Until recently, I naively associated El Salvador’s travel and lodging industry with charter airlines transporting illegal migrants who made it to the U.S.—only to be rewarded with an all-expense-paid vacation to the country’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center. That’s a perk not even offered with Chase’s refreshed $795 Sapphire Reserve card.
But I’m fast learning that El Salvador figures prominently in the travel infrastructure most Americans rely on.
As I’ve previously written, El Salvador is where the U.S. airline industry cartel—United, Delta, American, and Southwest—sends its planes for heavy maintenance. United also reportedly relies on an outsourcing firm in China for additional support.
The good news? The Salvadoran maintenance facility used by the cartel is ultimately controlled by a private equity firm. So it’s a given the center has management oversight focused on “unlocking value,” which is what private equity firms are infamous for – albeit for themselves.
The surge in stories about planes being delayed or making emergency landings due to maintenance issues is, I’m sure, no reflection on the superior work the American airline cartel undoubtedly demands from its low-cost maintenance vendors.
Hyatt, Hold My Call
Thanks to travel blogger Gary Leff, I learned yesterday that Hyatt laid off the roughly 300 U.S.-based call center agents it hadn’t yet pink-slipped and shipped their jobs to El Salvador—supplementing the call center support the hotel chain already relies on in the Philippines. Adding insult to injury, a travel source told me that the fired Hyatt employees trained their replacements, mistakenly taking the company at its word that the Salvadorans would only be providing additional support.
I foolishly mistook Hyatt as a premium brand. But premium brands don’t offshore their customer support. Hyatt now ranks in the same category as Microsoft and other mediocre tech companies that couldn’t care less about service quality.
Premium brands like Fidelity and Costco, in addition to treating their employees with dignity and respect, invest heavily in U.S.-based customer support. They know it’s not just about solving problems—it can also drive retention and even new business. When you call a company and get someone struggling to read an English script because it’s not their native language, it’s a dead giveaway how little that company respects you and values your business.
Hyatt’s move to El Salvador piqued my curiosity. Within seconds, I discovered the country is fast becoming the Arizona of call centers. I’m not sure why, but I’ve long considered Arizona the gold standard of customer care. Many of the best agents I’ve ever spoken to were based there.
One theory I’ve toyed with: call centers must be well air-conditioned to keep IT infrastructure cool—maybe Arizonans flock to them to escape the state’s brutal summer heat.
Sorry, I digress.
From Deportation Gate to Customer Care Hub
El Salvador’s rising profile as a destination for U.S. corporate outsourcing is understandable. The country has invested heavily in internet infrastructure—now rivaling that of many developed nations. It’s in the Central Time Zone, making it easier to staff call centers during U.S. business hours. Best of all (for corporations, at least), many Salvadorans speak both English and Spanish—the two dominant languages of the American marketplace.
But here’s the twist.
How did so many Salvadorans learn fluent, even idiomatic English—sometimes with a regional American dialect?
According to a January 2017 article in the New Yorker—published just five days before Donald Trump was sworn in and before the magazine devolved into a full-blown TDS op-ed mill—many of El Salvador’s call center agents are deported former U.S. gang members.
I kid you not.
The article profiled one such deportee: Eddie Anzora, described as “thick-armed and barrel-chested,” and born in San Salvador but lived in California from age 2 to 29, when he was deported for drug possession.
“I got real American-culturized from the beginning,” Anzora told the New Yorker.
This excerpt from the New Yorker piece was especially illuminating:
Drawn by low operating costs, generous tax incentives, and proximity to the U.S., more than ten major call-center firms now operate in El Salvador, employing some twenty thousand people. Deportations from the U.S. have fueled the industry by bringing an influx of English-speaking job seekers. Anzora was one of twenty thousand Salvadorans deported in 2007.
Since President Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. has deported 2.7 million people—more than during any previous administration (emphasis mine). A hundred and fifty-two thousand of them are Salvadoran, and roughly twenty percent spent at least five years in the U.S. They generally speak fluent and idiomatic English—the most crucial requirement for call-center work. Their next most important quality is their desperation.
“Deportees are very loyal,” a recruiter told McClatchy. “They know they won’t get another shot.” At one call center I visited, more than half the employees had been deported from the U.S. Recruiters show up at an isolated hangar at the San Salvador airport to intercept deportees as they get off small jets flown in by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Security Is So Overrated
When companies outsource critical functions to third parties, they increase their risk of being hacked. Hackers often gain entry through a vendor’s less secure IT systems. The U.S. hospital industry is notorious for this vulnerability because it’s not exactly brimming with elite cybersecurity talent.
U.S. companies like Hyatt increasingly entrusting customer data to call centers in crime-ridden El Salvador, potentially staffed in part by deported gang members.
What could possibly go wrong?
I’m certain Hyatt and the rest will swear on a stack of Gideon bibles there’s absolutely, positively no risk, and that El Salvador’s call center security rivals that of its aircraft maintenance operations.
Given that Hyatt’s customers have already been subjected to multiple breaches, one imagines the hotel chain has developed quite the expertise on worst cybersecurity practices.
Air India’s Trusting Management
U.S. corporations aren’t alone in their optimism trusting workers in potentially hostile countries. After the recent Air India crash, I got curious about where that airline sends its planes for maintenance.
Ready for this?
Air India outsources some of its aircraft maintenance to a firm in Turkey—a country that has publicly sided with Pakistan in its long-simmering conflict with India. On May 15, India’s aviation security authority revoked the Turkish firm’s approval, citing “national security reasons.” Air India reportedly has until August to sever the relationship.
Frankly, you couldn’t pay me to fly Air India—even if its planes were maintained by the best U.S.-trained mechanics.