Anywhere that there are a lot of poor people who can speak English or can learn it. Bangladesh? Ghana?

At some point, they're going to just offer higher pay. That'll solve the problem instantly.

"At some point, they're going to just offer higher pay. That'll solve the problem instantly."....

...and put inflationary pressure on an already booming economy, not to mention negate any cost benefits of outsourcing the work in the first place. Don't any of you neo-cons read Friedman anymore?
Your higher pay thesis is getting put into practise already however. 100% payrises and the pre - payment of bonuses is not an uncommon poaching method used by companies to woo relatively ordinary staff - particularly in IT.

That's won't put inflationary pressure on the Indian economy. It will put pressure on the US economy. Those call centers aren't serving Indian companies.

But from where I stand this is a good thing. It will make outsourcing to India much less desirable. And India was a special case - there aren't that many third world countries with a large percentage of English speakers. It's one thing to train someone to speak with an American accent. It's quite another to teach English to someone who only speaks Urdu.

Never spoke any other language but English. Studied French 7 - 11th grade and hardly remember any of it. When the language isn't around you and everyone speaks with an accent, it is hard to learn the language without an accent. I find it very frustrating as an American, when dealing with an American company to have an accent on the other end of the line. No money in the world is going to make a job better when you can't understand who ever it is at the other end of the line. People will just get frustrated. Some dude from lets say a small town in Idaho with a broken wash machine, can probably only have so much patience, and this annoyance can even be due to a guy with a heavy NY accent, but that's more tolerable due to location and national identification.

I know for myself, even more pay, with all the agrivation may not be enough. Everyone likes having money but I rather get a good nights sleep and be able to live with myself if I can pay my bills on less. Not be up weird hours and have people call me a rat eater as mentioned in the article.

Jamaica! Half of the explanations from call center employees sound like they've been smoking bones.

chsw

There was some news article a few weeks ago about Indian companies starting to outsource THEIR workload to Mexico. With the overbuilt international calling capabilities built from our underseas fiber optic infrastructure (Thanks 1999 Tech Boom!), moving a calling center is just a matter of finding the lowest cost labor force that can do the job. After Mexico sops up all it can, it will probably move to South America.

Italiani!!!

It's not the languistic ability or even the accent that's the problem, it is the lack of common idiom. Say you said some common catchphrase from a TV comedy like friends, or commented on a recent local (ie your country) news story, it is lost on the person you are talking to, and you have to be literal and over explain everything rather than use shortcuts local proximity allows. It becomes frustrating for both sides.

Here are 2 options if you don't like outsourcing:

1. Hire English speaking, uneducated immigrants to do it here

or

2. Write to the companies you patronize and demand that they raise prices 10% so that you can have decent customer service.