Outsourcing to India - Experiment 3 - GetFriday.com

Posted by admin on November 15th, 2007 filed in Advice

You would have thought I would have learned my lesson by now… Oh no faithful reader, I haven’t learned yet.

I had a lot of unfinished accounting entries to do to clean up my corporation. So I ask the folks at GetFriday.com if that is the sort of service they provide. Yes it is. I can hire a Personal Assistant who can do these items or delegate them to someone on the team who can do them.

Fantastic. I sign up for the 40 hour a week plan on a month to month basis. Cost will be $1120 per month.

Since their mention in ‘the 4 hour work week’ they have been very busy. There is a mention on their web site that there will be a 3 week delay for all new people signing up.

No problem I think, this puts me at November 19th, 3 weeks after I faxed in the papers.

November 2nd - I get an email confirming the three week delay.

This gives me time to prepare all my accounting tasks.

November 7th I get an email from my assistant introducing himself. His profile is attached to the email. I guess I had better prepare those accounting entries now… I spend the day gathering all the information.

RENISH
Bangalore • task@getfriday.com

EDUCATION
EME college, Baroda, Gujarat. INDIA
Instrumentation

COMPUTER KNOWLEDGE
WINDOWS 95/98/2000, XP, Vista
MS Office

INTERESTS: Playing BasketBall, Listening Music.
Languages known: English Hindi Tamil Malayalam

Yours faithfully,

OK, not the most comprehensive CV out there, but good enough. Let’s get started!

November 7th, I ask for a phone call to speak with him and that I have some accounting to do.

November 8th, early morning. I send a detailed email about the accounting tasks I need done. I ask them to please call me for clarification. I phone around 11 AM since I am anxious to get started.

The person on the other end of the phone can’t take a message for me, can’t tell me what is happening, can’t direct me to my assistant, and asks me to ‘please call back later on.’

I know its a different time zone, but GetFriday is supposed to work 9am to 6pm New York time, my time zone.

3:18 PM on November 8th, I get an email… My new assistant is ‘on leave’ and someone else is taking over his tasks. I ask for a call.

4:30 PM. I get the call… however I am in a meeting! I ask if they can call back after 7PM (they have a shift time then). I get an email saying that the person who was responsible for the task has left for the day.

6:50 PM Thursday. I ask for them to phone me Friday…

Friday, between 8:30 AM and 2 PM New York Time would be best. I will be driving in the car, so it is possible that the signal will be choppy and that my calls may hang up or I may be unreachable.

Friday - I receive a notification for a voice message that came in around 12:30PM. I miss the call. I am still in the car! Damn. I’m hopeful they will call back. They don’t.

Friday November 9th. 4:30PM. I phone GetFriday… I get a busy signal.
Friday November 9th. 5:30PM. I phone GetFriday… After a few rings I get a message saying ‘The caller has declined to take your call.’

So, three days in and no work done. I have 7 days ‘money back free trial’ How to proceed?

Sunday, November 11th… noon. I ask someone to phone me immediately. (I know its Sunday, but they will likely call me Monday).

This is David. I have just signed for the Personal assistant. So Far, this is not working out at all.

Can you please phone me at 647.XXX.XXXX so we can discuss how I can continue working with you, or to cancel as I am within the 7 day trial period.

Monday November 12th - Noon. No one has phoned. I phone them. First call, gives me a busy signal.

Second call…. I’ve had it. I call…Yes, they do answer in the end. I ask to speak to someone, but no one is available to help me. They say I need to send a fax or an email.

I send an email to TASK and SUPPORT emphasizing my cancellation and a Fax to them as well. I ask for someone to send me an email to confirm.

November 12, 2:30 PM. No one has send any confirmation yet.

November 13th - 4PM. I receive a phone call from the ’support’ team (just shy of 52 hours after I asked for a call) They tell me they will fix things up and assign a new assistant to me. At this point, I’m done. I tell them to cancel. I am heading into an optometrist appointment so I ask them to phone me back in one hour.

Two hours later, they call. They ask for my business and tell me they will fix things up. They ask for another chance. But for me, it’s done. One week had gone by and no work. If one week had gone by with no work, how would it be different? (and now that I am on the hook for a month commitment)

I don’t know… Maybe it’s me. I just think that if you hire an assistant, that they should be responsive and try to reach you and get your work done. Is that just me? If you leave tasks for them, they should reach you for clarification. Is it possible that I was expecting too much? Perhaps just because one of my weeks had been used up… No thanks.

So, that’s that. I’m done with Indian outsourcing firms. Hopefully I have learned my lesson. Is it possible that I just had *3* fluke experiences with these places. I really did have high hopes for this and I really did want this to work out.

What I would really like to hear is some success stories from people. Are these places just too busy?

Barring that, where can I get some outsourcing done locally? Are there ‘personal assistant’ type of companies in North America that have the ‘back end teams’ that these places supposedly have? How can I make this work?