Hacker News Reader

Comment by tfang17 | Hacker News Reader

Seems to be a lot of questions about how bootstrapped startups handle customer support.

I'm the cofounder of Eureka Surveys. We're bootstrapped, profitable, and just crossed 1M+ users. We've had an amazing experience hiring customer support in the Philippines. I have a thread about it on Twitter: https://twitter.com/t0mstah/status/1356296043009253382

The tl;dr is that you can hire cheap ($3.50/hr), high quality virtual assistants from the Philippines to handle customer support for you, all from day one. Having CS has really made a difference for us in our business and is one of our main differentiators as we've scaled up the CS team. DM me on Twitter and I can connect you to some excellent VAs looking for jobs!

View on HN

I’ve been to the Philippines a couple times (out of my own curiosity; origin = USA), and let me tell you, customer service there is HUGE.

From an American perspective, a couple key points to know are 1. Filipinos are among the nicest people in the world, cultural-wise, and 2. English is taught starting in most elementary schools there.

But wait, there’s more!

From the Filipino perspective, you get to help enable a new means of living income in what is a competitive and resourced-limited economy. To add perspective, while it’s not in all locations, it’s not uncommon to see homeless children wandering hopelessly.

100% agree, it's a win-win for everyone!

Filipino culture is also very friendly and most VAs speak almost fluent English.

Can connect y'all directly with our source in the Philippines if you DM me on Twitter!

Better to go straight to the source in my opinion, rather than using something like Fiverr. Going direct is cheaper, allows you to interview around a bit more easily, and helps build a more direct, long-term connection with the VA as an employer instead of as a contractor.

Hey Tommy, I DMed you but figured I would ask here too...what service do you use for VA?

Saved for later, thank you for sharing.

- Cheap, high-quality, free-from-exploitation. Pick 2.

Spare me the "Life is cheaper in the 3-world non-sense"

What do you propose? Don't hire from cheap places or pay them the same rate as expensive places? If companies pays the same as expensive places, why would they hire from cheaper places?

Write all these down:

- Pay your local workers livable wages and dont fuck the local population. Where are most of the customers located?

- If you want to hire foreign workers pay them the same or a substantial fraction of your local workers. If they are good their nationality should not matter.

- Hire and pay directly not through intermediates, dont wash your hands off from all the regulations you need to comply with.

Here we have a company which is effectively paying 10-20% of what a local worker would get (Net Salaries+Taxes+Compliance Requirements,etc). Are they going to charge for their product 10% of the US price in the Philippines?

Many companies want the "good things" about globalization: Access to cheap, unregulated workforce, free-flow of capitals, lack of responsibility for any externality created (are they contributing to social security?) but complain about the other side: worldwide liability, open borders, different regulations.

How much is a substantial fraction and who determines that? Is it a simple fraction or does it depend on the market and competitive landscape? Is it something governments should regulate or should consumers vote with their wallets?

Companies should adhere to regulations though, no arguments there.

> How much is a substantial fraction and who determines that

I determine that and I say +80% , you dont get weasel out of this with useless semantic distinctions.

> Is it a simple fraction

As oppose to a "complex" one?

> Is it something governments should regulate or should consumers vote with their wallets?

The company owners should be ethical enough to pay that.

Do you use this kind of sophistry to justify your compensation or what you charge for your product or service? I highly suspect that is not the case. Easy peasy to play Aristotle when it is about poor working-people living money.

You either don’t understand human nature and economic incentives or you don’t care. You’re either ignorant or authoritarian.

Ignorant and authoritarian tend to go hand in hand.

OK I am ignorant authoritarian, now please work for me for 1USD/h. Put up or shut up.

Do you not buy anything made overseas that pays workers less than 80% of some us based rate? You don’t own an iPhone I assume? You don’t own anything with an intel in it?

> You don’t own an iPhone I assume?

No I dont.

> You don’t own anything with an intel in it?

No.

> Do you not buy anything made overseas that pays workers less than 80% of some us based rate?

This is all what I have bought in the last 12 months (besides food and rent and services)

2 used jeans

2 used cargo shorts

3 T-shirts (5 USD each)

10 pair of boxers (New, 3 USD each)

1 100 USD phone

That's have been my total consumption. In my place I use 1 lightbulb, 1 small fridge, 1 rice maker and the laptop.

Any other question?

that 100 USD phone was made by poor low paid people in a poor country

If you have to pay 80% of the local wages it's not worth outsourcing and the Philippine economy loses out. Additionally it would completely mess up the Philippine economy. Suddenly people would rather work in a call centre than, for example, become a doctor because the salaries would be high and barrier to entry low.

Because paying people enough money to thrive, not just survive, is the right thing to do.

That certainly would be great, but is it realistic?

Manufacturing for example, is heavily outsourced to cheaper locations. We can certainly have all the tshirts we buy in the US made in the US. Hire locally, create jobs, pay a thriving wage etc.

Then the tshirts will cost more. You might be ok with that, but will the rest of the population? Or will they opt to buy the $10 tshirts made in China? Do we impose heavy duties on anything imported, so the domestic products are price competitive? What about export markets? Will Europe buy our $50 tshirts over the $10 Chinese made tshirts?

Paying local workers a thriving wage would be great, and we certainly do it for many sectors (tech for example). I just don't know if it's workable for a lot of things.

See I'm actually interested in a good-faith discussion of this topic, not a screaming match. Does anyone who isn't going to scream have something to say about whether this is actually an exploitative practice?

I would too.

We currently have a situation (we use cheaper labor in developing countries to make stuff more cheaply). Some take issue with this for various reasons like exploitation, depriving local labor force of work etc. I genuinely would like to hear some viable alternatives.

The common response is "just pay them more". But that doesn't work in most situations. So what do we do?

Hmm, interesting. I wonder if you could get creative with employment benefits Of course, if you're not actively applying geopolitical pressure to keep their labor cheap, and it's a mutually consentual agreement, maybe we can just say "it's not exploitative".

If they want to make more, why not simply charge more and let the market decide what's the fair value?

We do try and pay above market rate and provide benefits to our VAs. In general, our philosophy is to treat them like long-term employees, rather than as short-term contractors.

We have had 0% attrition rate and have been told by our VAs that working for us has been the best job they've ever had!

> Spare me the "Life is cheaper in the 3-world non-sense"

You obviously don't know what you're talking about.

I'm from Brazil. If you paid me $40.000 yearly to work remotely i would be a top 3%~ earner.

This would entitle me to:

- Renting a 60m2 2bdr, 2bath appartment in a top neighbourhood of São Paulo

- Having a really nice car (by brazillian standards)

- Top notch health insurance in the most respected hospitals in Latin America

- Easily keeping 1/4 of the money for investments and private pension

Reply on news.ycombinator.com