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American Productivity — Call Centers

oscar
4 min readDec 13, 2024

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Photo by Mina Rad on Unsplash

I’m sure there are a thousand ways to improve our productivity.
But the proliferation of Call Centers not based in the US, shines a light on the larger problem.
In the case of Call Centers, why can’t the many unemployed fellow Americans be trained to staff them?
The other day I had to schedule an appointment with an imaging office that is less than half hour walking distance from where I live. But the call I placed went to a customer assistant in the Philippines. Mind you, the person was helpful and courteous — good at her job.
But why can’t we get our unemployed people to do that work right here in the US?
Is it cheaper to go abroad to staff the centers?
Most likely.
But don’t we owe our own people a chance to be trained for all work?
In the pursuit of squeezing out profits, something is being lost.
Same thing happened to me a week ago while resolving a matter with Amazon — the retailer, logistics, cloud services, AI and you name it company, which will sell you anything and soon will be taking you into space also.
I put in the call and right away I was speaking to someone in a foreign country.
Something is wrong with that picture.
If you told me that we were at full employment, then I would have no argument.
But we’re not.
Sure, Call Centers require verbal skills, but are these companies presently reliant on foreign labor even trying to find American citizens who have such skills?
This problem has been…

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oscar
oscar

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