In any way I think about this, I come up with the same answer. It wasn’t worth it! People losing jobs, other rebadged to train their replacements, and nobody can guarantee that the quality of work will be maintained, much less that it will be better. What exactly is Xerox saving with this deal?
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I actually remember, Canada, too, along with Maine. About 20 years ago, the company I was with moved its customer service operations from a major city in the Northeast to Nova Scotia (Canada), New Mexico, and Arizona, though they were still employees of the company. The driver was to lower costs; but, there was also a secondary interest in spreading out locations to increase business resiliency as there were instances where weather or other calamities basically shut down all customer service functions for days. I'm also sure the tax incentives from governments in these new locations were also welcomed.
The cost did go down, but the quality was still good. The one key downside to the move was a major increase in cost in recruiting because customer service was considered an 'entry level' job where mostly college graduates could learn about the company and the industry. The best ones in customer service were eventually poached/promoted by operations, client management, and other internal functions and few into the company. With the loss of that talent pipeline, we had to then steal/but talent from other companies, which was more expensive and then had to train them how to work for us.
After about 5 years; the company then outsourced these call centers and their employees to a 3rd party. Eventually those companies then moved the positions to off-shore locations such as India (IT), Central America (finance), and the Philippines (customer service). Now, it's a move to AI.
With each move, costs did go down, but each step further away from the company did result in a noticeable drop in quality and customer satisfaction. For all intent, for most outsourcing firms and their customers, it's a cost-driven, commodity business now.
Canada is way too expensive now. Look out, they’ll move it to Guatemala or ...
off-shore to Canada???...
In all due respect, how many times is this going to be said and how many times will it be answered with “they don’t care about quality. It’s about cutting cost and selling out”? Really.
It’s not a difficult concept. They aren’t like you. They don’t care about your definition of quality. They don’t think they require quality to sell this thing. To them it’s ONLY ABOUT GETTING TO PRICE UP IN THE SHORT TERM AND SELLING.
When outsourcing fist hit the scene, it was based on scale of economies. In other words, companies move their ‘non-core’ functions that they may not have the experience and depth to be the best to a company who focus is on that function and can put the talent and dollars into it resulting in lower cost and improved quality through captured efficiencies. Quality was actually supposed to go up. Over time, because very few American companies can see past the next quarterly earnings report, sacrificed everything to save another Dollar. Nothing else matters. Thus, the race to the lowest cost began as outsourcing centers moved from outside of the major cities to rural America, then off-shore to Canada, Ireland, etc., then to places like Romania, Jamaica, Columbia, the Philippines, and India and now into AI.
As I know a bit of what’s going on internally within Xerox and how they treat their vendors and employees right now., I can only imagine how messed-up the deal with HCL is.
Companies that outsource their work do not care about quality. They care only that they are saving on salaries and benefits.
Honestly in the end I don't think Xerox cares because they just want to sell!
The quality of the work will go way down and the customers will walk away!