Comments on: Extreme offshoring: Pakistani Virtual Secretary

By: chowkidar

chowkidar — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

What happens when…The data link breaks during the middle of a task (ordered meal, scheduling a meeting etc).

For call centers, there can be redundancy as it a many-to-many system (many customers; many support staff). In this scenario it’s a n:1 and if the link to the solo secretary goes out things don’t just break, they come to a standstill.

Are these guys using a satellite uplink? I would hope so.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

re: What happens when…Good point. I don’t know exactaly what they are using, but I’d imagine they’d be smart enough not to trust only 1 provider with their uplinks. The must have some sort of redundancy in place, for example using fibre most of the time but fallback on satellite if something goes wrong.

By: haq

haq — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

mcdonal’s outsourcing drive through order takers?This one is interesting too: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2005-03-10-mcd_x.htm

McDonald’s may outsource drive-thru order-taking

The world’s largest fast-food chain said Thursday that it is looking into using remote call centers to take customer orders in an effort to improve service at its drive-thrus.

By: haq

haq — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

how much do they really save?Let’s say they are using data lines for the everything and it takes about 100kb/s of bandwidth to transfer high quality two way voice and video. PTCL gives out 8 megabits dedicated connection for $7,200 a month, lets round that off to $8,000 for bandwidth and maintenance issues. Let us say you can squeeze 8 (800 kb/s a max throughput) virtual secrataries into that kind of bandwidth.

Let’s say they pay the secretary Rs. 40,000 a month (that’s a very good amount for a secretary in Pakistan). Therefore, that comes to about a total operating cost of about $15,000 a month or $180,000 a year for 8 virtual secretaries.

Now lets say they pay each US secretary about $40,000 a year then you’d save about 180k or about half of what you’d be spending on regular secretaries.