Not so much. The first quote is just explaining an annoying situation. The second one has the implication of, “Ugh, who can understand these people, when they speak it sounds like nonsense gibberish. Also, LOL Indian people like to eat couscous, amirite? Amirite?” Just, really gross.
It’s possible to complain about outsourced call centers and the practice of hiring non-native speakers to handle phone transactions, without referring to the Indian language as “bim bim sallah bim language” and throwing in a bunch of random references to stereotypically Indian stuff that you saw on a Simpsons cartoon or whatever.
Right, I’ve always had a tracking number provided via e-mail when the shipment is sent, most often by the merchant. And yes FedEx and UPS are a PITA when they cannot deliver directly, it usually means heading for a depot out in the sticks or somewhere in a recondite back end of an industrial park, with quite inconvenient hours.
This is why my valuable deliveries go to my private maildrop address, or if/when allowed, to the office.
Damn you now you have me stuck thinking of that phrase being spoken in a very thick Scots accent.
But really, who mocks accents that way any more? That sounds like it’s from some bad vaudeville.
As others pointed out, the OP is a racist asshole. He’s also stupid, in that he didn’t “order something by Fedex.” He ordered something from a company that chose to use Fedex for delivery. Most companies don’t give you a choice in which delivery service to use in sending your order. And I have no idea why the door tag didn’t translate to a tracking number. Normally that works fine, or as suggested, he should have received an email message with the tracking number. If he didn’t, he can contact the vendor and ask them for it.
Leaving aside the OP’s indelicate-ness, I think the incident described highlights a terrible business practice that is becoming more and more widespread. I call it “officious-ness”.
An employee is unable, or perhaps even prevented as in the current case, from helping a customer, yet then is required to offer a, “Have a nice day.” I find that sort of policy mindless and infuriating. Ditto for reading to me from a script during a customer service call. It’s false politeness intended to disguise the fact that the company refuses to empower an employee to take any action beyond what’s explicitly permitted and scripted. It does harm to me, and the employee.
Southwest Airlines is well known for allowing employees to do whatever is necessary (within regulatory and legal boundaries) to solve a problem for a customer. They can bend or break company policy under some circumstances. Similarly, if you call them you talk to a human who actually speaks to you like another human. No script, at least as far as I can tell.
I wish that would become more common. It’s easy to see why there is resistance to this sort of thing. But I have to believe it would help business to unchain employees from the nonsensical performance art they are required to recite, and that no one believes is for the customer’s benefit.
I agree. Zappos is another company like that. New Balance discontinued the shoe that I wanted to order so I called to see what would be the closest replacement. Before he would tell me, he got on-line to see if anyone else had some. When it turned out that there weren’t any, he called New Balance and asked to find out what they recommended and then ordered it for me.
I heard a story on the public radio program This American Life about a call center in Mexico staffed by people who had been deported from the US for illegal immigration. The guy who was interviewed came to the US as a young child from Mexico and was kicked out as a young adult (and I gathered that was the status of many of his co-workers). So these workers were native American English speakers but cheaper than people in a US-based call center would be. Clever idea.
I’ ve also heard that some call center work is moving to the Philipines, as the English fluency is better. (I suppose that means that the former Indian call center workers can move up to higher level work, including, one hopes, whatever it is that Knowed Out does for a living.)
Yeah, Zappos’ customer service is spectacular. I guess it would have to be, for a company that sells shoes over the Internet. But still. I had to return a pair of shoes that didn’t fit correctly, and it was easier/faster to process the return than I’ve experienced at many brick-and-mortar stores.
I can’t believe that the English fluency is better in the Philippines than in India. It’s probably just cheaper labor rates. In any event, I have had both good and bad experiences from tech support in both places.
Admittedly, I just went through a three day marathon of shitty tech support with a bunch of Indians working for a Verizon contractor but it seriously never crossed my mind that their nationality was to blame because that would be incredibly idiotic. One thing that I have noticed is that there is no pretense that the employees are in India anymore. It used to be that you would get someone with a thick Indian accent and they’d introduce themselves as Steven or Peter. Now it’s Vanesh or Sidhur.
Ah, but can you understand my thick north American accent?
not true. The guy who called me, unsolicited, from “Microsoft” to help me with my Windows computer had a very thick Indian accent, but said his name was Eric.
(My MIL accepted “help” from one of those crooks, but that’s another story.)
I’m not sure what that has to do with what I said because anyone should be able to see the distinction between a customer support center for a legitimate business and a group of con artists.
(I got one of those calls too but I didn’t catch guy’s name. I played alone for a bit by asking him increasingly ridiculous questions until he clued in and laughed out loud.)
Not always. Some employees have accents that are simply impenetrable. I’ve been in never-ending “What? Please say that again? What? Can you repeat that? More slowly, please?” loops. These are calls I want very much to succeed…and the guy on the other end really is trying his best. He just has too thick an accent.
