The Communications Workers of America supports efforts to restore confidence in the booming call center market, save precious jobs here in America, and help provide a measure of security for telephone and Internet consumer transactions. That is why CWA supports The Call Center Consumers Right to Know Act of 2006. At the time of printing for this fact sheet, there was no bill number for either the House or Senate bills.
In today's economy, consumers increasingly use the telephone or Internet to buy goods and services, inquire about transactions and bills and obtain technical support or other information. It is estimated that more than 70 percent of customer interaction occurs in call centers.
Most telephone and Internet-based customer service transactions are provided by customer service or sales representatives located in centralized call centers. There are more than 50,000 call centers in the United States and another 50,000 call centers abroad. In the U.S., an estimated 6 million employees work in these centers. However, these numbers are changing fast - for the worse.
Many companies and public entities no longer operate their own customer sales and service operations, but contract with a third party call center operator to provide the service. Information technology and marketing techniques have transformed customer sales and service delivery from what was historically a local, decentralized and personal labor market to one characterized by centralized remote servicing via technology-mediated call centers. This centralization has contributed to the offshoring phenomenon we see today and will continue to see in the future. Forrester Research, a marketing research firm, predicts that 3.3 million U.S. service industry jobs will be offshored over the next 15 years.
Consumers should have a right to know where they are calling and who they are talking to. This is what The Call Center Consumers Right to Know Act of 2006 will provide. Some customers prefer using local or American companies. Taxpayers may prefer that tax-supported services provide local employment. Consumers have a right to know that the call they place to what they believe is an "American" company is in fact answered by someone located in India, Vietnam, the Philippines, or any number of off-shore locations. But because of the sensitivity of sending U.S. jobs offshore, many foreign-based contractors have instructed their employees to conceal their true locations.
In state after state, bureaucrats have contracted out services to companies who sub-contract with off-shore call centers to do the work. For example, a company contracted by the state of New Jersey to process welfare and food stamp cards moved its customer service center to India. More than 35,000 Alabama food stamp benefit questions were routed to India. New York City sent its parking ticket collections work to India, before public disclosure forced the city to bring the work back. In almost every one of these cases, legislators had no prior knowledge of the transfer of state-funded jobs off shore.
Hundreds of thousand of U.S. sales and office support jobs are expected to move offshore. GE Capital, Dell, AT&T, Avaya, Citigroup, American Express, Avis and Whirlpool represent just a fraction of the companies that send customer service work off-shore.
Consumers lack the basic information they need to make informed choices and obtain better customer service. Transparency of information is the foundation of accountability and efficiency in the marketplace. There is no transparency in customer service operations today.
Consumers have a right to truthful information. Call center employees are instructed to answer calls using the brand name they are selling or servicing, and often respond to customer inquiries with the information that they are employees of the company selling that brand. This is not accurate information. Customers erroneously place confidence in the transaction based on the brand name and reputation on the company, when in fact this confidence is misplaced. In some cases, the help that a customer seeks is not available to them through call centers located outside the United States. For example, if a customer of United Airlines wishes to modify an existing reservation employees at call centers located offshore are unable to perform this most basic of tasks. As reported in Business Week, March 19, 2001, the customer may even be giving credit card information to a convicted felon taking airline reservations from a prison-based call center anywhere in the world.
Informed choices make the marketplace more efficient. For example, manufacturers are required to provide detailed product safety information. Federal law requires disclosure of U.S. content for automobiles, textiles and wool products. The Federal Trade Commission enforces standards to ensure commercial compliance with "Made in USA" labeling to ensure consumer confidence.
The Call Center Consumers Right to Know Act of 2006 will be enforced in much the same way. Corporations providing call center services to American consumers will be required to certify annually to the Federal Trade Commission that their employees are truthfully disclosing their location at the beginning of each call.
Consumers have a right to secure financial transactions. Consumers are deeply concerned with the phenomenon of identity theft. Efforts to stem this tide and keep up with the technological advancements that enable these crimes have done nothing to allay those concerns.
According to a story printed in the San Francisco Chronicle by David Lazarus on April 2, 2004, an Ohio company that offshores medical files to India, including patient records, was the victim of an extortion attempt by its own workers in Bangalore. These workers threatened to reveal confidential materials unless they received a cash payoff. According to the same story this security breach was alarmingly similar to a threat received by UCSF Medical Center just three weeks earlier from a Pakistani woman who was transcribing the Bay Area hospitals' files.
This trend becomes all the more frightening when millions of calls involving personal financial transactions are routed offshore where our laws are meaningless and our law enforcement agencies have little or no power to enforce American law.
The marketplace has failed to protect consumers. According to a 1998 study, entitled Service Fairness, "Service customers are vulnerable to exploitation." They are captive until the billing error, routing problem, technical malfunction, wrong service order, or other problems are fixed. Customers who have accurate information about the location and identity of the service center are better able to use this information to resolve their service problems and to make informed choices.
The Call Center Consumers Right to Know Act of 2006 will extend fundamental consumer rights to the marketplace of the Information Age – the customer sales and service call center. It will provide consumers the information they need in order to better exercise their choices in products and services, protect the security and safety of personal information provided in telephone or Internet transactions, and obtain access to redress or remedy from the responsible service provider.
For further information, contact:
David B. Martin
AFA-CWA, AFL-CIO
(202) 434-0597
dmartin@cwa-union.org
www.cwa-governmentaffairs.org
