Business Week, June 25, 2007

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Business Week

June 25, 2007

SECTION: Up Front: OUTSOURCING; Pg. 14 Vol. 4040

HEADLINE: HELLO, INDIA? ER, DES MOINES?

BYLINE: By Kerry Miller Edited by Deborah Stead and Michael Arndt

BODY:

Most call centers catering to American customers are in the U.S., not overseas, contrary to what many people may think. That's just one finding in a new study--the largest ever--of 2,500 call centers in 17 countries.

Led by Cornell University, the survey shows that most call centers serve their own domestic markets. India is an obvious exception, with 73% serving foreigners. (Indian centers also average 741 employees, compared with 96 to 396 in the U.S., depending on the sector.) "The kinds of calls that are going offshore continue to be very simple transactions," says Rosemary Batt, professor of human resource studies at Cornell and a lead author of the report.

Here's a sampling of what else the researchers found about the world on the other end of the line.

GRAPHIC: illustration, Illustration: Call Centers