OT: Off shore call center workers mad at American

[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 ).

[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! 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.

[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.