Outsourcing Toolkit
Story: Wipro to create 500 new UK jobs
Wipro: Cheap materials, shaky foundation
Wipro is amongst several large companies in India that compete for IT service outsourcing. This means that they go in and "manage" an organization's IT infrastructure, IT facilities and IT support because the organization doesn't want to hire, train and maintain IT staff and hardware/software themselves.
It's a tempting business model for companies that deal with quantity and not quality. I've experienced the quality of customer service of 3 of the top 4 companies - Wipro, HCL and Infosys. I haven't experienced TCS as yet.
Wipro is by far the worst. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is, say, the customer service of Enterprise Renta-a-Car (considered amongst the world's best service), Wipro would be a minus 10.
IT services outsourcing has several facets - customer service, staff courtesy, staff knowledge, expertise with the language, staff problem-solving skills and management's buy-in or support for all these facets.
Wipro fails miserably at all of them.
I have not met or spoken to a single Wipro IT services employee who did give a damn or who was courteous or who was knowledgeable or who was professional. Not one.
This should not surprise people who are familiar with the Indian business landscape; it's cut-throat competition amongst the top companies who constantly strive to undercut each other's prices and consequently constantly sacrifice the quality of personnel. In this landscape, Wipro is notorious for its ridiculously cheap rates ($6-8 per hour for overseas IT projects!!) and equally lousy personnel. They are legendary for hiring below average people, giving them none to below average training, bidding on IT services projects at embarrassingly low rates (and obviously winning them) and populating these projects with dozens of below-par, ignorant employees.
I've had first had experience of their shoddy customer service. Wipro IT department employees calling themselves "customer service executives" treat customers like dirt or worse and have no idea of the problems they create by messing with IT systems. They end up shrugging their collective shoulders saying "we don't know what's wrong" and "no, we don't know why that's not working".
HCL, in comparison, is much better, with a level of professionalism and courtesy that's rare, even in the US. My limited experience with them is one of 100% satisfaction; it's always been a joy dealing with them, especially because they show that they genuinely care and that they really want to spend time with you and solve your problems.
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