call center respondents live and work in Mohali, Punjab, india, but they answer service questions from American users of Quark Software.
Although outsourcing, or hiring outside contractors to perform jobs that could be done by employees, has been much in the news in recent years, it is nothing new to business.
In recent years, outsourcing has been increasingly linked to off-shoring, the use of contract labor from other countries. This from of outsourcing is driven by difference in labour costs, since workers in countries such as china or india typically make a small percentage of the wages paid in the most developed countries.
Facilitated by the 24-hour connection of the internet, service jobs such as customer call centers have long been popular forms of International outsourcing.
Increasingly, jobs in areas like financial management and information technology are also going to well - educated workers in countries such as india. Outsourcing and off-shoring continue to be controversial topics in many developed countries, where local workers feel they are losing jobs to foreign competitors.
