OT: Off shore call center workers mad at American

[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.

[Thermodyne]

geoschmo said:
Hey, it sounds like you have dealt with my company.

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

[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)."

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

(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. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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?