, it's Indian English idiom.

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derpman86@reddit

Well actually...

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Exalting_Peasant@reddit

Kindly do the needful and revert sar

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NibblyPig@reddit

Surely you will get the karkland

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AdultContemporaneous@reddit

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pseudocide@reddit

But do you revert promptly?

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NibblyPig@reddit

You like to revert, isn't it

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ExecuteArgument@reddit

I redeem promptly

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fluffman86@reddit

DO NOT REDEEM! WHY WOULD YOU REDEEM‽

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keddren@reddit

"WHY DID YOU REDEEM IT!?!"

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itsmrmarlboroman2u@reddit

I don't always do the needful, but when I do, I do the same.

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_Mamas_Kumquat_@reddit

please revert to concern team

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cbelt3@reddit

For those who are not used to this, this simple phrase translates to:

“Would you please do my job for me ? I am too inexperienced, unfamiliar, or unwilling to do the research”.

Remember that IT support people in India are educated, paid low wages, and are always looking for better jobs. Be nice to them. They are also rated on closing tickets, NOT the quality of the process. That’s why “assigned to customer “ is a status.

Many of us take the opportunity to inform our users and solve process problems that create tickets. We hate repeat tickets. Offshore support LOVES repeat tickets… better metrics.

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pdp10@reddit

Many of us take the opportunity to inform our users and solve process problems that create tickets. We hate repeat tickets. Offshore support LOVES repeat tickets… better metrics.

Emphatically this. Outsourcers want to solve the same three issues all day, every day, and bill for it.

Body-shop outsourcers hate this one weird trick: automation.

If you can eliminate and automate them out of a job, you'll win. If you're prevented from doing that by someone internally, you can't win.

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Quinnster247@reddit

> educated

LOL

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cbelt3@reddit

You need to understand the controlled higher education system in India, and how the caste system STILL drives the segmentation of society. And how their education celebrates rote learning.

Many cultures punish independent thought in their educational approach, and we all need to understand those limits and work within them.

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Palantir_Scraper@reddit

Institute of Technology Kerala

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buendia_aureliano@reddit

Kerala has a better infant mortality rate than the USA. You brain dead cunt.

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Quinnster247@reddit

Center of Excellence! Thank God we can have Cisco and Amazon bring over 100 million H-1ẞ geniuses to teach us how to build this kind of infrastructure in America.

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Exalting_Peasant@reddit

Yeah well lack of understanding or care while being measured on closing tickets means you will get a lot of closed tickets. Doesn't mean that actual problems are being solved better or at a faster rate.

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Palantir_Scraper@reddit

You made the mistake of thinking whoever's desk the KPIs hit is smart lol

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itheian@reddit

On priority

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Affectionate_Idea710@reddit

Yes, but. Took me a while to realize that ‘yes but’ actually meant ‘no’.

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ultrarichard69@reddit

Ahha! That's the only one I actually enjoy, makes me chuckle every time. I also like how there is seemingly no way to make it sound threatening or urgent without making it funnier

DO THE NEEDFUL!!!!!!

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_bx2_@reddit

gif

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Embarrassed-Gur7301@reddit

Kindly

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krebstaz@reddit

Respond that you already used the bathroom and no longer no to do the needful

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egyenlet@reddit

Check the same

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Delakroix@reddit

for the same!

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MySurvive@reddit

Kindly do the needful and inform user of same

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PlennieWingo@reddit

And revert back

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Psychological_Tart92@reddit

ASAP

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DeltaOmegaX@reddit

We were recently told that if a ticket comes up from our L1, to treat it like a telephone operator writing a note. If it was sent to the wrong team, we're to move it where we think it belongs. They're 'kids right out of college' and paid so little that they can't be held accountable for quality. So... It's like having no IT triage.

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EnvironmentalBug5525@reddit

Do the needful, AKA polish up the resume and find a new job.

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Sleepytitan@reddit

Company exports SD. Executive gets bonus for savings. SD ticket completion plummets. Executive retires. New executive on brings SD back. SD ticket completion sores. Executive gets bonus. Executive retires. New executive exports SD to save money…

And on and on it goes with outsourcing and cloud and ai and whatever will be next.

After 20 years of IT shit, I’ve learned that if I don’t like something it’ll change soon enough.

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Blueacid@reddit

Gentle headsup - completion soars, that's when stuff goes up / flies / is good. Sores are open wounds on the skin.

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Sleepytitan@reddit

I’m old. I type bad on a phone. The autocorrect does what it does. I don’t care anymore.

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RevolutionaryWorry87@reddit

Start applying for new jobs.

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Wraith_9912@reddit (OP)

you might be right, maybe its time

[-]

Magnatron832@reddit

Happened with my old place mate, we ended losing our jobs, trust me, start looking now because your job will be next

[-]

BubberJones@reddit

Confirming this. They won't stop at Level 1/2. Once they start offshoring, it will keep going up the ladder.

[-]

TheFireStorm@reddit

Where I came from they sent the devs to TCS first then trickled down to L2 and L1. Now after 3 years of chaos they are bringing it back to US and trying to rebuild the teams

[-]

Magnatron832@reddit

Funny enough it was TCS that we lost to, heard the company is in shambles, oh well, reap what you sow.

[-]

sriracharade@reddit

Many such cases.

[-]

lurker_bee@reddit

As the pendulum swings! :D I've seen this many times unfortunately.

[-]

OptimusLame-@reddit

Company i used to work for did this. Took them years to recover back to local support once management realised it was an utters shit show.

Let it fall apart. Point out the failings every step of the way, don’t hide it.

[-]

Expensive_Plant_9530@reddit

Service standard will fall.

End users will get annoyed.

Your job will get harder.

Document any issues you come across and send it up to your manager.

[-]

RFC1925@reddit

You have to put everything into simple format writing. Would not be surprised if they're putting your messages through a translate app. I've done a lot of overseas work, where there was often 2-3 translations happening back and forth. follow the old adage, Keep It Simple Stupid (K.I.S.S.)

[-]

pirate742@reddit

Try a different offshore group.

Working with a fantastic team out of the Philippines currently. They maintain their own documentation after we provided a baseline. We teach them something once and they never ask about it again. Escalations have dropped significantly.

I think you got a bad bunch bud.

[-]

sriracharade@reddit

Would be interesting to get perspective of Indians in this thread.

[-]

ciabattabing16@reddit

A lot of unfortunate Service Desk customers having a lot harder time of doing the needful, obviously.

[-]

No_Promotion451@reddit

Don't care no more

gif

[-]

porfors@reddit

How do u offshore Level2 ?

[-]

kernpanic@reddit

You end up with teleconferences with 20 people in them. 16 from the support. 13 of them will not say a word. 1 will know something about it. 1 will be managing the conference and another one will have the keyboard, but won't even know how to change directory without being told.

And you'll need multiple of these conferences to solve any simple problem.

[-]

Ron-Swanson-Mustache@reddit

And they will be asking you solve issues that you specifically outsourced to them.

[-]

Exalting_Peasant@reddit

You may as well just get 20 monkeys to randomly hit buttons on a keyboard at this point.

[-]

pdp10@reddit

Monkeys-on-Keyboards-as-a-Service.

[-]

XanII@reddit

Jeesus christ man.

Also don't forget the one who fiddles with their microphone or just otherwise doesnt understand mute.

[-]

TheDawiWhisperer@reddit

jesus wept this is my life at the minute.

if you ask them to do anything they'll fuck it up or just stop at the first sign of resistence, they'll ask you for a "quick call?" or "quick connect?" and you'll be stuck on the phone with a dozen of them all afternoon, like you say with 11 of them not doing anything and one of them doing the driving.

then you'll eventually give in and just end up doing the thing yourself.

[-]

terminal-admin@reddit

Sounds like my life every time I need to submit an Azure support request. I finally stopped because I always figured out the issue before them.

[-]

Drag_king@reddit

Don’t forget: “Do you mind if we record this?”

[-]

Mindestiny@reddit

Don't forget the project manager that's there for "reasons" and just makes everything less clear

[-]

YouCanDoItHot@reddit

This gave me PTSD.

[-]

zkareface@reddit

Social engineering attacks will be super effective now, India based L1s love to give out accounts with passwords to anyone that sounds convincing.

[-]

RangerNS@reddit

Now I get tickets that are barely comprehensible.
they have no troubleshooting ability.

Keep replying with insufficient information.

Do not change the work you do.

Do not be a hero.

[-]

CaptainZhon@reddit

Some American lackey will have to make it work or management will blame them and they will be replaced.

[-]

HmbleJaguar@reddit

As someone who works in L1 support in India, I am shocked by the range of skills, abilities and sheer 'cant be bothered' attitudes in some of the people here. I am embarrassed myself hearing them handle stuff

[-]

the-illogical-logic@reddit

It's good for you though. You should hopefully be able to progress faster and end up earning more in the long run.

However as the saying goes,

It’s hard to soar like an eagle when you’re surrounded by pigeons.

[-]

No_Huckleberry7790@reddit

Find other job and do not waste you time helping them, they are there to replace you.

[-]

NibblyPig@reddit

Working as intended.

The objective is to tick a box saying 'Is support available'.

The quality of that support is irrelevant

[-]

Ill-Barracuda9031@reddit

My place setup a "center of excellence" in India. Who do you think these "elite engineers" escalate to? Me and now they started hiring consultants.

I don't know what's better. No matter the level, India sucks.

[-]

Mothringer@reddit

The problem isn’t India, the problem is management. There are great people in India, they just aren’t the ones you hire if you’re going there to save costs.

[-]

Ill-Barracuda9031@reddit

We are paying them 30% over the normal tech wages "They best and brightest"

They need to be told what to do and/or only know what they have been told what to do in the past. Zero innovation.

[-]

Mariling@reddit

This is just the same racism I faced from whites 20 years ago but from Indians now. Except for some reason the Indians get to pretend to be a "minority".

All 5 officers at my company are Indian males and yet we have a perfect diversity score. Make it make sense.

[-]

pdp10@reddit

We are paying them 30% over the normal tech wages "They are the best and brightest"

The problem here is that this can't be contradicted, because that would mean that a decision-maker got snookered.

[-]

SkillsInPillsTrack2@reddit

The only thing that should be outsourced is the burden of being on call 24/7 as a sysadmin.

[-]

AdmRL_@reddit

Leave, management are doing it on cost grounds, that's why they think it's great. Arguing quality doesn't mean anything as that's not the point of the exercise.

[-]

wastrelbaggins@reddit

Wait till they start to offshore business functions - an Indian service desk arguing with eastern European business users is hilarious.

My popcorn consumption has increased and I'm very good at reverting with updation.

The best thing to do is stick within your remit and let the mess show up in the stats - we tracked first time fix rates and the number of resolver group reassignments which both looked terrible upon offshoring everything. This was 20 years ago, and it's still not reached parity with the local team.

We've got a chatbot now, so I suspect things are only going to get worse.

[-]

soloshots@reddit

[-]

cloudfox1@reddit

Show them generative ai and how it helps write readable sentences

[-]

paishocajun@reddit

Don't feed the clankers or their companies if you can help it

[-]

kiddj1@reddit

About 10 years ago I was a senior on a help desk for a large organisation and my manager pulled me into a room and asked if I fancied an opportunity to visit India.

I was tasked to go there for 3 weeks on my own to train a senior and 3 help desk staff to help build out a follow the sun helpdesk.

I spent 3 weeks focusing on how to answer a call, collect the relevent information in order to log a ticket. I didn't give a damn about them trying to fix most things outside of a password reset.

I remember the first couple of calls were a few staff members some execs screaming their heads off because they want to speak to an English person, but this never seemed to phase them an just encouraged them to try harder.

I left the company after a year but I can say that the time the Indian helpdesk was online eventually became identical to the UK help desk. Tickets were of the same quality and their resolution rate was climbing closer to the UK on the worst day

It all comes down to how the desk is outsourced.. this was essentially ran out of the Indian office as the business was multinational so they could have the required training.. but if you just sign a contract and just get them to take on the work.. it's not gonna happen you need that handover period

[-]

Squeezer999@reddit

kick the tickets back to them and have them correct the content of the ticket

[-]

kujakutenshi@reddit

Let it burn + polish up resume. If they thought supports were expendable, they think the same about you (but haven't figured out how to replace you conveniently yet).

[-]

DrunkyMcStumbles@reddit

Find a new job. They don't care and will outsource anything they don't understand.

[-]

Bright_Arm8782@reddit

Bat every ticket back to them, play ticket tennis if you have to.

[-]

wheezes@reddit

They themselves will be replaced by Claude in a few months.

[-]

general-noob@reddit

Do the needful and find a different job.

[-]

thisguy_right_here@reddit

Kick the ticket back to them asking for more information.

Use a template.

Make them do the needful.

[-]

independent_observe@reddit

What do you think is the outcome

You will have to start doing the needful

[-]

BoysenberryDue3637@reddit

There is only one fix to this. Have the customer community throw a shit fit when tickets are bad because of troubleshooting/language barrier/ticket resolve time. Nothing will get done from inside of IT, it has to come from external.

I'm going to give you a dirty little secrete on outsourcing. You are being charged per ticket. The more tickets, the more money the outsourcer gets. One of the companies I worked for in the mid 2000's, the user community started opening tickets for the smallest problem because of the charge. That is what got it back to the US.

[-]

hawksdiesel@reddit

Yeah, it's not about helping at that point it's about the money.

[-]

flummox1234@reddit

AI = "Actually Indians"

[-]

zAuspiciousApricot@reddit

This comment deserves an award

[-]

Tricky_Pudding@reddit

Just saw this happen where I work.

C levels thought everything went great. No product team agreed.

They sent out a survey to confirm their fantastic initiative. It got swept so far under the rug only the top levels saw it.

Then they booted the pro-Indian management and employees and we’re slowly getting back to status quo with less people, more work, people burning out etc., but without Indians in the building.

Don’t get me wrong, lovely people but every time one showed promise they were rotated out to consult with a bigger company.

[-]

leftydog1961@reddit

You don’t own the company. Sit back and enjoy the spectacle. $ is the only driver of corporate decisions. When enough people complain about poor customer service that causes an impact to the C suite then change will occur. I’ve seen this at GE Capital 30 yrs ago when they off shored most of IT under Welch. Start looking 👀 for another position. No Loyalty!!

[-]

c1u5t3r@reddit

From experience: that only costs money and all they do is write „ticket acknowledged“, „we will check your requirements“ or „we will keep you updated on the progress“ and send the ticket to your in-house support, because they can‘t do more than that. Sadly.

Due to that experience, we are insourcing again. And we didn’t get the cheap outsourcing company in India.

[-]

MrBDIU@reddit

Ascension Healthcare did that. Helpdesk, Systems Administrators, the works…. Hacked / Ransomwared a year later…. Who could ever have imagined???? Every Dr, Nurse, Pharmacist you talked to hated the change… I’m sure they made huge profits though…. Before the class action suit of course…

[-]

mustmax347@reddit

It depends on how they are managed. If they are allowed to think on their own and not just read scripts it can work out ok.

Only allowing them to follow prompts or read scripts will just lead to frustration and lack of support from your end users.

[-]

pdp10@reddit

Lots of performative, affirmative, uselessness. Run about, scream and shout.

How would you handle this?

Be more specific. Escalated tickets? Decide which ones need to be started from the beginning, and which ones don't.

[-]

coukou76@reddit

It will be shit tier like everything outsourced in India

[-]

Buddy_Kryyst@reddit

It's going to suck for a good while, but if they picked an actually competent firm, it will eventually get better. That's been my experience. Until then though let the flames burn high.

[-]

neresni-K@reddit

Just bounce back tickets to respective levels.

[-]

tranoidnoki@reddit

DO NOT REDEEM!

[-]

Guido01@reddit

You get what you pay for unfortunately.

[-]

BamaTony64@reddit

Next time a C Suiter needs support, transfer the call to India...

[-]

FundedPro147@reddit

The same as usual: It will be stepdown in quality resulting in much higher productivity loss for users on average, which will offset the money saved from outsourcing in the first place. Productivity loss due to incidents is difficult to quantify, so it will look like a success and leadership will get their bonus. Of course somewhere down the line when old leadership has already left the ship, new leadership will realize what's going on and go back to inhouse IT.

The cycle repeats every 5-10 years.

[-]

Regen89@reddit

Not today, not today you fucking demon

[-]

WRB2@reddit

Don’t let things fall apart, be part of the solution.

Document document document. Each week take the worst written tickets and provide the original text to management with what it actually was in English. My guess is these guys are the low cost provider and are giving you their low cost provider employees. Doesn’t mean they don’t have better just means you don’t get them.

Come up with a five question or a 10 question checklist for them to ask and fill out no fancy words simple information clear.

Come up with the questionnaire to send out to people who you deal with on third level support to say how did you feel your first and second level support was going. Specifically around the turnaround time and the ability for the people who answered the calls to speak and understand English. Again, turn that over to management not to say you gotta get rid of these guys, but to say we need to make these guys better.

They’re your partner, you’re in a boat together, and you will be taking on water if you haven’t already. You can standby and point fingers and say oh the sharks are starting to come around. Or you can teach him how to bail and how to row so that you don’t have to swim with the sharks.

It sucks they picked who they picked, but they didn’t ask you unfortunately my guess is it was priced driven and they have no control over who answers the calls.

Just about everybody has call scripts perhaps you need to make a better 1st, 2nd and 3rd question tree and have Scripps made for them.

Make recommendations around the basic improvements you need to get them to deal with things. I wonder what their clothes rate is of first call close second level close before it gets to you would be interesting to see how that matches with a survey of users, but that’s something for your managers to do.

Best of luck sorry you’re in purgatory. Do your best to get out you can do it.

[-]

Useful_Judgment320@reddit

Usher said it best

[-]

1z1z2x2x3c3c4v4v@reddit

How would you handle this?

Easy. Do your job, and do not work extra hours to compensate for substandard Level 1 and Level 2.

Until management sees a performance hit from the substandard service, they will think everything is fine... because it IS fine.

[-]

chaoslord@reddit

Send tickets back constantly requesting more info, clarification whenever possible. Managers like this don't listen to your "feelings" they need data, and the % of tickets that are sent back or delayed is the only way to prove it.

[-]

Jazzlike_Tonight_982@reddit

Be prepared for re-work on levels never before imagined.

[-]

boli99@reddit

Do the needful, then revert.

[-]

ConkerPrime@reddit

LMAO yeah. It’s even more hilarious when they write that in a ticket. Like where did that phrase come from? Curious on its origins in India.

[-]

DaftPump@reddit

Don't. Management thinking it's great means they aren't understanding the reality of outsourcing cons.

Management decision, management remorse...

Keep all emails involved with their malfeasance because management will probably throw this back at you and your team.

[-]

stephenph@reddit

I was in a situation where the outsourcing was in process. Had to sit on a troubleshooting call.

Caller 1 (the main tech and the group that was replacing us) was in Brazil, spoke no English and everything was through a translator. He was very methodical and I would give high marks except for the language barrier.

Caller 2 was Chinese with a VERY thick accent, she was good at her job but you had to get through the accent barrier

Callers 3 and 4 were in india, would not engage unless directly asked and you could tell they had no clue even how the app was supposed to work. They were the ticket originators.

To top it off, the call was at 1:30 am local for the US after already on troubleshooting calls (local) since 8 pm.

To be fair Brazil actually worked out the solution, it just took five hours to get there.

[-]

ShoulderIllustrious@reddit

I'll do you one better, to both Costa Rica and India. The ones from Costa Rica manage the ones from India. They occasionally try to boss the on shore folks around too! The other day I had to remind them that we pay them to support us and not the other way around.

[-]

ConkerPrime@reddit

When talk to enough of them notice things like the insistence on saying double-o (or whatever letter) and if don’t say that but spell it out (o-o) it breaks their brains. Think the entire country uses the same book/class to teach english.

Other odd things is “atdirect” for @. Saying “at blah.com” confuses them but atdirect blah.com does not.” Also they will rattle off their name and spelling like a machine gun but if you don’t practically put a three second pause between each letter in your name, you are going to fast.

So yeah poor tickets and inability to adapt is expected. Suspect those can adapt are the ones that move out of the country.

[-]

OberstObvious@reddit

There really is only one way, and that is through malicious compliance. Vocally support the outsourcing to India, and the team over there. Do not try to do their work because you feel bad for your colleagues, this will only result in you being overworked while those responsible think it's because of their brilliant decision that everything seems to be running smoothly. Have people create tickets and forward those to India. Do not let managers use shortcuts, make sure management has to suffer the exact same consequences other staff has. If they force you to make exceptions for management, make sure very soon everybody knows management is treated differently (for example, put up an innocent-looking sign in the service desk area saying only management is exempt from using the new standard procedure). You will have to make sure things break, deals get cancelled, and work suffers without it being your fault. The best way is to do what management wants you to do: send it all to India.

[-]

RealAnthonyCamp@reddit

This is the first step. They are just waiting to go full AI agent next.

[-]

UnluckyZiomek@reddit

I'm local IT working for HCL, unfortunately not a sysadmin yet (but I'm trying to land a job in this field). Main L1/L2/L3 and operations are located in Indie of course, just local IT Guys supporting many places of HCL's clients are coming from counties they are supposed to support place in.

Regular day in, nobody knows who can install something because they took ability to install from local IT to outsource it to Indie obviously, it's not working and basically nothing is installed, including critical software since it was introduced and just some ServiceDesk guys from Poland trying to bypass it, by installing from CMD (saving the day, but why bother?).

All L3 Complex level cases are dismissed because SD L3 located in Indie doesn't understand content of tickets or what is L1 from Poland reporting, their usuall activity is to assign it back to L1 in Poland or just close the ticket as incomplete causing even more chaos.

Operations like network support obviously also located in Indie tends to randomly change switches configuration, basically rendering whole local network unusable or changing network certificates without informing anyone or testing if new certificates work and making whole client's network unusable.

Other operations like AD/Windows Server introduce changes like faulty GPO that makes computer screens appear black rendering computers unusable or about 200 GPO's coliding with each other making domain barely work.

I'm here at local L1/L2 support basically watching everything burning and falling apart doing nothing about it, I like it this way, it's all their fault.

Client obviously claims that working with HCL is still profitable for them than having to afford IT Specialists all over the world themselves, which could be true costs are lower, unless they calculate production downtime (which they won't do).

[-]

owzleee@reddit

You’ll also have a very high staff turnover rate, so will be constantly training up new people.

[-]

Affectionate-Cat-975@reddit

Log your time / overhead against their spend center to right size the cost. Then run employee satisfaction surveys

[-]

Turbojelly@reddit

Time to read some "chronicals from george" to get i to the right.mindset to deal with them.

[-]

Civil_Asparagus25@reddit

Let it all burn down to the ground. If management says it's great, why should you care?

[-]

420BUNIT@reddit

Yeah I'd get out of there faster than the train from Delhi to Calcutta....

[-]

mr_lab_rat@reddit

It’s a cycle.

Either tough it out for a couple of years until shit gets so bad they bring it back or leave.

[-]

GardenWeasel67@reddit

Welcome to Hell.

[-]

Ankur67@reddit

I’ve worked in TCS .. yeah service quality was bad given short training but the client side made sure to have good quality of service therefore made client side one team member to check our tickets once a week .. if there’s a quality issue or anything , revert to team lead on improvement .. if it persists escalation which may lead to team member to be fire them ( generally happen when there’s an security issue like storing password in sticky notes or notepad) .

Given rise of cyber security risks , it’s pertinent to not comprise on quality.

[-]

AutomaticGrape9263@reddit

You will get replaced with an Indian as well.

[-]

_haha_oh_wow_@reddit

Do the needful?

Nah, I'd probably:

1: Warn leadership of the problems that this will cause/is causing in writing if you are in any sort of decision making position.

2: Start looking for work at a better place.

3: Buy some popcorn and watch the shitshow while you search. You warned them this was a bad idea, listed the reasons why, and now the things you told them would happen are happening. What else can you do but try to find humor in this very stupid situation?

[-]

suddenlyupsidedown@reddit

Cover your ass, do not cover anyone else's, start looking for the exit

[-]

projectnuka@reddit

Please do the needful.

[-]

XanII@reddit

There is nothing you can do about it. We are way past the 'i am better than 10 filipinos'. No you will be replaced by a guy who calls himself 'Bully' and has 9 coworkers that each arrived by scooters and rikshas and were given a Jabra fake headset and sat in front of a computer.

[-]

AfterEagle@reddit

It starts with them, next it's you.

[-]

zedarzy@reddit

Expect someone to scrape emails and phone numbers to sell them if it hasn't already happened. Followed by phishing and scam attempts.

[-]

Altruistic-Map5605@reddit

I’ve worked with a lot of folks from India but the Chinese are funnier. They would work on our schedule and have a webcam on in a bunk house with half naked dudes sleeping behind them.

[-]

Adrenalinmike@reddit

Get used to it, it's day to day reality. Or lookout for a job outside corporate world and IT .

[-]

Icuras1701@reddit

Please do the needful

[-]

Professional-Heat690@reddit

And kindly revert

[-]

ExceptionEX@reddit

I mean, if management is taking things in a direction that doesn't work for you, then likely time to start looking an exit.

But I would reject tickets that lack details, or non-comprehensible, with that as the reason why.

Don't know what your level of responsibility or authority is, but if you do have it, I request a meeting with the management on the Indian side to make it clear this level of detail is a waste of time.

[-]

Altruistic-Map5605@reddit

It’s happened before it will come back the. It will happen again.

[-]

skyfall8917@reddit

If you don't own the decision, you don't own the consequences. Put a marshmallow on a stick and roast it in the fire that is going to ensue.

[-]

miniscant@reddit

Obviously management chose the lowest-tier offering. There is no single outsourcing operation. Many options exist and the failures need to be documented in the ticketing system and summarized for upper management to see that this was their fault.

[-]

Pale-Price-7156@reddit

I watched a company get built up to $75M in revenue. Then they outsourced operations to India.

Said business made it 2 years before they folded operations entirely.

[-]

RavenousTitan818@reddit

Be honest with management, and tell your users to file complaints. Literally no one like contacting support and having to talk to an Indian.

[-]

GeekgirlOtt@reddit

Since you have not replied aftery solution [it's only been 3 hours on a holiday Monday in Canada], I will close the ticket. You can open another one of the issue persist

[-]

Icuras1701@reddit

If you quit make sure to use up all your FSA before you leave. Its use it or lose it.

[-]

Ferretau@reddit

They would have been better outsourcing it to the Philippines, English is like a second language there for a lot of the younger people.

[-]

Kracus@reddit

I've been in a few shops that have done this towards the tail end of their life. They hire local guys with good expertise to drive up the value of the business and create a great value for clients then once they've cemented their reputation they export the business model to India or Manilla and the quality of work being done drops substantially while the business owners use the previous KPI's to find a buyer for their IT outfit.

New buyer comes in thinking they're buying a great business as it dies off from all the talent leaving.

[-]

javierdapear@reddit

Companies like this are so shit. Its terrible for both you and the person overseas and your clients get the end of the stick in this.

[-]

georgecm12@reddit

Metrics. If you have a metric of resolution time prior to the change, compared to your resolution time now, that may show management that while they're saving money on the L1/L2 support, they're going to be spending more on the more expensive L3 and above technicians/administrators having to essentially re-do the work that the L1/L2 are supposed to be doing.

[-]

fennecdore@reddit

Another thing to track is number of time a ticket is reopened and if you can check if user open the same ticket a high number of time, your user might not be aware that they reopen a closed ticket.

I used this to put the final in the coffin of our offshoring by demonstrating that a considerable amount of time was lost because was incapable of doing any troubleshooting and were spending most of their time doing step 1 of their procedure to close the ticket as fast as possible.

Sure they had a good average time to resolution but nothing was being actually resolved.

[-]

Safe_Place8432@reddit

This is how a company I worked at got level two out of India. They did the ticket metrics and also pulled some choice tickets where level one tickets were closed for metrics without the problems having actually been solved because the level three techs put those tickets in their tickets when the problem got to them

[-]

randalzy@reddit

- "oh we need to outsource L3, you say?" (that will be their use of metrics)

[-]

Likely_a_bot@reddit

The exec who made the decision will get a bonus based on the money saved, will update his LinkedIn profile with how much money he saved the company by "Spearheading the strategic transition of IT support to an offshore model, reducing annual operational expenditure by x amount."

Then he will leave for a better position at another company --long before the fallout from his decision is felt.

[-]

fwambo42@reddit

Dismal failure

[-]

Anthropic_Principles@reddit

Your opinions count for nothing (sorry, but it's true), but what do the stats say?

Mgmt may be happy because the first contact resolution rate is climbing and response times are falling but these are not the stats that matter.

How has CSAT changed since the move?
What direction is the reopened ticket count heading?
What %age of tickets are escalated to L3 compared to before? How many new KB articles have the L1/2 team authoried

[-]

TheDawiWhisperer@reddit

just wait a couple of years for the cycle to come back around where you bring it all in house

then some beancounter will realise it's cheaper to offshore it and make everyone redundant again.

repeat until the end of time

[-]

iUsed2Bsomebody@reddit

Speaking from experience, commenting on the language barrier between you and the India service desk will be seen as racist by the company. You really need to be careful there.

[-]

ganymede_boy@reddit

How can she slap!?

[-]

ThreePointedHat@reddit

One of the worst things that resulted from our outsourcing to India is that lots of users would try to work their way into a shadow support system of domestic employees. So instead of going through the pain of calling and placing a ticket with the Indian service desk team they would try to go through any other IT related team they were aware of, cybersecurity, data governance, infrastructure engineers, etc. So people that got paid 5-10x what a service desk employee would get paid would take maybe 1 hour out of their work week on average dealing with people trying to avoid the service desk. There also was a build up of unresolved problems since people just stopped calling the desk as well as duct tape solutions.

Luckily our new CEO has a brain and realized that the cost cutting really didn't save much and service desk is a recruitment pool for specialized teams so it got brought back to the US.

[-]

SillyRecover@reddit

Collect your paycheck and go home.

[-]

Coldwarjarhead@reddit

Update your resume and start looking for another job.

[-]

_bx2_@reddit

What a shit business decision. I'd start looking for a new job.

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TheCudder@reddit

I worked for a division of GE when they did that. End users just bypassed the help desk and brought up the issues directly to us via phone, email or walk-up. Meanwhile management indefinitely begged users to call the help desk first.

What l really ended up happening is we just opened up a ticket on the end users behalf...because otherwise we'd have no way to track and measure our metrics, because users made it clear they weren't dealing with the out sourced help desk --- between the language barrier and the fact that they didn't offer any actual support (just ticket routers).

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Hatchz@reddit

Don’t pick up the slack to the point you aren’t being a good steward. If they messed this up, there are genuine consequences, if you bridge the gap and wear yourself out to fix it then guess what is coming next week.

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MammothStart4553@reddit

This happened to my team lol we got replaced by Indians

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badaz06@reddit

Copy and email management the tickets and ask them to interpret

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Iamcursed@reddit

Quit while ahead. Let the management defend it.

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Iamcursed@reddit

Quit while you're ahead.

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North4t@reddit

Do some social engineering of password resets if you don’t have a red team.

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Outside-Banana4928@reddit

I would let problems build up, then pretend that you are actively working with the help desk in India. When the issue is never resolved, emphasize to management that you are working with the support team in India.
Keep opening ticket after ticket until you create a huge convoluted mess, and you can stand by idly and when management finally starts poking their nose into the hold up, you can take what they are asking for and create even MORE new tickets with the help desk in India.

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danekan@reddit

I think the no troubleshooting ability is the biggest tell. I have managed offshore teams and even helped my own service desk go offshore. Different sets off offshore talent will be good and even great for different things. This is a sensitive topic to even talk about really. Not having in depth critical thinking can work well for offshore devs when you can outlay a solid feature request and all steps to get there. You’ll probably get exactly what you asked for (the skill there is : bugs and all, you need to be an expert at product design to make it work). Offshoring it service desk support can work well but not if you don’t have critical thinkers. Your level 1 will implode unless you have every possible call type documented in a run book of steps to resolve. Your level 2 just won’t function. If you can get a functional level 1 out of this though ai probably could have done it all the same.

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Sure-Assignment3892@reddit

I've never once seen an organization outsource to India and have it go well- it's always been an absolute clusterfuck and a sign to run.

You get what you pay for.

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bewsii@reddit

I absolutely hate when I have to call Cisco or Oracle during off hours and reach an India based support line. Or dealing with Philippines based medical coders. The English translation is horrendous and it’s a frustrating experience every time.

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bin_of_foots@reddit

went through this at my last place and it just dragged everything down. the outsourced team couldn't handle basic stuff so tickets either came back unsolved or with notes so vague you had to start from scratch. spent half my time either redoing their work or explaining the same issue three times before they got it. management only cared about the cost savings on paper until our ticket resolution time hit the fan and users started complaining to the c level about response times. if you want to stay sane document everything that comes back broken and keep a running log of how much time you're actually spending fixing their mistakes. that data is what eventually made them reconsider, way more than complaints alone.

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st0ut717@reddit

Do the needful

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theoriginalzads@reddit

Go ask on r/shittysysadmin as they’ll have plenty of great and totally ethical ideas.

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Samatic@reddit

I would say get rid of the Indian support or I'm leaving this job.

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GENERIC-WHITE-PERSON@reddit

"Hey, now we can afford 10 more T1-2 support" - MGMT

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Samatic@reddit

Hey least now you know and knowing is half the battle!

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IcanzIIravor@reddit

You just have to endure it if the job is still good for you or move on. If you can endure it, in a couple of years they will be bringing it all back. Ticket quality and length of time it takes to get anything fulfilled or fixed will lead to it all coming back onshore. It was moved offshore to save the company x amount of money and for someone to get promoted and/or leave for a higher paying job elsewhere to screw up the next companies IT. Rinse and repeat.

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Zuxicovp@reddit

right there with you, unfortunately. my company just outsourced both the service desk and a critical platform to Brazil. execs keep touting how it’ll save millions per year…

yeah okay, except instead of paying a level 1 service to do the work for less, instead it’ll just make more work for the higher paid engineers and ops teams

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yrogerg123@reddit

Give it 5 years, it will come back

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SlaveCell@reddit

And then outsourced in another 5.

The circle of tech support

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_Ins0mn1a_@reddit

Nothing you can do about it
Just try to make them read, think, try to troubleshoot and do not do the work for them

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caffeine-junkie@reddit

Kick the tickets back as incomplete or missing information/trouble shooting steps already taken and their results. This will result in more complaints and issues dragging out, but unless you want to be outsourced as well, you need to get the business on your side. The way to do it is for basic tickets to take a week or two to be solved.

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rufus_xavier_sr@reddit

Make sure your computer is plugged in, I will wait while you check...Make sure your monitor is plugged in, I will wait while you check...Make sure your keyboard is plugged in, I will wait while you check...

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Fast_Cloud_4711@reddit

Tickets that are SLA breached by 8 months has been my experience to the point that users stop complaining.

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mschuster91@reddit

If you got a decent manager: compile a report about ticket quality issues that they can provide to management.

If you are the manager: run and don't look back.

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gumbrilla@reddit

Bang them back.

But.. here is the thing, are they are assigning whole ass tickets from L1 to L2 to L beyond, or sending you tasks. If it's the former, the lot of you don't know what you are doing, and you should hire a professional.

I'm too long in the game to put up with this shit, I would tear a fucking strip off both my and the outsourcers management,. It's not the poor fuckers on the desk, it's a failure of leadership.

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britannicker@reddit

But, but, something something saves money.

/s

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Jerkface0079@reddit

Don’t try and salvage it, don’t let their profit seeking weigh on you in any capacity. Do your best with what you have, and that’s it.

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Moontoya@reddit

I reiterate, IT is a Cassandrean task

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guitpick@reddit

You're going to need to reinstall XP before we can help you further.

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binaryhextechdude@reddit

When I started out in Service Desk I was in the oil and gas industry with a multi national company. Our team won awards for customer service which naturally we were very proud of but each day at 18:00 when we closed the phones diverted to what was known as Central service desk. In the morning we would come in and there would be tickets in our unassigned from Central. One morning the ticket was from a call regarding Voicemail not working. The technician had connected to the users machine for whatever reason. Voicemail has nothing to do with the users PC and you fix it in the Cisco dashboard. Maybe the team had an alway remote in policy? I’m not sure.

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msdee83@reddit

Bad, bad decision.

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maikel87@reddit

The only way for the company to learn (if they even could) QUIT NOW!. Let it fall apart.

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Efficient_Finance935@reddit

management thinks its greaet because the way their head works is with allocated budget. Meaning they are probably stealing it for other vendors (bribe, friends to support etc)... so its great until afte 4 months quality drops in the reports as well so bad that you cant even fake the curves anymore.

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ProfessionalSeat4060@reddit

Start using google translate to make your own job easier. When upper management ask what is all this Punjabi text in tickets explain it’s easier to communicate using google translate then English.