I dealt with an Indian call center recently regarding an airline scheduling problem, and they couldn’t have been nicer or spoken better English.
Of course they were completely clueless regarding my question, which got answered only after I requested (and got to speak to) a U.S. supervisor…
Una, that’s mind-boggling. :eek: Have you thought about taking it to the local press?
I would suspect since they’re not supposed to talk about it internally that talking about it in public to the press identifying the corp involved would be, um, not especially appreciated, either.
Especially since I bet that CIO got a real nice bonus.
Nah, I’m gonna give one. And right now, because ignorance must be fought.
When someone says A, and I mention that, given B and C, the implication is apparently X, I get a bit tired of hearing, “But I didn’t say X, I said A.” I know that already. That poster’s mission, should s/he choose to accept it, is show why A doesn’t imply X. And if they don’t choose to accept that mission, then I am left with little choice but to assume they have no counterargument, and that A does in fact imply X.
Your turn.
You’re lucky you were able to get to speak to an American. With United, I was told that that was not an option.
I don’t think anyone is advocating being cruel to the people on the end of the line because they’re going to change everything. But, the fact is, there are legitimate issues with Indian call centers (and other call centers employing non-native speakers) and frankly the decision makers haven’t made themselves available to call. Rest assured - as a former call center manager - the decision makers ARE listening to calls, and they ARE aware and concerned when lots of customers bitch at their agents. Longer calls and higher employee turnover due to angry customers has an actual business impact. Sitting quietly and putting up with bad treatment accomplishes nothing.
The biggest problem with these call centers is that they absolutely cannot handle many types of inquiries and problems. Wherever it’s set up, if I’m dealing with customer service that can’t handle my issue - and there are US centers that have this problem, too - I stop giving them my business and I tell them why.
Frankly, it’s bad customer response that is driving many call centers back into the US and other native English speaking markets. If people just put up with it and don’t mind, the company cheers because they were successful in cutting costs.
It’s like what wring said. If I did so, 1) it wouldn’t improve anything, and 2) it would have me singing the following song ala Jimmy Buffet:
*Wasted away again in Unemploymentville
Searching for my lost 401k
Some people claim “a man named Singh is to blame!”
But I know…it’s my own damn fault…*
There’s a woman of Indian descent that works here at the call center. She doesn’t have much of an accent at all, but it seems people pick up on it and ask where she is.
“We’re in Ann Arbor”
They reply with “No, I mean, are you in America?”
To which, she replies “Yes, I’m in America. I’m in Ann Arbor, Michigan.”
Then the call starts.
This is exactly why you need to take tutorials , not mistakenly think that you can give them. It is not up to me to show that A does not imply X. It is up to you to show that A implies X, and up to you to show that B and C are true, and up to you to show logical relationships between A, B, C, X. It is not up to me, as I did not mention B nor C nor X.
I said that I do not mind where a call-centre is as long as I get good service. You said that I seem to be saying that call-centres in India are generally giving bad service to customers like you.
Can you not see that I was not saying that?
Correct me if I am wrong here, but were not you the one who started this thread? You have a problem with Indian call centres. I do not.
Huh. That would come as a surprise to my friends Chris and John (their real names), who are both Indian Christians and do, in fact, both work in a call center in Bangalore. From what I can tell, Christians are actually overrepresented (relative to their percentage of the population) at this particular call center which supports a major US financial services company.
Gah! Eaten post! That’s what I get for not copying my response for the first time ever…
Anyhoo, I’ve managed in call centers, too, and I agree with everything you said. Except that if some of the posters above actually said what they said they said, then I stand by what I said. And certainly the enterprising ladies and gentlemen of the Dope can find out who the VP of Customer Service is and send them a letter.
Cruel/snarky remarks to someone who clearly hasn’t been set up for success does NOTHING, except take you down a peg in my opinion. Not, I’m sure, that that counts for anything.
See, the problem, from my POV, is that you said
And what RTFirefly said was
YMMV, but I see RTF’s quoted line as implying a circumstance of the call centre worker (workre?) being difficult to understand.
With that pointed out, do you prefer to concede that you did imply that RTF was receiving bad service (by your standards), or would you prefer to retract your original post and restate your point?
I know a quite famous Indian professor named Jacob, btw.
My daughter, who was studying Hindi for fun, discovered once that people in the Indian Call Centers are absolutely forbidden to speak Hindi on a call. I can imagine the amusement when a native Indian in the US speaks to a call center employee in India.
Tinkertoy, if the satellite TV company is DishNetwork, let me say that you have the best call center in the universe. All calls have been answered on the third ring, with perfect advice. My kids gave us a DVR for Christmas, and I think the call got answered on the third ring Dec. 27!
If you don’t, you should study them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blinkingblinking
I said that I do not mind where a call-centre is as long as I get good service. You said that I seem to be saying that call-centres in India are generally giving bad service to customers like you.
See, the problem, from my POV, is that you said
Quote:
Originally Posted by blinkingblinking
If you are talking to a call centre worker who does not know what they are doing or is rude or difficult to understand, then you are getting bad service.
And what RTFirefly said was
Quote:
Originally Posted by RTFirefly
Their English is generally impeccable, but my American accent, and their Indian/British accent, are just ‘off’ enough that it seems that I have to repeat every third thing I say to them, and vice versa.
YMMV, but I see RTF’s quoted line as implying a circumstance of the call centre worker (workre?) being difficult to understand.
With that pointed out, do you prefer to concede that you did imply that RTF was receiving bad service (by your standards), or would you prefer to retract your original post and restate your point?
I was just making a general point. I was not talking about what happened to RTFfly especially. It seems obvious that he was getting bad service. I do not have to imply that. I am happy with that post. No retraction here. My point was well made thanks anyway.
I plan to be dead by then.
But when he responded to you, he said he didn’t want to characterize it as bad service.
I guess this could be just another illustration of the hazards and pitfalls attendent upon using a generallized “you.”
That is what you were doing in post #10, is it not? Sorry if I got confused on that point, but I suspect I wasn’t the only one who did. I’ll butt out now.
Has it ever occured to people to ask ‘Why does this company have a call-centre in India?’
Why do British companies have call centres in Nigeria? Why?
Because geography does not matter for customer enquiries.
At my call centre there is about less than 1 % of calls where people ask ‘Where is this branch?’ I just have to look it up on the online map. Other than that why would it matter where the call-centre is?
Only when customers start complaining does it become an issue to them. I have heard other operators and I also have this problem. One does not reverse a bank fee and suddenly it is "Where are you?’ “What country do you come from?” Our reaction is what relevance does that have for your banking.
blinkingblinking, I’d like you to meet my friend Jen.
Jen works in New Jersey. She once opened a ticket with her company’s internal HelpDesk, way back before I’d gotten it through the HelpDesk’s manager’s head that “text-based is better than voice-based”.
Two days later, the ticket hadn’t been solved. She had called again and been told “we’re working on it.”
And then she got a phone call from some guy who wanted to close the 48-hr old ticket because “it looks bad”; unsolved, and at 3am her time. The guy hadn’t bothered to look up anywhere “where is factory 1031 located” and didn’t even seem to comprehend the concept of time zones.
Geography matters quite a lot at, quoting Jen, “three in the fucking morning”. Good training can solve this, of course, but it has to be provided.