A few years ago I saw an amusing TV documentary about “schools” in India that teach prospective call centre staff how to be more western. It followed a group through their training as they adopted fake western names, attempted to alter their accents and use western slang. More subtle tricks involved checking the net for local weather and sports scores to pretend to be a local.
I imagine it was this program
It’s my understanding that call center workers even in the US are assigned fake first names. And my point in any case was that a “Western” first name does not necessarily have to be a fake one.
I have worked with many Indians and have never met one with a traditional western sounding name. I doubt very much that many Indian Christians are working in call centres. Most of them live in rural communities and are Dalits (formerly “untouchables”). They suffer much persecution.
You are putting a lot of words into my mouth. The customers ask my friend where she comes from, not where the call centre is. My friend thinks that it is racist for someone to ask where she comes from if they just want an account balance. I can see what she is getting at. But I do not think it is racist per se.
I never said ‘call centers in India are generally giving bad service to customers like me’. I said nothing like that. Try actually reading my post. I said it does not matter to me where the call-centre is as long as you get good service.
She thinks it is racist to ask where someone is from, when the customer just wants an account balance. I can see what she means although I do not agree 100% with her. As far as I know she realises that it is a non sequitur. She says she is just making a statement about the bank’s policies so that she does shut up the customer.
Blinking’s point is a valid one IMO. The problem isn’t call centres in India, it is call centres with poorly trained staff who are only capable of working from a script. I’ve had two bad experiences, one with an Australian and the other with an Indian (or similar sounding accent.)
The Australian was part of Dodo’s support staff. Dodo are an ISP that I got a cheap backup dial-up connection with for occasions where I’m on the road and my own company’s dial-up provider is having problems.
I couldn’t connect to Dodo though, I kept getting a message saying their computer wasn’t responding. I tried deleting and resetting my dial-up connection but still no joy. So I called Dodo and got through to some fucker who just couldn’t get it through his head that I did have some computer skills.
I understand that they need to cater for the lowest common denominator but I’d expect they might be able to change their style a little depending on who they’re talking to.
So I get this guy and explain the problem and what I’ve done about it so far. The following conversation goes something like this:
Call centre guy: “Ok, I’ll get you to do something that should fix the problem”
Me: “Ok”
…pause…
CCG: “Click with the left mouse button on ‘start’”
Me: “yep”
…pause…
…pause…
CCG: “Have you done that?”
Me: “Yeees” (just before I said “yep”)
CCG: “Ok, click on ‘control panel’”
Me: “yep”
…pause…
Me: “I’ve done that”
CCG: “Ok, now click twice quickly on ‘network connections’”
Me: “Ok, I’ve done that”
…pause…
…pause…
Me: “I’ve done that, what next?”
CCG: “You’ve opened ‘network connections’?”
Me: “yes”
…pause…
CCG: “Ok, now left click on file”
Me: “Yep”
…pause…
…pause…
CCG: “Have you done that?”
Me: “Yes”
CCG: “Now click on ‘New Connection’”
Me: “I already have a connection for Dodo”
CCG: “This should fix your problem”
Me (thinking that just maybe this was going somewhere worthwhile): “Ok, I’ve click on ‘New Connection’”
CCG: “You’ve done it already?”
Me: “It wasn’t difficult”
CCG: “Ok, now click on ‘Next’”
Me: “Yep”
…pause…
…pause…
CCG: “Have you done that?”
And on it went. Needless to say, his big plan for fixing things was to set up a new dial-up connection, exactly the same as the one I’d set up. Needless to say, it did jack shit.
By the end of it I was about ready to explode.
When it didn’t work, he had no other suggestions. I later learned that there is a setting on my modem which will make it handle a poor quality connection better. I turned that on and the problem was fixed. So, it wasn’t Dodo’s problem and I don’t expect them to know everything about everyone’s modem setup. I do expect them to listen to my problem and acknowledge that I have already tried their wonderful solution. I also expect them to be trained well enough to be able to talk to me like a human being and to not have to refer to a script just to setup a dial-up connection.
The problem with the Indian girl was that my problem was something a little out of the ordinary (I had a wireless modem that had the wrong firmware loaded which didn’t include any options for setting up the wireless. In addition, the modem would not accept a firmware update.) Her English wasn’t good enough for me to be able to explain what was happening. And she seemed limited to a script, she was, at first, incapable of saying or doing anything outside of her script.
We eventually managed to communicate enough for her to realise that the menu items she was directing me too didn’t exist and that I had a problem with the modem. I did get a satisfactory result eventually. But it was painful and severely hampered by the limitations of the call centre staff.
When I call the support line. I have already scoured the Internet for solutions. I have found the manufacturer’s website and read through the support part of their forums. I have exhausted all avenues freely available to me and I’m expecting to get someone on the phone who knows more than I do. I’m expecting to get someone who, if not an expert themselves, has been trained by one or who has access to one. I want someone who has a more thorough repertoire of solutions than, “is it plugged in?” and “is it turned on?”.
It has nothing to do with where the centres are or what nationality is manning them. It has everything to with how well equipped they are to deal with problems.
Quite a lot of call centres are in Omaha, Nebraska, and Chatham, Ontario. Why those two places became call centre Meccas, I don’t know, but they did.
Companies don’t usually “put call centres in India” - they usually award contracts for phone support to companies already in India, like Wipro. Sometimes the Indian company wins the bid, sometimes the Canadian company wins the bid, sometimes the American company wins the bid.
I would just like to point out that if I have a complex problem I don’t want to talk to an Australian either, particularly.
I flash back to some years ago, when I worked in a newspaper office, and the Australian at the next desk asked me where the type was kept.
I’m sitting there wondering if he’s run out of commas or something–the composing room is downstairs–when he comes over to my desk, grabs my tape and says, “You know. Type.” Like I am an idiot for not having a clue.
Okay. Maybe I’m an idiot. (That is probably “eejit” in Australian.)
This was not the only misunderstanding. He referred to a former employee as “the cream.” I had no idea why for a long, long time. This former employee, who had a second job as an armed robber of pharmacies after hours, was incarcerated, and Australian slang for such a person is a “crim.”
I worked in a decent-sized call center for a pretty large company, and we all went by our real first names (except for a paranoid few who used aliases).
Don’t know about Chatham, but Omaha initially became a telemarketing/call center mecca because it was early and heavily wired for telecommunications when the Strategic Air Command was located here. We had the technology, the non-accented Midwestern accent, and the ability to call to the East Coast til 9:00 and the West Coast til 9:00 while keeping reasonable hours for the workforce.
Anyhoo, now back to your regularly scheduled rant. Which really has to do with companies deciding to 1) put their call centers in India, and 2) not train their employees well. So we really should be pitting the companies, and certainly NOT the Indian employees.
While I sympathize with you, you should look at it from the company’s point of view. To keep a crew of highly qualified people, who know the product well, troubleshooting problems, 24/7 is kind of expensive. To keep a crew of undertrained, lesser paid people who can read a script available 24/7 is quite a bit less expensive.
I’d bet that 80+% of the calls coming in are handled by that script. Most people don’t scour the internet, or read the manuals to find a solution. Most people are idiots who call up and want to be spoon fed the answer.
While it irks those who have a clue, and don’t have a cookie cutter problem, companies are going to invest their resources helping the 80+%. Especially since it cheaper.
Must be a version of the midwestern accent I’ve never heard before. 
I have read similar articles, though have not seen this program. I routinely ask their name. I also ask where they are. Fuck a duck, they know so much about me that it’s sick, the least I can do is have some parity. It is also helpful to know if I am talking to someone who is completely sleep-deprived because they are working on USA East Coast Time from half way around the fucking world and if that makes me a racist instead of a person who wouldn’t mind cogent technical support from someone who is awake, well then I’m a racist. :rolleyes:
I spent over 6 hours on the phone with Dell a few years ago. I logged all of the calls. Six HOURS. I talked to ( I remember the names, but not the order ), Christine, Kevin, Steven, Ellen and ( this took the prize ) David. David was the manager, who got on because my problem was taking soooooo long to resolve that it was screwing up the time limitations placed upon his subordinates. ( I kept saying, " Stop FOLLOWING THE SCRIPT AND START THINKING !! ". 
).
I lost it. I said, " David huh? That’s a beautiful name, David. Do you know that David was a King, a Jewish King? Lots of Jews in your home town, huh? "
Thundering silence. So I called him on his shit. I said look, you clearly know what you are doing and are resolving this, so why don’t you tell me your REAL name so I can address you with some shred of respect. I talked to a Kevin today and I promise you the fellow didn’t have a drop of Irish in him.
He told me his real name, which stunned me. I promise that it was not David.
I detest the calculating methods used to mollify ignorant Americans by overseas tech centers. Gateway finally called it what it is, and has stopped using all overseas tech support. About time, I say.
Cartooniverse
I work for a call center. We’re a company that’s part of a mega-huge corporation. In any case, we do tax and accounting software. In any case, when we were first hired, someone asked about outsourcing. They said that someone else in the industry (our software is professional stuff and isn’t stuff you can get off the shelves) tried to send their calls to India, but stopped it within a month or so. Apparently, because it’s professional accounting (and because it’s wildly profitable) the call center stays in the States. If it were tax software for the average Joe, it’d be in India.
Irony.
I work in a call center in L.A. We aslo have one in Florida. Some of our callers are Indian. Both caller and callee are frustrated. We speak the same language but…I swear Indians who learn english seem speak it at high speed. After I have spoken with someone several times it gets easier. Could be that they learn to slow it down a little, or that I become a little more familiar with the caller’s speech pattern. But it’s a struggle at first. I have to have them spell the words sometimes (which is also a struggle) and have to repeat things back to them often to make sure we’re on the same page.
Or it could just be I have trouble with thick accents. At another job, I had a caller from Ireland. I swear I couldn’t understand a word she was saying.
1920s Style “Death Ray”, you would be amazed at how many people say they have done things but, in fact, they have not. So, even if they say they have done it, we have them do it anyway.
Heh, kind of like an Aussie I worked with who almost misrouted our boss to Texas because he said he needed tickets to Dulles airport.
I didn’t mind setting up the connection again. But I would’ve appreciated it if he’d just talked to me like a normal person.
“Ok, I’ll get you to set up the connection again just in case. Go to start, settings, and control panel…”
Then if I say “What is ‘Start’”, he knows that he’s dealing with an imbecile and can slow everything down to a frustrating click by click plod.
I’ve had to deal with a lot of upset customers at our bank because of sales calls from India for additional credit card features. The customers, mostly elderly, were getting calls to add payment protection or some other bullshit. Apparently during the calls, the solicitor would tell the people their social and mother’s maiden name to prove they were legitimate. I’ve had many pissed off customers over the last year about this. Complaints range from a national bank sending their information overseas where anyone can get it to jobs being sent out of the US. Never did ask any customer why they thought the calls were from India, they just all started the pissed off rant with “This person in India called me…!”
If one of my former co-workers asked a young Indian woman where she was from, it would have been because he was flirting/hitting. Blond surfer looking kid from Alabama who just lurrrrved the eastern women.
One of the benefits to my college education is an ability to understand thick Indian accents. Also, because the two thickest accents were both professors who I learned a lot from, and who earned my deepest respect, I don’t start off thinking they can’t help me. It is not racism, nor xenophobia that causes me to hate, hate, hate foreign call centers, it is the fact that they waste my time and patience.
In general, however, a monkey with a script, regardless of nationality, is not going to be able to help me. In general, such scripts are in the manuals in the form of troubleshooting tables, or available on line. So I’ve been through all the “by the book” attempts to solve th problem before calling.
And, in general, outsourced support is only going to be monkeys reading scripts.
Well, for me (and for RTFirely, according to his OP), the problem is that it’s often difficult for me to understand the help staff—and for me to be sure that they’re understanding my (sometimes fairly complex and nuanced) problem—even if they’re doing a great job at providing service. It’s just a barrier that I’d rather not deal with when I’m stressed out enough to necessitate the call in the first place.