How Offshore Customer Service Is Quietly Breaking Us

We’ve all been there. You call customer service with a simple question, a return, a billing issue, or a refund request. But instead of help, you get a nonstop wall of scripted chatter from someone halfway across the world. You try to interrupt. You try to clarify. But they keep talking, like a runaway train that never pauses for breath.

Photo by Charanjeet Dhiman on Unsplash

Today, I called Rugs.com to return a rug I mistakenly ordered in the wrong color. The call wasn’t a conversation. It was a one-sided lecture. Every time I tried to ask a question, I had to talk over her. Not because I wanted to, but because there was no natural pause. She wasn’t listening. She was reciting. It left me feeling tense, irritated, and physically stressed. And it’s not the first time this has happened.

This dynamic plays out with big banks like Citibank, telecom companies, and even healthcare providers. The rep talks over you, repeats themselves, and ignores your clear, direct answers, like you’re not even there. They don’t respond to what you’re saying because they’re not engaging with you. They’re sticking to the script. Is this just bad training? Or is it cultural?

In many offshore call centers, especially in countries like India and the Philippines, communication styles are different. Culturally, there’s often a belief that “helping” means explaining everything, thoroughly and quickly, even if the customer didn’t ask for all of it. Silence can be seen as awkward or inefficient, so they fill every second of the call with words. But in the U.S., we value a different kind of exchange, one with pauses, listening, and back-and-forth dialogue.

When that dynamic is missing, the conversation becomes emotionally exhausting. It creates subtle anxiety in your body because your needs aren’t being acknowledged in real time. It’s not that these workers are rude. It’s that they’ve been trained to talk, not to communicate. It’s about outsourcing our interactions to people not trained in human connection, because it saves companies 80% on labor costs. And they don’t care that it’s costing you your time, peace of mind, or blood pressure.

Meanwhile, American companies keep sending these jobs overseas because it saves them money. According to recent research, 59% of businesses outsource specifically to cut costs, not to improve quality. This is the new corporate formula: lay off experienced American workers, replace them with low-wage offshore staff, and convince shareholders it’s “smart business.” This isn’t personal. It’s systemic. It’s what happens when companies put cutting labor costs above actual service. They know it’s frustrating. They don’t care because you don’t show up on the spreadsheet. Profits do.

A report from Deloitte found that 59% of businesses outsource to reduce costs, not to improve service or efficiency. That means the priority isn’t your experience, it’s their bottom line. American workers are paying the price. More than 300,000 jobs are outsourced from the U.S. each year, with customer service and tech support leading the list.

My job was offshored to India in March. Before I was cut loose, I was forced to work with the new team, and I saw the mistakes, the confusion, the lack of accountability. I flagged it. But in today’s corporate ecosystem, you’re expected to suffer through it , work harder and inefficiently, because it’s cheaper to let things fail quietly than to admit outsourcing doesn’t always work. Accountability doesn’t matter when companies are laser-focused on the bottom line.

The “global HR” department of the company that let me go made several mistakes when communicating about my severance and benefits, repeatedly telling me that they did not receive my paperwork, and I had concrete proof that it had been sent and delivered. Each time I called, I got a different response and eventually had to engage other American employees within my old team to follow up repeatedly. So, not only did my job get sourced overseas to people continually making mistakes, but after I was let go, the global, un-American HR customer service I received made copious mistakes. Oh, the irony. The real kick in the balls was a raise and a great review a few weeks before I was let go. America is falling into a deep and insidious hole of profit over people. Back to my point below:

So instead of trained, experienced American workers who know how to read a customer’s tone, solve the problem, and listen, we’re handed a phone line to someone given a script and a stopwatch. Companies know and couldn't care less. They’ve accepted that stress and frustration are part of the process now. They figure you’ll hang up and move on. But they don’t realize that all these little moments and all these failed interactions are building resentment.

It’s turning basic customer service into a high-stress event. These calls leave people feeling angry, unheard, and sometimes even physically unwell from the tension they build up just trying to be understood. This isn’t about nationality. It’s about fit. Communication isn’t one-size-fits-all. What works in one culture can feel invasive or overwhelming in another. American companies outsource services without considering the human cost, the tone, the lack of timing, and the rude style; we all lose. The result? A quiet erosion of trust, one awkward, frustrating phone call at a time. When was the last time you hung up more relaxed than when you dialed? When did a “service call” stop feeling like service?

You try to interject — they keep talking.
You ask a direct question — they keep talking.
You clearly state the solution — they keep talking.

It is a dystopian nightmare.