OT: Off shore call center workers mad at American

[Thermodyne]

STAFF AT Indian call centres dealing with Americans are getting more angry at some callers' rude, backward, stupid and bigoted comments.
A collective for Indian workers, formed by Vinod Shetty, a Bombay lawyer, said that most of the Americans seemed to have chip on their shoulder about outsourcing and vented their insecurities on call centre staff.



Story (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27783)
Main Article

Original Story (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/17/BUGB3FPGT01.DTL&type=tech)




Perhaps, if they were able to speak understandable English and had a working knowledge of the product in question, we wouldn’t be so rude.
I recently placed a call for some support on a name brand VPN appliance. I had unlimited free support and timed paid support. I called the free support on what I figured was an easy question. All I wanted to do was add a port to UDP so that I could connect some users that could not use the standard port because of local firewall restrictions. I’ve done it lots of time with another vendor, but they don’t use a webserver interface. You just type in the commands and the write it. With this system you could only make changes by selecting from the menus.
I started by explaining what I needed to do, and ask how to get to a command line and what to enter when I got there. After 40 minutes, mostly translation problems, the girl kicks me to level two. I wait almost half an hour and the go through the whole thing again. After about 15 minutes of discussion, I get kicked to level three. They come right on the line, and I go through the whole thing again. I spend over an hour with this guy, and have to repeat almost everything I say twice. Finally he says that it can’t be done on this model. I hang up and call my sales rep to lay into him about why he sold me this system that did not meet the bid specks. Most of you guys know me; he was about to have a bad day. Of course, I get voice mail. When he calls me back, he assures me that the OS is writable and gives me some free time with paid support. I then call the paid support number, and get the same guy that I had the day before as tier three free support. He doesn’t even remember the call until I give him the service request number! During this conversation he admits that he has never seen the appliance and has not had time to read the material that the manufacture sent out on it. He wants me to call him back in a few days, or because this is paid support, he can kick me up another level. Well heck, I’m well and truly bent over, so I say “kick me”. Now I get to speak to a lady in Europe (Where the product is made) and she says no problem. She gives me an address to type into my browser and that takes me to a command line. Then she tells me what to enter and how to write it. So after spending hours talking to India, I get my problem fixed in 10 minutes by someone who knows the product. Speaks English as a second language, but does it well. And never said “what you say” once during the whole conversation. So, yes I agree with the article above, the Indians are mistreated by American customers. But perhaps if they knew WTF they were supporting and how to answer basic questions, in understandable English we (I) would have a little more respect for them. It has gotten to the point where the location of help support is becoming an important factor as to where I buy equipment from. I don’t know how the rest of the world feels about it, but this American has a very low opinion for unqualified “experts” when seeking technical help. And I also feel that my time is far too scarce and much too valuable to be jerked off for hours at a time by some stupid subcontractor who probably doesn’t even completely understand what I’m saying. Unfortunately, this has become they way things are in this industry. And as long as these people are mistaken for knowledgeable technicians, my frustration will have to continue to be mistaken for rudeness. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[General Woundwort]

Ah, the joys of globalization. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[Hunpecked]

I agree with Thermodyne. As an American consumer I shouldn't have to call halfway around the world, only to find incompetent support personnel!

I'm sure there are plenty of incompetent support personnel available right here at home!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[TerranC]

I'd be more sympathetic to your plight if it wasn't for this:

http://angryasianman.com/Power99_Call_to_India.mp3

[geoschmo]

As someone who has worked in customer support for almost ten years I can tell you that the problem you describe isn't really caused by the outsourcing. Language problems aside, you are likely to get the same level of non-support from a help-desk staffed by people right here in the good ole USA. It's a lack of training by the company, and understaffing caused by stetching too few people over too many product lines. It's difficult as hell for those first and second level people to really get proficcent with the products they are supporting, since they rarely if ever actually use them and only spend their days sitting at a desk taking calls. And when only metric your company judges your performance by is how quickly you answer the phone and the number of calls you take, you can see how actually helping the customer to resolve their problems gets lost in the shuffle.

At any rate, being rude with the person answering the phone isn't helpful. I'm sure given their preferance they would want to help you with your problem. It's not their fault they don't speak english fluently and aren't sufficently trained. They are just trying to earn a living like everybody else. Save your anger for the manufacturer that hired them for not supporting their product. Oh, and the telemarketers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

[Fyron]

You should not apply for a job where you will have to converse with English speaking people constantly if you can not speak English very well. There are plenty of other ways to earn a living that do not depend on skills you do not have.

[Slynky]

I don't like outsourcing. However, even though I've received less-than-satisfactory assistance from some of my calls to India (or wherever), it's not the fault of the person on the other end of the phone. It's the fault of CEOs and American government (who pass laws in payment for campaign donations that favor offshoring). I might also point out that I've received less-than-satisfactory assistance from people who speak English as a first language.

[geoschmo]

Imperator Fyron said:
You should not apply for a job where you will have to converse with English speaking people constantly if you can not speak English very well. There are plenty of other ways to earn a living that do not depend on skills you do not have.

Uh, really? You might say that here, but I'm not sure it's true in India. If jobs were that common over their I doubt that companies could save so much money by moving their support centers.

There's also the matter of what it means to speak acceptable english. If you have to work a little bit to understand their accent that doesn't mean they are illiterate boobs. A lot of Americans are pretty insular and lazy when it comes to that sort of thing.

But regardless even if jobs were plentiful, are you saying if a company wanted to hire you doing a nice comfortable job when your alternative is some kind of unplesant or maybe dangerous manual labor, and pay you better money than the hard job paid, you'd say "No, sorry, I just don't think I'm qualified." http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

I'm not saying outsourcing is a good thing. I work in support. Outsourcing means me losing my job some day. But I hate all outsourcing. Customer support started going in the crapper years ago when companies started marginalizing their support departments and farming it off to third party support companies. But nobody got upset when that third party company was hiring unskilled Americans, paying them substandard wages and giving thim insufficent training. It was only when they started hiring unskilled Indians, paying them substandard wages and giving them insuffiecent training that people noticed there was a problem.

[rdouglass]

My $.02 on this issue.

It doesn't matter where you live or what you do for work. If your job is to support / help people using verbal communication, you better be able to understand and be understood by the people you support.

How many job requirements incude "good verbal and written communication skills". Almost all?

If they cannot communicate effectively with the person they're supposed to be helping, all that happens is the customer frustration level goes up. And that doesn't have a lot to do with technical abilities. If you're supporting English speaking people (not just Americans now but English speaking people), you better be able to speak and understand English effectively.

What they're doing with or what they'd be doing without that job is irrelevant.

EDIT: Hey, I actually agree with Fyron. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

[Renegade 13]

Imperator Fyron said:
You should not apply for a job where you will have to converse with English speaking people constantly if you can not speak English very well.


I agree.

[Thermodyne]

My bad, I didn’t make my point clearly enough. My complaint is the audacity of the founders of this group. They are actually saying that regardless of the quality of the support provided, that they should be treated as respected credible professional service providers. If you read the article, the Yanks will notice that the main quoted insult is not something that an American would normally use. In fact, upon some questioning of one of my Indian friends, it turns out to be a common Indian slur used by city dwellers to describe tribal people living in rural areas.

Now, while I do fault the people involved in the forming of the collective, I do not fault the call takers. I do however reserve the right to vent my frustration at their incompetence. They are just trying to earn a living. The root of the problem is the lack of product support by manufacturers, but the problem we as callers face is the lack of professionalism demonstrated by the call centers. They get paid to put people on the end of a phone line, and have not been held accountable for the standard of said people. When answering technical calls from America, the person needs to speak more than passable English, including technical vocabulary. This is the responsibility of the call center owner and the manufacturer who contract with them to be sure. But for a group of poorly trained service providers to form a group to demand treatment on par with skilled professionals is ridiculous. Would their time be better spent demanding better training from their employers? Not to mention reasonable wages.

Now anyone who ever worked a help desk knows that from time to time you will get a caller that is over the edge from word one. Such is life. But my experience is that this can be corrected by simply helping them with their problem. This often takes very good communication skills, something that is very often lacking with people who are communicating in a second language. Any recent customer support poll you care to look at will demonstrate the low satisfaction rate. And anyone in the business can tell you that outsourcing has only exasperated the problem. And what ever happened to saying “I don’t know”. Many a time I have told a user that I couldn’t solve their problem, but that I would find a solution and call them back. This used to be what second tier help desk people did. But as Geo has already stated, speed at answering and time per call is the standard used today, so second tier is often just staffed with people who talk and type faster. My largest equipment supplier still has it’s call center in the states, and while they may be lacking in technical knowledge or hamstrung by company policy designed to hide major (read expensive) defects, the ability to communicate well helps to greatly reduce the level of stress.

As to Geo’s concerns about being on an American call center, you have my condolences my friend. The Global economy was intended to spread the wealth and raise the third worlds standard of living. But it would seem to have only exported jobs. This will only change when the consumers (voters) demand it.

[Thermodyne]

While we are talking about off shore service, I have another question that some of you might be able to answer. What do these companies pay for overseas calls? I have a sister who lives in Australia, and a few years ago I called her at Christmas. Turns out that she was in Pakistan at the time. So after talking with some of her friends “mates?” for about an hour, I called her in Pakistan. That call was about an hour also. When I got the bill I almost had a stroke! How do these call centers afford to keep people on hold for hours at a time?

[geoschmo]

Thermodyne said:
... so second tier is often just staffed with people who talk and type faster.

Hey, it sounds like you have dealt with my company. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Thermodyne]

geoschmo said:
Hey, it sounds like you have dealt with my company. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif



Don’t have a clue, but since we have to buy from the low bidder, I’ve talked to a bunch of them over the years http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

[Starhawk]

Well considering in this country I can't apply for a lot of jobs unless I speak frickin Spanish (in my own damn country mind you) then if those Indians can't be bothered learning enough English to speak to me they can get a job where they don't have to talk to me.


My biggest problem here was when I was called be a bloody company alright the scary thing they already knew my zip code and SSN (which later pissed me off to no end).

Anyway so here's how the first conversation went:

"Hello Trevor my name is (not a clue what she said) I would like to talk to you about getting (not a clue wtf she said) since you are now going into college."

(me)
"Um excuse me what do you want?"

(her)
"Yes I represent (babble) and I want to talk to you about (babble).

(me)
"Uh.....look I'm really busy with my school work can you please just tell me What you want?"

(her)
"I would like your zip code again please so we can confirm it at (babble)."

(me)
"Uh two three four five two."

(her)
"Thank you now may I please confirm your social security number?"

(Me)
"I don't think I'd like to give you that unless you can tell me what you want it for."

(her)
"Trevor (since when were we on a first name Basis?) I have already said I represent (god knows who) and we would like to offer you a (blah blah) for your college improvement."

(me)
"Uh look I don't give out my SSN because I don't think you really need it."

(her)
"Fine we'll get back to that later (persistant isn't she?) what college are you in?"

(Me)
"Westwood online."

(her)
"(no clue what she just said here)

(Me)
"Can you say that again please?"

(her)
"I said would you like us to meil (spelt as pronounced) you a (still no idea WTF she said)."

Okay here I was pissed off and irritated because WTF is she saying? so I decided screw it I'm hanging up.

(me)
"Look I told you fifteen minutes ago I was busy now I have to go back to my tests."

(her)
"This won't take much longer (yeah assuming I can understand you) can you please wait?"

(me)
No look you obviously have my number go ahead and call me back some other...(this is what pissed me off she cut me off here)

(her)
(mumble blather blather) no clue what she even said AFTER she cut me off.

(me)
*click*


She called AGAIN a day later (bugged the holy hell out of me because I still had NO IDEA what she was saying this time around so I hung up even faster).

THE THIRD FREAKING TIME I just said screw it and had my dad pick up the damn phone.

After twenty minutes he realized she was calling me about a College Credit card and that she was outsourced somewhere in India (I'm guessing my dad subtly asked her WTF her accent was)

So yeah I understand how irritating it is to deal with someone who can barely speak English with any comprehensible ability.

I don't want to sound like an "ugly american" but I understand WHY English is the primary trade language of the world (It's relatively easy to learn and you can skid by with knowing less of our language then you can with most).

I mean for instance you can't "skid by" with Spanish because it's got like a hundred and one ways to refer to everything from a spoon to a table and let's not even get into the fact that EVERYTHING has a Gender and if you accidentally use a male instead of female or vice versa what you say will have no meaning whatever.

Indians should be forced to learn english just like any other trade partner if they want to do business with everyday joe American (I don't mean all of India just those directly interacting with me since God knows I don't know Indian).

[Captain Kwok]

*sigh*

You know most Indians can speak and understand English very well (considering most of the education system their is still English-based). Like Geo alluded to earlier, this is mostly an accent issue. The same sort of reason why I have trouble understanding some of my UK work colleagues over the phone.

Sometimes the ignorant comments I see here (and other threads) makes me sad. /threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif

[Fyron]

Geo:

This about sums up what I was meaning to get at:

rdouglass said:
It doesn't matter where you live or what you do for work. If your job is to support / help people using verbal communication, you better be able to understand and be understood by the people you support.

=0=

rdouglass said:
EDIT: Hey, I actually agree with Fyron. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

*checks the universe for signs of impending collapse/implosion*

=0=

Captain Kwok said:
You know most Indians can speak and understand English very well (considering most of the education system their is still English-based). Like Geo alluded to earlier, this is mostly an accent issue.

Effective communication ("Speaking well") involves both your ability to formulate coherent sentences and the ability of your audience to understand you. You might be very fluent in a language, but if your accent makes your speech incomprehensible to those you are trying to communicate with, you are not really "speaking well" in that context. Very thick accents are a detriment to effective communication, and are definitely a problem for support staff supporting users that have no experience with your language.

EDIT:
Of course... I probably should have read Starhawk's post before posting this... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif Geeze man, learn a little tolerance.

[Captain Kwok]

It's not that I disagree with your reasoning Fyron, it's legimate, but your target should really be towards the people responsible for making these decisions (to locate call centres etc) and not directed at people just wanting decent jobs with relatively good wages.

I wonder if we'd be willing to pay the extra X$ for the alternative to have "native" tech support? If your answer is no, then I don't think you have much right to complain.

[Fyron]

My answer would be yes. Unfortunately, I do not like Macs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Starhawk]

Of course... I probably should have read Starhawk's post before posting this... Geeze man, learn a little tolerance.



I am very tolerant of other cultures and my statement has nothing to do with tolerance of "culture" it has to do with tolerance of people who can't speak worth a damn trying to take my money away from me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

And it also has nothing to do with tolerance of a culture when someone calls me THREE TIMES with an accent so thick I can't understand half the stuff she's spouting.

That would be like ME speaking to a Spanish person in Spanish....I may get the occasional word right but most of them will sound like blather to a Spanish person.

And I was also not criticizing other languages Per Se I can just understand why English is a trade language was apposed to say....uh Spanish French/Any other language with gender based designations of every object and item in their language.


And like I said clearly it pisses me off that in America there are an assload of jobs that would require that I learn to Speak Spanish fluently and with little accent in order to simply be hired. And yet an Indian woman who though probobly very good with Indian can hardly manipulate English is what I'm stuck talking to in order to find out what she wants?

And don't talk to me about tolerance when you don't know how diverse a group I have as friends mmmmmkay?

And I never said I blamed her or had anything against her in particular I just think whoever hired her is an idiot

[Renegade 13]

Heh you think having to learn Spanish to get a job is bad? Try having to learn (or at least take as a course) French in order to get into a Canadian university! It's quite similar to Spanish in some respects, such as the masculin/feminin designations attached to most words...really is frustrating to learn! Never have been good with languages...

What we really need is a worldwide language, something that everyone speaks. Unfortunately, everyone would want that to be their language...

[Spoo]

Starhawk said:I don't want to sound like an "ugly american" but I understand WHY English is the primary trade language of the world (It's relatively easy to learn and you can skid by with knowing less of our language then you can with most).

I mean for instance you can't "skid by" with Spanish because it's got like a hundred and one ways to refer to everything from a spoon to a table and let's not even get into the fact that EVERYTHING has a Gender and if you accidentally use a male instead of female or vice versa what you say will have no meaning whatever.



English is the primary trade language of the world because that's what's used in the USA. English is not at all easy to learn. Many of our words are not pronounced the way that they're spelled, i.e. "though", "of", "neighbor", etc.

There are also myriad exceptions in our grammar. Just try listing the rules of grammar. Examples: How do you express a verb in the past tense? Usually you add an -ed: Climb->climbed, but what about run->ran is->was sleep->slept read->read (not the pronounciation changes)? When do you use "too" and when do you use "to"? Also, consider how changing the accent on a word can change it's meaning. "CONtent" vs. "conTENT"

It's funny that you compare English to Spanish. Spanish is a relatively easy language (at least for English speakers) to learn. Consider that the words are almost always spelled exactly like they sound. Accents are always on the second-to-last syllable unless an accent mark is present. Of course, there are irregular verbs etc., but I believe there are significantly less of them than in English. Messing up the gender of nouns/adjectives may cause confusion, but it won't cause complete loss of meaning. Finally, as far as I know, "spoon" is "cuchara" and "table" is "mesa" or "tabla", depending on which definition of "table" you mean. What are the 100 other translations?

[douglas]

English is the primary trade language of the world because Great Britain went on a gigantic colonization spree for a century or two and managed to outdo everyone else at it, and everywhere they went they took their language with them. At its height, the British Empire included the American colonies (which became the USA), India, Australia, huge swaths of Africa, and part of Canada. France got a share of Canada, and Spain took Mexico and maybe some parts of South America, but they never even came close to matching Great Britain.

I think I've seen some statistics that Spanish is actually spoken by more people than English, but English speakers are spread out more, so it's easier for non-speakers to find a translator in more places for English than for anything else.

[Slick]

If you believe in exponential economic growth, everyone better be looking for a good crash course in one of the Chinese dialects.

[Suicide Junkie]

What we really need is an artificial language for maximum ease of learning and use.

Don't use anyone's native language, but make a list of the best features and make one.

- Certainly no gender for asexual or non-living things.
- Pronounced the way it is spelled.
- Avoid sounds that major groups of people find hard to distingush.
- Avoid words that sound the same but mean different things.
- Unambiguous grammar.
- Consistent tenses.
- etc...

Perhaps add some single-word paradoxes to cut short the inevitable AI uprisings http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

If you make your tenses very structured, you should even be able to handle time travel tenses without any problems:
"I'm glad that I will have thought of this idea!"

[Starhawk]

Well Spoo I suppose in a sense your right however most people do tend to agree that gender designation for myriad objects that are not even alive is a frustrating and difficult aspect to learn.

I agree with that part entirely because I tried to learn Spanish and the gender designation PLUS the different words to represent the SAME object were frustrating as hell.


But I do agree that we should probobly eventually come up with a universal language that is used for trade and international relations because it would seriously simplify things.

Problem is that whole ONE LANGUAGE thing scares the hell out of most people and rightfully so, because a universal language can lead to a universal government and unfortunately you can't be at all sure that would be a good thing.

[Jack Simth]

Suicide Junkie said:
What we really need is an artificial language for maximum ease of learning and use.

Don't use anyone's native language, but make a list of the best features and make one.

- Certainly no gender for asexual or non-living things.
- Pronounced the way it is spelled.
- Avoid sounds that major groups of people find hard to distingush.
- Avoid words that sound the same but mean different things.
- Unambiguous grammar.
- Consistent tenses.
- etc...

Perhaps add some single-word paradoxes to cut short the inevitable AI uprisings http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

If you make your tenses very structured, you should even be able to handle time travel tenses without any problems:
"I'm glad that I will have thought of this idea!"


There sort of is: Esperanto (http://www.esperanto-usa.org/)... but the catch is getting enough people to want to learn such a thing that everyone does, and then keeping it "pure" and avoiding the language drift that leads to such things as the word "special" becoming an insult, without getting the chains on advancement that France deals with....

[Thermodyne]

I think someone took the time to write down Klingon.


We can all switch to that for this board http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Or for the klingons out there:

joH'a' 'oH wIj DevwI' jIH DIchDaq Hutlh pagh http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Jack Simth]

Scouting has badges for people who pass a translator test; no specific language list is on the requirements, just that the translator be able to do the test in the appropriet language and have a scorer that is considered fluet (basically, amounts to translating a particular length of text or carrying on a meaningful conversation for a particular length of time).

I've met somone who prominently displayed a "Klingon" translator badge on his shirt.

Kinda scary, really....

[Suicide Junkie]

A nice universal language would help as an intermediary for translations too.

How would it lead to one government anyways? That's silly. Better let the Americans, British and Canadians know.

[Jack Simth]

Would it directly lead to a world-government? Not really. It would, however, eliminate one of the major roadblocks to a world-government.

[EaX]

"Well considering in this country I can't apply for a lot of jobs unless I speak frickin Spanish (in my own damn country mind you) then if those Indians can't be bothered learning enough English to speak to me they can get a job where they don't have to talk to me."

I'm surprised about that, why do you need to know spanish?

[Randallw]

I occasionally have to deal with Indian call centre staff. Occasionally my Internet is unavailable. Now I'm not one to complain and it usually only lasts a few hours every month or two so I don't worry about it, but I can't see why when I do call them about it I have to call all the way to India. Usually however they call us for some obscure reason or another and I havn't got a clue what they're on about. Last time one of them called up and asked for Mr <my surname>, now that could be me or my father, so I said yes Randall W, and if she wanted my father she didn't even bother to clarify she just hung up.

[Kamog]

Well, I did technical support for a couple of years several years ago and I didn't like it very much. Some of the problems that people reported were strange and I had no idea how to fix them. So I would tell them that I would find out and call them back. The trouble was that there were so many different models and types of products, many of them discontinued, and for some of them, the guys who designed and worked with the product have long since left the company and the documentation they left was very poor, and now there's nobody around who knows much about it. So I have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what's going on. Some of the products were not very reliable to begin with because they were rushed out to the market without sufficient testing and development. Then the technical support people get the angry phone calls!

[Will]

Well, sort of getting back to the original topic of the post... Those Indians need to just get over themselves. As far as I -- and much of the rest of the population of the world -- am concerned, call center tech support on the scale of "professional prestige" is somewhere between a fast-food restaurant employee and a retail cashier. It's a job mainly for people of the educational advancement around the level of the average American high school student. Which, unfortunately, isn't really that advanced. If they want professional respect, start studying, take entrance exams, and go to school to study in a professional field. Don't try to pass off your work as professional just because you get to sit in an office all day. (As a disclaimer, I have worked the help desk for a company before, and I have done retail cashier briefly. I have thus far been spared from burger flipping.)

Oh, and Spanish is definitely easier than English to learn. Because when you come down to it, English is such a mish-mash of languages from all over the place, and while it is Latin-based, it also has elements of Greek, Germanic/Nordic, Cyrillic, Arabic, and naitive American speech in a lot of the vocabulary. Spanish, you only need to learn a thousand or so verbs with the three main conjugation rules, a few hundred irregular verbs, and a few thousand vocabulary words, and you're set. There's no need for a Spanish-language Thesaurus, but with English it's almost essential. And I remember reading an article on language somewhere before, I believe about Esperanto, that mentioned the size of various languages. It went something like 100,000 total words for a lot of European languages, I think something like 150,000 for Hindi (that's 'Indian' for some of the folks here) or German, and then English... depending on which estimates you take, between 600,000 and over a million. Of course most people only use around 50,000 of those words, and many of them are extremely technical in nature, but there are many words that are mainly regional; probably the easiest to illustrate that with Americans is: 'soda', 'pop', or 'Coke'. Depending on where you are, you use one of those words to mean exactly the same thing.

By the way, thesaurus.reference.com has four noun entries for 'table', and one verb entry.

[Alneyan]

I guess Spanish is needed because of the high number of Spanish people in the US right now, and some of these aren't quite exactly fond of English. You know, cater to your customers, and all that. Fluency in English is the norm here, and a third language is *recommended*.

Most foreigners that learn English in a formal setting have no trouble with "too/to", "their/there", "it's/its", and so on, because our learning is based on writing, and not speaking. I wouldn't say gender-based nouns or tenses are the main problems of French or Spanish: many learners get the articles wrong, but it will not affect comprehension (at least French doesn't have more than a few words with a gender-dependent meaning).

Pronunciation... now that's a funny thing, and possibly the hardest thing to learn. I have a few foreign-born teachers, and though their sentences are perfectly correct, and they have lived in France for a *long* while, some mistakes still sneak by. Comprehension is still perfectly possible, of course. French is a pretty odd language with regards to pronunciation: we have nearly random unvoiced letters that may or may not affect pronunciation, a perfectly regular stress on all our words (word stress is always on the last voiced vowel of the word), all words are stressed in a sentence, but there is a "rhythm", *some* words are linked in speech (the infamous liaison), and we have little love for diphtongs. Of course, other languages have their own pecularities.

[Thermodyne]

Will said:
and then English... depending on which estimates you take, between 600,000 and over a million. {words}





That’s because we have so many lawyers and politicians. I’m sure ole Billy Bob had the non-English speaking world confused with his explanation about the meaning of “I did not have sex with that woman.”

[dogscoff]

Will said:
Well, sort of getting back to the original topic of the post... Those Indians need to just get over themselves. As far as I -- and much of the rest of the population of the world -- am concerned, call center tech support on the scale of "professional prestige" is somewhere between a fast-food restaurant employee and a retail cashier.




You're wrong there. It's not a great job in the Western world, but in India, where the average wage is well under a dollar a day, a call centre job is very well paid and highly covetted.



It's a job mainly for people of the educational advancement around the level of the average American high school student. Which, unfortunately, isn't really that advanced.




Most Indian call centres only employ university graduates. I'll say that again. They only employ university graduates. Sounds crazy I know, but for the wage of one spotty amerian burger-flipper, you can probabaly get two highly qualified and intelligent Indian call centre operatives, and put them in extremely desirable working conditions to boot, so why not? That's why these jobs are going out to those places. And if you want to compare the American education system to the Indian one, I don't think you'll find the Indians coming out too badly.

What's more, call centre operatives almost always speak fluent english already, they've got Britain's shameful colonial history to thank for that, but they often go on accent and culture training courses before starting work in order to iron out the last few barriers to communication. They'll study western TV and culture, and even take on western names. Would you take on an Indian name to get a job?

Now I deal with call centres as much as anyone, and for the most part I have no trouble. I'm not saying there's not a problem with some people that can't be easily understood, but getting pissy with ppl on the other side of the world who are just trying to make a living isn't helping anyone.

As for telesales and so on: Whenever I get one, the second I realise it's a telesales call I calmly but firmly explain that it is my personal policy not to buy anything from any cold call, then politely end the call. They soon stop calling.

The ones that really get on my tits are the ones where you get called up by a [censored] robot that spouts some recorded message into my ear. In these cases I leave the phone off the hook then go do something else, in order to waste as much of the sponging SOB's phone bill as possible.

And yes, English is a ***** to learn as a foreign language. The only reason we native English speakers have so much trouble with foreign languages is that (a) on the whole we are too arrogant to see the point in learning foreign languages (b) we are barely taught English grammar at school which really inhibits foreign language learning, and (c) foreign language teaching is started too late. I was about 9 or ten before I started French lessons at school. However I visited a school in France once where they had 4 year olds learning English. Those kids will be bilingual by the time they are eight, and will have no problems whatsoever moving on to third, fourth, fifth languages.

Finally, although an artificial language like esperanto would save everyone (particularly the Europeans- you don't want to know how much is spent on translation by the EU) a lot of money, they don't work. Mainly because the only reason to learn one is to talk to boring business people about boring business matters. You're never going to read a great book or see a great film or seduce a beautiful woman in an artificial language. Doesn't matter anyway, realtime universal machine voice translation is probably not much more than a decade away. I assure you the Babelfish site is NOT the state if the art.

[Suicide Junkie]

You're never going to read a great book or see a great film or seduce a beautiful woman in an artificial language.

What about Shakespeare in the original Klingon?

[AgentZero]

As someone who recently lost their job to outsourcing (to India, no less), this might sound a bit odd, but I actually have quite a lot of sympathy for the Indians. When I was dealing with the general public, which wasn't long, coz I got my self promoted right quick after a few months of THAT, I can't tell you how many times I answered the phone and had the person on the other line sigh with relief and say 'I can't tell you how good it is to hear someone who speaks English!' Now, I was one of only about 3 native English speakers in an office of about 200, but all the other ESLers had perfect English, it was just accented. But I'd still talk to lots of people on the phone who'd say 'I was just talking to so-and-so and I couldn't understand a word she was saying' and I'd be sitting there thinking, 'Funny, I can understand her perfectly.' But it's a lot trickier to understand someone when it's just a voice in your ear. So if it was that bad when our customers had to deal with European accents, I hate to think of what it's like for the Indians. Hence, my sympathy.

The people who don't get my sympathy are the CEOs and accountants who decided to outsource in the first place. Gob****es. And I'm not just saying that because I lost my job (really!), but because they had an extremely well trained office full of people who were very good at their job (we'd actually have people call us long-distance from the States for help, because, well, we were just that damn good) and they decided to replace us with a group of people who were trained by other people who'd only been trained as teachers two weeks earlier (in contrast, my initial trainer had been with the company 5 years & the guy who trained me after my promotion had been there 25 years), and all this because it'll save a couple million a year. Now, that might sound like quite a bit, but the company in question is a major airline which deals with annual budgets in the billions so a couple million ain't really that much.

As for English being easy to learn, all I can say to that is PFFFFFT! It's an atrociously difficult language to learn. We had a lot of Spanish & South Americans in our office (South Americans came here to stay with the company after their local offices were closed, 2 years later they lose their jobs completely. So much for rewarding employee loyalty), and they were always asking me for help with their English, despite the fact that it was quite good, there were still endless lists of things about the language that confused them. On the other hand, my spoken Spanish actually got pretty good. Just don't ask me to spell any of that crazy stuff. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Grandpa Kim]

From AgentZero
'I was just talking to so-and-so and I couldn't understand a word she was saying' and I'd be sitting there thinking, 'Funny, I can understand her perfectly.'



Another factor is familiarity and consistency. When I was in high school I worked summers painting houses. Most of the crew were Italian immigrants. It took me about two days to get with the program, after that I could understand them perfectly. One summer we had a Scot from deep in the highlands. I could understand the Italians perfectly, but when he spoke it might as well have been Swahili for all the sense I could make of it. I just couldn't shift gears fast enough. If we spoke for a short time one on one I would quickly "learn" his language, but in a group he was
incomprehensible.

Keep in mind this was all face to face; over the phone is at least three times harder.

[General Woundwort]

I often wonder how people who aren't born and raised in English ever come to understand and write it. Most of my bad memories of elementary and middle school are of English classes - as in learning the rule, and then the 10,000 exceptions to that rule...

[luke_slovakian]

Well i speak a couple langauges fleuntly myself. English being my third. And i have to agree they can not speak proper English, it gets sooo annoying. And I liked the guys story from page one, where the Euro chick helped him out in like 10 minutes.(Aren't we Euros smart http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif).

[Atrocities]

This just proves my point from an earlier post that stated that companies SHOULD NOT export tech support calls to other countries....

We Americans have a higher standard of stupidity and require knowledgeable high school drop outs to provide out tech support.

[AgentZero]

Atrocities said:
This just proves my point from an earlier post that stated that companies SHOULD NOT export tech support calls to other countries....

We Americans have a higher standard of stupidity and require knowledgeable high school drop outs to provide out tech support.



Dammit man, I don't care if the tech support people are idiots, as long as they're knowledgable idiots! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif And I don't mind if the guy making my flight reservation doesn't speak English, as long as he didn't have to steal my job to do it.


Oh.... Wait....

[El_Phil]

I've been told by a variety of people that Dutch is fairly easy to learn.
I also happen to know that no South Africa dares speak Africans to a Dutchmen, as Afrikans is dismissed as 'Baby Dutch' or 'If your 10 year old kid spoke that bad you'd be seriously worried.'

Combining these two facts I would say that Afrikans is very easy to learn. Of course I have no evidence for this bar my own stab at learning Afrikans, which was conducted entirely in pubs and so isn't perhaps very representative. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Evil_Duckie]

Phil,

I'm Dutch (cheers) and last year I had the chance of speaking to a South African. We found out that if I spoke Dutch and he spoke Afrikaans, we could have a perfectly good conversation. Some words are different, spelling is different, grammar is sometimes different, but we could get the meaning across.

I've got the same thing with Belgian clients who speak Flemish. No major problems at all, apart from the occasional odd word that we can then laugh about.

Speaking Afrikaans, but Flemish more so, is still somewhat considered to be a sign of having lower intelligence (but then again, some of the rural Dutch accents have the same stigma)

As for learning languages, I had no trouble learning English and almost consider it my 2nd language but I found German and French much more difficult. I really suck at those two, because they're so hard on grammar. I can speak/read/listen to German okay though.

Finally, when it comes to accents, don't forget that there's plenty of people with horrible accents in English-speaking countries too. I have a friend from Yorkshire that I simply cannot understand...

[Sivran]

I have no sympathy at all for the call-center workers in India complaining about Americans venting their frustrations at them. I've worked in a call center.

That is part of their job. It's called "defusing the situation" -- ie, letting the customer vent. Tech support agents--especially agents in India--should expect people to be pissed off, complaining, and generally nasty. They should let the customer get it out of their system, and then help them as best they can.

Now, if the customer doesn't calm down, or continues to swear and be generally nasty and shows no sign of wanting to cooperate, call centers have policies to deal with customers like that. Generally, they get warned at least three times, and then disconnected.

[TurinTurambar]

That's the most "on-topic" comment I've read since the first post. By the time we call for tech-support... we're already angry! Then add a thick accent and the obvious reading of a script.... pissed off. Major.

[AMF]

In all of this, might I respectfully submit that we take a second and remember Kant 101: people are ends in themselves, not means to ends. That person on the other end of the line is a person, with hopes, dreams, fears, etc…not a emotionless machine. Being nice is sometimes hard, but it’s the right thing to do. Especially when one considers how extremely fortunate almost everyone here is likely to be in relation to the average Indian, or whoever. A little perspective can go a long way.

Thanks,

Alarik

Ps: Having said that, I am the first to admit that I get extremely annoyed at people, especially when driving or faced with willful ignorance, but that doesn’t make it right to yell at them. At the end of the day, when all is said and done and I am worm food in the ground, I would hope that I have left the world a better place…and maybe being nice to others is one very minor way to get there.

[Karibu]

I think everybody should learn Finnish instead of English, Spanish or Esperanto. We have no genders on our language. We just have 14 ways to bend every word (vs. German 4). Also we don't have those confusing prepositions or words like (in, out, at, etc.) but we just attach a nice postposition after the word (those 14 I meantioned). You only have to remember that those 14 ways to bend the words are not always same with every word, but they differ somewhat unpredictably.

And best part is, that we are a nation of 5 million people with no enemies (well, Swedish but who cares about them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) or geopolitical agenda.

Now, go and write to your Senator, hush! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Iron Giant]

I've had my share of India calls, mostly to Veritas. I've mostly had good experiences with them, though I love to use vernacular (sp?) expressions with them.

After being on the phone with one guy for an hour fixing a huge issue, I told him I had to "go see a man about a horse". LOL. "you have to go and see a horse?" hehehe.

There was this one Indian woman with a beautiful speaking voice and a very sweet Indian name too and I showed her my website while she had taken remote control of the Server I was on and we were waiting for some download to complete.

I actually feel really bad when I hear that someone has changed their name so its more "american". Does everyone need to be named Bob to do business? Sheesh, some chinese friends of ours introduce themselves as Peggy or Betty. I think Pai'yan (sp) sounds so nice and can't hold a candle to Peggy. Makes me ashamed to be an American to think some people would change their very name to be more "like us".

otoh, if you move from country A to country B, its pretty arrogant to refuse to learn country B's language. That applies to Americans moving abroad and anyone moving to the USA too, jm .02

[Suicide Junkie]

When I worked with a call center I noted a few things:
- Many people start out upset.
- When you speak good english, and spend the first 30 seconds calming them down with simple things, it helps a lot.
- When they realize you're NOT reading a script like a computer, and are actual nerds with a clue, it also helps a lot.
Note: Asking them to describe the symptoms in detail, and then just listening is a great way to let them vent AND refine your questions later.
- Explaining what you are doing while you do it also helps. *Light* technobabble, which you tweak on the fly to their level. You don't want it to feel like they are being put on hold again.

[TurinTurambar]

Suicide Junkie said:
- Many people start out upset.
- When you speak good english, and spend the first 30 seconds calming them down with simple things, it helps a lot.
- When they realize you're NOT reading a script like a computer, and are actual nerds with a clue, it also helps a lot.




's what I'm sayin' man.

T/threads/images/Graemlins/Dagger.gif

[dmm]

Regarding a logical universal language:
It won't work. People are too insular, inventive, xenophobic, and obstreperous.
English is a good case in point. Some claim that it has become a lingua franca, but it is not quite correct to say that people in Nigeria or India or China can speak English. What they speak is Nigerian-English or Indian-English or Chinese-English. They can speak it very effectively with one another, which is very helpful in uniting their large countries with many minorities and dialects. But they need extra training to converse readily in English with outsiders. This should not surprise us. Ever try to speak (in English) with someone with a thick Cockney accent, or Southern Appalachian (U.S.) accent? Especially over the phone?
My point is that a lingua franca quickly mutates (degenerates?) into dialects and from there into separate languages. It is almost impossible to stop this process. It can be slowed by imposing a standard on everyone through the educational system, but eventually the standard becomes so far removed from daily life that only the elite use it. Latin and written Chinese are the most obvious examples from history. But even the elite can't stop the morphing, so that eventually the standard becomes rather arbitrary. A good example is English spelling, which used to be quite logical back when it was standardized, but since then the pronunciations have changed (mostly simplified). The standardization allows us to read the Declaration of Independence and Shakespeare and even older stuff, but makes good spelling into a feat worthy of contests.
Some questions to ponder: How would one re-standardize English spelling? Whose pronunciation should be used? Who would enforce it? Who would translate all of the old writing into the new spelling? Would this cause English dialects to diverge even faster?
One last point about English: It has been criticized for having so many ways to say almost the same thing (i.e., loose grammar and huge vocabulary). That is not needless complexity; it is richness. Don't fret. The richness would disappear from "lingua franca English" just as it did with Classical Greek (compared to koine Greek, the "lingua franca Greek"). If English actually does triumph and become the lingua franca of the 21st century, ironically most of our 22nd century descendants won't be able to understand most of 20th century English. Of course embedded computers will automatically translate for them, but the nuances will be lost except to scholars.