Outsourcing Overseas - XBox LIVE Support SUCKS

[Yogizilla]

*** UPDATED ***

In a matter of a month, both Nick (KiNgDeeM) and myself were reminded of a horrible trend called "overseas outsourcing". It's a topic I have written articles, blogs, and threads about in countless publications, forums, discussion groups, and more. First, what is overseas outsourcing? Basically, it's what a company does when they decide they want to make more money and don't really care about the quality of their customer service which, BTW, is one of the biggest points of presence for a business of ANY size plus is probably the single best marketing/PR effort anyone could bolster.

The interesting thing about the trend is that you'd expect smaller companies with tighter budgets doing the overseas thing but, instead, it's the large corporations that have taken a liking to setting up "global headquarters". Don't get me wrong: it's nice to help other, less fortunate, countries stimulate their economies but at the cost of quality support.. WHY?? It seems counter-productive, especially since companies can lose customers rapidly and then no one is making money.


The Support Game

I worked several years as a Support Analyst, Level II Helpdesk Technician, Helpdesk Manager, Director of Call Center, and just about any role you can think of within the support world. I've seen the line of crap some of these operations give their customers. They read scripts, follow stringent procedures, and have the silliest of policies. In spite of all that, if you keep your call center internal, it tends to be easier to manage and the quality is much better than if you outsource it, let alone send it overseas. If an internal helpdesk can go to crap easily, imagine one that is in a whole different country than the native land of any given business!

The whole trend frustrates me as a tech-marketing evangelist and consumer that is affected by it. Sure, these folks overseas may learn the language and learn to understand and perhaps emulate an "American accent" but, in the end, they don't truly understand the needs of the customers. They only know what their limited support systems show them and what their scripts tell them to do. Most of them don't really care about the customers because, let's face it: Americans are not very well-liked throughout the world, thanks to our not-too-brilliant government.


Sorry, Can't Help You

When Nick and I dealt with XBox LIVE support, we both were essentially told "sorry but we can't help you" - INSANE! I remember in all my sales/marketing and tech support training the #1 credo they taught us was "the customer is always right" and, with that, you never say "I don't know" or "sorry, I can't help you" - what happened here?? Because of these nasty trends, I plan to slowly rally up my fellow writers and media contacts so that we can start an awareness initiative, at the very least.

To me, customer service is even more important when you are paying for soft services. XBox LIVE is a soft service so you would think companies would treat these operations more seriously. Perceived value suffers greatly when you have terrible support people in place. As a business, your chief goal should be making sure that every point of presence, anything client-facing (that means human resources and print materials inclusive), projects what your company is all about. If you project an air of not caring or valuing your customers, they'll go elsewhere.

Microsoft is fortunate that they do not have too many direct competitors in the online gaming realm, simply because their market segment is console gamers and, well, both Sony and Nintendo lack in the online multiplayer department, unfortunately. I guess this is why Microsoft decided to treat XBox Live as a separate company and outsource it entirely overseas. It's a nice way to dodge liabilities and be more hands-off.


Staying At Home

I find that companies with call centers in the native country of origin tend to be more flexible, effective, and accomodating. It's easy to get a problem resolved and get credits or at least some sort of kick-back whenever you experience a problem, even if it is something as "little" as being annoyed by a bad customer service rep (a'la an XBox LIVE rep laughing at you).

Over the years, I have become much more aware of which companies keep their support internal. Those that "stay at home" tend to appeal to me more. It's just much easier and pleasant dealing with people that are truly professional and understand your needs. Trained monkeys reading from scripts are worthless, if you ask me, and, for that, I much rather work with a voice-activated system or automated web site.

Like I have said, these folks may get trained so that they learn the language but they can never fully absorb the culture. What may be rude to us as a people may be perfectly fine to them. This is part of the reason they get away with proverbial murder: they don't care enough to try harder and, in their eyes, they are doing their job.

I say: give me your script and let me fix the problem myself. It may move along faster. I can be a trained monkey too! =oX


How XBox LIVE BLOWS

Case #1: Nick followed the XBox.com instructions for creating an XBox LIVE account before you have an XBox 360. He proceeded to create his XBox LIVE Silver account. All was well.

When he got his XBox 360, he immediately started to play some games to unlock achievements. Once his network was expanded for the XBox, he decided to take advantage of the one-month free XBox LIVE Gold trial. Lo and behold, he is unable to use this promotion with his current account.

He decides to call up XBox LIVE, thinking that, with the advancements in technology, it'd be a simple point-and-click matter to tie the promo into his account. He never used a promo code on his account so it should be no problem, right? Wrong. Not only did they keep him on hold for a total of over 65 minutes but, in the end, they told him he had to create a whole new account in order to be elgible for the free trial, even though he was never a paying XBox LIVE subscriber. Utter crap.

Apparently, Microsoft gimps their support people to the point in which they can't modify existing accounts. If you need an account update, you need to create a new account with the updated parameters. Remind me: what century are we in again? You'd expect this in the beginning of the Digital Age but, for Pete's sake, we're well beyond the cusp of the dawn of the Internet and digital freedom!

Case #2: Days later, I decided to renew my XBox LIVE account. I didn't have much money left in the account I had on-file for XBox LIVE so I decided to buy a pre-paid card and renew it before the auto-renewal kicked in. Just to be on the safe side, I checked both XBox.com and my 360 Dashboard to verify my renewal. It said I renewed in December but did not say a date. I checked my online banking and no charges where in progress/posting. Looks good so far.

To be more safe, I checked previous bank statements. My last charge for XBox Live renewal was on December 18th. Sweet. I had more than enough time to use a pre-paid card and get one of those bundles that gives you Microsoft Points, free games, and the Live Vision camera. I'd save a good $30-40. Plus it'd be one less bill to worry about for a good while. YAY!

Well, let me tell you: this was the most expensive subscription yet. My XBox LIVE Gold 1-year subscription came out to $153.36 - WHAT?? Why? Because, apparently, in the wonderful world of Microsoft, a renewal can be charged at any time in the renewal month that they feel is prudent; furthermore, even if you have already extended your subscription, auto-renewal takes place. That's pretty brilliant. Charge a renewal on a bill that was paid, effectively double billing the client. I'm being sarcastic, BTW - it's the dumbest thing since Tila Tequila got her own show. =oX

This was wrong for so many reasons. Not only did I get double-charged but now I had an overdraft charge of $30 plus the negative balance that XBox Live gave me. Very nice, dingbats, VERY nice. I figured it'd be no problem to at least get one of the charges credited and/or maybe get some Microsoft Points for my inconvenience. Any other company I deal with right now would give me the courtesy, just for being a customer for over 4 years. Not Microsoft's XBox Live division.

This time, I was sent to a call center in what I believe was Argentina. I recognized the Spanish accent but, rather than speak in Spanish and make their jobs easier, I decided to make them sweat a bit. Man, the accents were almost impossible to decipher and I am a native Spanish speaker! It had to be one of the most piss-poor experiences I ever had and it reminds me why I hate calling for technical support - most of the time, I help myself better than any of those idiots can!

After being placed on hold several times, I was finally able to get a higher-up on the phone but it was pointless. All he did was keep regurgitating some paper notes he had or whatever appeared on his screen. It was like he was a POW trained by the Marines to not divulge any information that may be useful to the enemy - I really felt like I was the enemy! Terrible.

In the end, I told him about my affiliations with publications and the media. I told him that it'd be a shame that they'll get some PR due to some needlessly-stringent policies that accomplish all of nothing. I don't think he understood even 5% of what I told him or he just ignored me. Either way, it was like talking to a wall. I was the biggest waste of an hour and a half I've ever had in my life.

Now, I tried to use all sorts of logic with the so-called "supervisor". I tried to put him in my shoes and, no matter what I said, he kept insisting that there was nothing he could do. I gave him plenty of opportunities to tell me something positive. He didn't even assure me that my suggestions and concerns were logged. There was no feeling that my words were even being logged, let alone sent to someone that could do something with them. It truly was a dead end.

Both Nick and I are astounded that, with all the dynamic technoloy out there, these guys have a system that is anything but flexible. Support systems should be turn-key and facilitate tiers of support. To me, it feels like XBox Live just has a bunch of phone operators with all the same level of access. No escalation process at all = GARBAGE SUPPORT.

The hilarious part of this all is that the "supervisor" I dealt with told me that, in the future, I should call them before I use a pre-paid card. Interesting. Nowhere on the packaging does it say this and, well, you can't return pre-paid cards once you've opened them. DEE DEE DEE... Seems like a trap to get consumers to waste more money and feel more obliged to stick with them. What ever happened to making customers stick around by keeping them happy and satisfied??

Obviously, Carlos, if I knew that using a pre-paid card would not supercede the renewal fee and if I had known you guys can put the charge you want through at any time, without a temporary posting, then I would have just put the money in the bank and bought the XBox Live Vision Camera instead of the whole friggin' XBox Live Gold Pack. Estupido. There's a word you may understand.

XBox Live Support gets a Big FAT F- from us. If the report card went to Z, we'd give them a Z without equivocation.


Dodging the Crappy Support Bullet

Boycotting service is one way shake things up. In fact, if Microsoft doesn't get their act together, I think I will let my subscription die out and just stick to PC gaming, where there are less politics to worry about and more fun to be had. I am a PC gamer at heart anyway and only do the console gaming to accomodate my friends that are too silly to realize that PC gaming is cheaper in the long-haul. On the PC side of things, you don't have so much monopolization so the game companies actually try to hook up their customers and treat them nicely.

Microsoft is behaving as if they have no competition but, if Sony didn't keep shooting themselves in the foot and Nintendo restructured their online strategy, they'd be shit out of luck. XBox is still eons away from reaching the level that PC games have reached for over a decade now. The convenience factor is the only thing on their side. Console games are easy to get into: pop the disc in and you're ready to go. It's a consistent experience for everyone on the platform, for the most part. No installation or intelligence needed, for the most part.

In fact, the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) for a console is now more than a PC and, on top of that, you are paying a comparable initial cost, as computers become cheaper and cheaper. You can do a lot more with a full-fledged PC, too. Team XBox Live needs to pull their heads out of their arses. With games being released on multiplatforms and becoming cross-platforms, PLUS development tools becoming more accessible on the PC side, it's only a short time before the markets truly merge and the King of Gaming, the PC, returns to their his throne.. Officially, that is!

In general, if you want to assure yourself a headache-free experiences with a company, be sure you call in any payments, service changes, upgrades, and the like. It's more of a hassle but, in the long-run, you'll be better protected because there will be a paper trail. Get the customer service reps to disclose the caveats and exceptions that are hidden in all the legalese that no one ever reads. I made the mistake of trusting information that both my bank, XBox.com, and my XBox 360 dashboard displayed which, apparently, was different from what the folks at XBox customer support have. ROFLMAO.. What a joke!

You see, the bigger problem is that companies do not make enough FAQs or useful knowledgebases. They also do not bring up prompts and warnings when they matter the most. If there are typical misconceptions, those are things that should be nipped in the butt pre-emptively. Customers can't foresee most issues until they run into it so it is unfair to tell them "well, in the future, this is what you can do".. Customer service should accomodate the customers, not the other way around. Customer service should also consistently disseminate knowledge so that common pitfalls can be avoided proactively. Customer service should not be limited to firefighting.

Sadly, the reality is that most customer service reps will just tell you what you did wrong, slap you on the hand, and tell you what can be done in the future. That's what the XBox LIVE team does. Gee, thanks...

Good luck with your current problem. Your current problem will remain and you'll have to deal with it on your own. Sorry but them's the breaks! This is why we should all be more proactive and put these lazy bums to work. If you fart, call them up and tell them you farted. If you want to change a setting, call them up and ask them if it's okay. Ask tons of questions, random and dumb questions even, the dumber the better, and make them work for their money. Perhaps then they can be more useful. Let's document their responses to our dumb and sometimes impossible questions. Push the limits! Hey, they're working for pennies on the hour so let's make them earn that - it's FREE for us!!


Escalating Issues

Escalating an issue is the best way to get to someone that both knows what they are doing and has access to what you may really need. Unfortunately, when you deal with customer service shops like XBox Live, you are dealing with a self-contained island island of POO - good luck getting out of that mess!

Any good call center has Standard Operating Procedure that stipulates the following: a Level I Analyst will do all in their power and, if the customer remains unsatisfied, the issue will be escalated up the tiers of support. Eventually, you'll hit a manager and not a mere "supervisor" (which is usually just an analyst that receives overflow and "special" calls).

The scarier part is that, the more autonomous and segregated a call center operation becames, the more of a song-and-dance routine customers must perform in order to get things done. You have to go through all the motions to make sure SOPs and policy are being abided by before you can see any real results. All this is meant to frustrate customers so that they give up and eventually stop bothering about their issue. The wager here is that the issue is not big enough to go through the trouble of dealing with the inept call center analysts.

Yes, they just try to tire you out by running customers through loops. By the time you're done looping, you figure the issue is not worth all the trouble. Well, they underestimated us. ;o)


Deleting Jobs

Outsourcing overseas has another lovely effect: it deletes jobs. Typically, a company can fire a few people and hire three or four times as many people overseas, pay for the new facilities cost, and still turn a significant profit. In many cases, work is outsourced to call centers that allocate pods or groups of operators that will handle the account. That makes things even cheaper.

In turn, these folks overseas get rich and typically end up starting their own franchises here in the states. This deletes jobs across the boards as foreigners get priority over natives. Again, I am not saying we should not help other countries but, whent here are so many people looking for jobs or better opportunities, it's a shame to have work fly out the door, beyond the reach of our own.

What's even more sad is that, when you have homeland support shops and call centers, those poor analysts get more pressure put on them. The impending threat of being outsourced is over hung over their heads. When customer service/support is sent overseas, the expectations are very low for both the company and teh customers. This gives overseas support analysts the go-ahead to do whatever they want, for the most part, which is not limited to laughing at and hanging up on customers.

I know that there are current and former customer service analysts thinking to themselves what sort of torture they would be subjected to if they ever did anything bad to a customer. Hanging up on a customer, in most places I know of, results in being fired. No questions asked. A customer can curse your entire fmaily and say every bad word in ten major languages but you have to maintain your cool as the service professional. This is not the case with people overseas. Manners don't translate very well across cultures and you really can't enforce, let alone teach, such things.

In short, this means that good service professionals are losing their jobs to amateurs simply because some companies get to the point where they figure that, if they're going to give terrible service, it might as well be cheap. For whatever reason, when a company brings customer support back home, the expectations for internal teams become ridiculous. Performance metrics such as talk time, average speed of answer, issues resolved per call, recurring issue count, and overall customer satisfaction don't matter overseas. They just want to see how many customers they can tell to EFF OFF. Pretty sad, eh? What's more sad is that this is not mere hyperbole. It's ALL actuality.


Taking Action

If you find the overseas trend pitiful and/or had a piss-poor experience with XBox Live customer support, here's what we can do:

1. Blog about it.
2. Link to each other's blogs.
3. Promote related articles using StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, etc.
4. Sound off in this thread!
5. Promote this thread!!
6. When possible, boycott companies that practice poor business policy.
7. Spread the word about shady companies!
8. Document your customer service stories.
9. Warn friends and family of your customer service horror stories!
10. Remember to be courteous when you provide service yourself.

...You'd be surprised how fast a message can spread once it gains some visibility and becomes viral. As we collect links, we'll feature them here so that search engines can easily create a dynamic map of our efforts!


Since this article was originally created, the atrocities have continued and now XBox LIVE is actually crapping out. We pay for this? WHY?? The least Microsoft could do is give all their customers Microsoft Points but, nope, they just give you a cheap "sorry" and move on. Read my latest articles on WordPress!

http://yogizilla.wordpress.com

...It's time to wage war on unethical large corporations!
_________________
MOTM: NoF currently invading XBox LIVE, Spark, and MORE! Follow us on Twitter - NipplesOfFate and Yogizilla - PLUS join us Yahoo Groups!"
=N4L= | Mein nepohl endst uhn fohgen!

[KiNgY]

How come you haven't blogged about it on word press? i haven't even seen a recent blog on word press, blogging somewhere else?
_________________

[Yogizilla]

[Yogizilla]

I'm putting up the YWP article now as we speak! Oh boy.. It's going to be GOOD! MUHAHAHA! Microsoft can go eat it. ;o)
_________________
MOTM: NoF currently invading XBox LIVE, Spark, and MORE! Follow us on Twitter - NipplesOfFate and Yogizilla - PLUS join us Yahoo Groups!"
=N4L= | Mein nepohl endst uhn fohgen!

[Princess_Meri]

Xbox Live has been billing me for 2 years.
I have called several times for them to stop.
They still keep charging.

It is always a runaround.
Either in the phone recording
Or the operator.

They want to know when they can contact me,
Yet they can only call when they have time.

They sent an email, in which I replied,
But it came back.

1. Contact the BBB, Better Business Bureau online.
The more people that contact the BBB, the worse the
rating Xbox Live gets. You must find them by their
phone number from the Xbox web site.

2. If your credit card is from your bank, the bank can
stop payments to Microsoft. It will cost $20 +.
If the credit card is through a company, you can
Dispute payment. Your credit card company will
Send a form that you will have to get notarized.

3. Search for Xbox Live problems on the internet.
Post negative comments about Xbox Live. They actually
Pay people to check the internet for negative posts.
Maybe with enough publicity, Xbox will become better.

Don’t forget to mention in your posts that Xbox is
Making a fortune by billing people who do not use their services.

After contacting BBB, and then contacting Xbox again,
Let them know you will have to contact the BBB again.

[KiNgY]

Sorry. They do have there flaws and can be a hell of alot better but im still kinda sorta happy with it.
_________________

[luckyluckxx]

LOL

WBR,
Alex

[Yogizilla]

After reading Meri's account and that of others, I really want to go forward with an official campaign. That's the plan, at least.. I think we have to raise the awareness of people that just let this sort of thing slide rather than rise up against it. Microsoft is hardly the only company doing this sort of thing but the example-setting needs to start SOMEWHERE!
_________________
MOTM: NoF currently invading XBox LIVE, Spark, and MORE! Follow us on Twitter - NipplesOfFate and Yogizilla - PLUS join us Yahoo Groups!"
=N4L= | Mein nepohl endst uhn fohgen!