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Call Centers In A Faraway Land


Ted Murphy

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I hate the fact that companies choose to outsource their call centers to another country then staff it with people who cannot speak english.

I was trying to help a friend call up to get her interest on her mortgage and it took a looooooong while to understand the figures this fellow was trying to say.

Ted

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Better yet, phone companies that use sales people in India. Besides the fact you can't understand what they are saying, usually the line is not crystal clear so you can't hear all the stuff they are mumbling. You think if they are trying to sell phone service, they would get a better connection.

Dell's pretty bad now. Next to impossible to understand what they are telling you to do.

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I always feel that way when I get someone from the south on tech support. I wish they could speak english also ;)

As a guy from the South who works tech support I always love the comment "you don't "sound" like you're from the South." Unfortunately all of my favorite replies to this response are inappropriate for both this forum and the company for which I work.

-ld

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Personally, I like call centers located in the Southern US. It's about the last part of the US that is still polite to people.

The call center guy I was talking about was from India and the connection was terrible and his english nonexistant. It was much better than it used to be; my college roomate was from India and the connection was so bad his mom often thought I was her son.

Ted

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Last week, my gf called the Microsoft tech support # b/c she was having problems installing the newest patch for XP. Call center was in India. Person stayed on the phone with her for about an hour while the patches downloaded (she was using a dial-up) and he gave her his email address. She says he started hitting on her, and was getting chatty, asking her what she did. When she told him she worked for the feds, he got real quite.

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The Dell call center in India is a particular passion of mine.

I was late on a single payment last year and got the dreaded phone call from India. I listened politely and told the caller that I would make the payment that day. He told me that I needed to make the payment NOW and that he would be glad to take my credit card info. I declined to do that with the thought in mind that was no way in h*ll I was giving CC info to someone over the phone and off-shore. He then asked for my checking account number and, with the same thought in mind, I again refused. He got pretty agitated and started running off at the mouth unintelligibly. All I could understand was that he wanted me to make a payment right then and why wouldn't I cooperate with him. I finally asked him where he was physically located and he replied New Delhi. I told there was his answer as to why I wouldn't be making a payment through him and hung up. Payment is on auto draft through my bank now so I don't have to go through all that again. ;)

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2 of my last 3 jobs have been outsourced. It really sucks, what I would suggest, is to get on the company's website, and find a feeback link, and complain about out-sourced service. You would probably be surprised by the number of call centers located in Canada, since it is about 25% cheaper to put desks up there, too.

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Over the last couple of months I've had the need to call Citibank and have found that about half the time I get India, the other I get a US CSR. The India CSR's that I have talked with all have a British accent.

I can say the services has been no better nor worse fom one to the other.

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The India CSR's that I have talked with all have a British accent.

Oh my, when I write this, it's cristal clear that I'm Dutch. :P Hey you cosmopolitans, in this country it's considered normal that one is able to understand and write English, German and at least a little bit of the French language in case of meeting Eric G.

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The start up company my husband works for has opened an office in China. All the entry level engineers will be chinese. The starting pay per engineer is 1/4 that of the american counterpart. All the managers now have to learn chinese and travel to china on rotation every three weeks. This was sitting so badly with the american engineers that a few actually left the company. Management was worried so they appeased the remaining american engineers (including my hubby) by giving back the 10% pay cut that was made two years ago. I think the whole thing stinks...Particularly because the products they develop are high speed telephony/network systems. We don't need to be handing over superior technology to communists!

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We don't need to be handing over superior technology to communists!

Well, there have to be export licenses, etc - they can't send certain types of data to those engineers (as determined by the US government). Otherwise, they can easily buy those things and reverse engineer them, if they want, so.... They'll get the info, if they want it....

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Cisco did the India thing also. What I found out was that cultural differences make the communication diffcult. I was constantly asking do you understand, the answer was always yes. But i knew the answer was NO.

Well turns out they are worried about insulting us. Because to them if we ask do you understand and they say no, then they are telling us were idiots who can't explain our problem. So they are never going to tell you they don't understand. I still don't know how to get around this.

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We've moved some of our functions - including our internal Helpdesk - to India, and have run into this same problem. The solution - cultural sensitivity training - FOR THOSE OF US IN THE US!!! I have to accept that the person on the other end of the phone is lying to me.... ;) *That* gets to me. I'm open to tolerating communcations differences, but, sheesh....

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We don't need to be handing over superior technology to communists!

Well, there have to be export licenses, etc - they can't send certain types of data to those engineers (as determined by the US government). Otherwise, they can easily buy those things and reverse engineer them, if they want, so.... They'll get the info, if they want it....

Yup, I know about those NSA visits - had a team visit a software company I used to work for over an educational license to some chinese university. I don't know how the heck this start up is getting around it. The chinese engineers will be working on pin outs on fpga chips as well as coding for some of the fpga chips. If I'm not mistaken, they've been tasked with redesigning a gigabit ethernet board my hubby designed last year. Maybe they only get one board layer that requires the work instead of the whole board....I still think it's stupidity materialized.

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Call Botach and you think they have a call center.

sploorf!! You really need to provide somesort of warning before doing that! You owe me a new keyboard. The proper way is to put "C&C" (cats and coffee) warning in the subject line - that way one doesn't spill the hot coffee on the aforementioned cat, causing untold injuries to reader.

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Call Botach and you think they have a call center.

sploorf!! You really need to provide somesort of warning before doing that! You owe me a new keyboard. The proper way is to put "C&C" (cats and coffee) warning in the subject line - that way one doesn't spill the hot coffee on the aforementioned cat, causing untold injuries to reader.

Sorry!!!! OUCH!!!

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A friend of mine told me to say this to an Indian call center worker that was rude.

So in my best squishy mart voice I said:

"Nonee chokree..mota decka"

Rough translation:

Little woman with big a**.

She screached something and hung up. I think it really means something a little more harsh. :D

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