Who in the hell thought up that great idea? Call centers in India, Pakistan and the Philippines with bad phone connections and people with a poor understanding of English.

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Originally posted by GWbiker:
Who in the hell thought up that great idea?

People who figured out that they could hire 50 Indian calltakers for the cost of 1 American.

They suck equally as bad as UPS surepost

It our governments fault. They allow them to spoof a local caller ID number. It'd be an easy change, just require any caller to put up their actual caller ID. Or maybe the company they are working for.

This whole thing is out of hand. They should be required to show us where or who they are, then let us decide if we want to answer an "indian" phone number. Of course you can just hang up if its a recording. If a female caller, just start by asking if she's married. The ones in Utah can honestly answer yes, just not that they're one of 20 wives of Seldom Seen Sam.

Gawd how I hate them. Might be better to demoralize them. Just pile on some abuse about their poor language skills.

Think he's talking about inbound call centers for customer service, and yep tons of companies have done it, in some cases they do a good job, I'm more concerned with the access to private information by some call center in India being hacked...

The "new" General Motors did that for awhile to us in dealerships after the dust settled post bankruptcy, to the Philippines. What a CF that was.

If we had anything more than a easy request it became a train wreck. There were still a limited amount of supervisors in the states but the overseas people were reluctant to transfer us even if we requested that.

I found out the "secret" code to get a stateside supervisor one day. Five times I requested to be transferred, three times that was politely ignored, fourth time I got a abrupt response "I can do this" (sorry bucky boy, my factory rep, his supervisor and I had been deep into the problem for a month and a half, now a shipping problem) to which in frustration I blew up with a slew of obscene words ending with "Let me talk to a ******* supervisor, do you ******* understand?"

Suddenly I hear "One moment", a transfer to a U.S. based person, the problem was fixed in about five minutes at that point.

About three months later, citing dealer concerns the call center was brought back to the U.S.

And the fact that "Customer Service Numbers" are located in a room with 300 other non english speakers so you are not only are trying to deal with the accents, but everyone elses accent in the background, too.
When one of these Asian folks answer the phone, my routine conversation is:
Me: Can you hear me and understand me?
Jugdish: Unintelligible response.
Me: OK. Put someone on the line who speaks non-accented plain English, who can speak loud enough to cut through your background noise, please.
At this point in the call, I am often put on hold until my carcass withers into dust or I get disconnected.
My favorite point in the conversation comes when they ask if I would like to take a survey after the call is over!
Then I tell them to hire Americans!

Yeah, and their name is always Susie or Tom or Patricia or Jennifer. Yeah right.
.

I hate off shore support. With them, they have a script, “Do A. Do B, Do C.” Never, ever interrupt.
On shore? “OK we are going to..... Now we’ll start with...”

Our cable company, TDS, which sucks, has a call center in the Caribbean. Our cable and internet were out on the night of the election. The next day after 90 minutes on hold we finally got through. You could here a rooster crowing in the background. They are a shitty company. But the only one available in my area.

I had to contact Amazon customer service twice in the last month. Both times I got a rep in Puerto Rico. They were a little difficult to understand but got the job done. I'm a little sympathetic as they are trying to make a living even though it is at the likely expense of an American job.

I am pleased to be informing you that you first must shut down your computer in order for properly work it will!

Mister John, prease to thank you very much for being a loyal customer.

Sank yo for yo pahshuns,
U hoed preeze , my name barb

Five calls to tech support at U S cellular before I could understand someone

I used to work for a couple of corps that had overseas call centers.

One of them had specific requirements and standards for minimum English fluency in their reps. In addition, those reps at the call center who passed tests demonstrating increased fluency (which included ease of understanding) got pay increases.

I thought it was a great idea. U.S. companies save big $$ by outsourcing call centers, but it sure does help when you can talk to a call center rep and understand what they're saying.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Think he's talking about inbound call centers for customer service, and yep tons of companies have done it, in some cases they do a good job, I'm more concerned with the access to private information by some call center in India being hacked...

For some perspective, here's a couple of shots from my former employer's call centers.

quote:

Originally posted by mcrimm:
Both times I got a rep in Puerto Rico
...
I'm a little sympathetic as they are trying to make a living even though it is at the likely expense of an American job.

(Psst... Puerto Rico is America, dude. )

Maybe they could route those 911 calls overseas as well. We could also replace the telephone operators at the Capitol as well. At first we could start with just the Democratic Senators.

quote:

For some perspective, here's a couple of shots from my former employer's call centers.

I don't see the shredders.

quote:

Originally posted by Georgeair:

quote:

For some perspective, here's a couple of shots from my former employer's call centers.

I don't see the shredders.

Ouch.