OT: Off shore call center workers mad at American

[Thermodyne]

STAFF AT Indian call centres dealing with Americans are getting more angry at some callers' rude, backward, stupid and bigoted comments.
A collective for Indian workers, formed by Vinod Shetty, a Bombay lawyer, said that most of the Americans seemed to have chip on their shoulder about outsourcing and vented their insecurities on call centre staff.

Story
Main Article

Original Story




Perhaps, if they were able to speak understandable English and had a working knowledge of the product in question, we wouldn�t be so rude.
I recently placed a call for some support on a name brand VPN appliance. I had unlimited free support and timed paid support. I called the free support on what I figured was an easy question. All I wanted to do was add a port to UDP so that I could connect some users that could not use the standard port because of local firewall restrictions. I�ve done it lots of time with another vendor, but they don�t use a webserver interface. You just type in the commands and the write it. With this system you could only make changes by selecting from the menus.
I started by explaining what I needed to do, and ask how to get to a command line and what to enter when I got there. After 40 minutes, mostly translation problems, the girl kicks me to level two. I wait almost half an hour and the go through the whole thing again. After about 15 minutes of discussion, I get kicked to level three. They come right on the line, and I go through the whole thing again. I spend over an hour with this guy, and have to repeat almost everything I say twice. Finally he says that it can�t be done on this model. I hang up and call my sales rep to lay into him about why he sold me this system that did not meet the bid specks. Most of you guys know me; he was about to have a bad day. Of course, I get voice mail. When he calls me back, he assures me that the OS is writable and gives me some free time with paid support. I then call the paid support number, and get the same guy that I had the day before as tier three free support. He doesn�t even remember the call until I give him the service request number! During this conversation he admits that he has never seen the appliance and has not had time to read the material that the manufacture sent out on it. He wants me to call him back in a few days, or because this is paid support, he can kick me up another level. Well heck, I�m well and truly bent over, so I say �kick me�. Now I get to speak to a lady in Europe (Where the product is made) and she says no problem. She gives me an address to type into my browser and that takes me to a command line. Then she tells me what to enter and how to write it. So after spending hours talking to India, I get my problem fixed in 10 minutes by someone who knows the product. Speaks English as a second language, but does it well. And never said �what you say� once during the whole conversation. So, yes I agree with the article above, the Indians are mistreated by American customers. But perhaps if they knew WTF they were supporting and how to answer basic questions, in understandable English we (I) would have a little more respect for them. It has gotten to the point where the location of help support is becoming an important factor as to where I buy equipment from. I don�t know how the rest of the world feels about it, but this American has a very low opinion for unqualified �experts� when seeking technical help. And I also feel that my time is far too scarce and much too valuable to be jerked off for hours at a time by some stupid subcontractor who probably doesn�t even completely understand what I�m saying. Unfortunately, this has become they way things are in this industry. And as long as these people are mistaken for knowledgeable technicians, my frustration will have to continue to be mistaken for rudeness.

[General Woundwort]

Ah, the joys of globalization.

[Hunpecked]

I agree with Thermodyne. As an American consumer I shouldn't have to call halfway around the world, only to find incompetent support personnel!

I'm sure there are plenty of incompetent support personnel available right here at home!!!

[geoschmo]

As someone who has worked in customer support for almost ten years I can tell you that the problem you describe isn't really caused by the outsourcing. Language problems aside, you are likely to get the same level of non-support from a help-desk staffed by people right here in the good ole USA. It's a lack of training by the company, and understaffing caused by stetching too few people over too many product lines. It's difficult as hell for those first and second level people to really get proficcent with the products they are supporting, since they rarely if ever actually use them and only spend their days sitting at a desk taking calls. And when only metric your company judges your performance by is how quickly you answer the phone and the number of calls you take, you can see how actually helping the customer to resolve their problems gets lost in the shuffle.

At any rate, being rude with the person answering the phone isn't helpful. I'm sure given their preferance they would want to help you with your problem. It's not their fault they don't speak english fluently and aren't sufficently trained. They are just trying to earn a living like everybody else. Save your anger for the manufacturer that hired them for not supporting their product. Oh, and the telemarketers.

[Fyron]

You should not apply for a job where you will have to converse with English speaking people constantly if you can not speak English very well. There are plenty of other ways to earn a living that do not depend on skills you do not have.

[geoschmo]

Imperator Fyron said:
You should not apply for a job where you will have to converse with English speaking people constantly if you can not speak English very well. There are plenty of other ways to earn a living that do not depend on skills you do not have.

Uh, really? You might say that here, but I'm not sure it's true in India. If jobs were that common over their I doubt that companies could save so much money by moving their support centers.

There's also the matter of what it means to speak acceptable english. If you have to work a little bit to understand their accent that doesn't mean they are illiterate boobs. A lot of Americans are pretty insular and lazy when it comes to that sort of thing.

But regardless even if jobs were plentiful, are you saying if a company wanted to hire you doing a nice comfortable job when your alternative is some kind of unplesant or maybe dangerous manual labor, and pay you better money than the hard job paid, you'd say "No, sorry, I just don't think I'm qualified."

I'm not saying outsourcing is a good thing. I work in support. Outsourcing means me losing my job some day. But I hate all outsourcing. Customer support started going in the crapper years ago when companies started marginalizing their support departments and farming it off to third party support companies. But nobody got upset when that third party company was hiring unskilled Americans, paying them substandard wages and giving thim insufficent training. It was only when they started hiring unskilled Indians, paying them substandard wages and giving them insuffiecent training that people noticed there was a problem.

[rdouglass]

My $.02 on this issue.

It doesn't matter where you live or what you do for work. If your job is to support / help people using verbal communication, you better be able to understand and be understood by the people you support.

How many job requirements incude "good verbal and written communication skills". Almost all?

If they cannot communicate effectively with the person they're supposed to be helping, all that happens is the customer frustration level goes up. And that doesn't have a lot to do with technical abilities. If you're supporting English speaking people (not just Americans now but English speaking people), you better be able to speak and understand English effectively.

What they're doing with or what they'd be doing without that job is irrelevant.

EDIT: Hey, I actually agree with Fyron.

[Thermodyne]

My bad, I didn�t make my point clearly enough. My complaint is the audacity of the founders of this group. They are actually saying that regardless of the quality of the support provided, that they should be treated as respected credible professional service providers. If you read the article, the Yanks will notice that the main quoted insult is not something that an American would normally use. In fact, upon some questioning of one of my Indian friends, it turns out to be a common Indian slur used by city dwellers to describe tribal people living in rural areas.

Now, while I do fault the people involved in the forming of the collective, I do not fault the call takers. I do however reserve the right to vent my frustration at their incompetence. They are just trying to earn a living. The root of the problem is the lack of product support by manufacturers, but the problem we as callers face is the lack of professionalism demonstrated by the call centers. They get paid to put people on the end of a phone line, and have not been held accountable for the standard of said people. When answering technical calls from America, the person needs to speak more than passable English, including technical vocabulary. This is the responsibility of the call center owner and the manufacturer who contract with them to be sure. But for a group of poorly trained service providers to form a group to demand treatment on par with skilled professionals is ridiculous. Would their time be better spent demanding better training from their employers? Not to mention reasonable wages.

Now anyone who ever worked a help desk knows that from time to time you will get a caller that is over the edge from word one. Such is life. But my experience is that this can be corrected by simply helping them with their problem. This often takes very good communication skills, something that is very often lacking with people who are communicating in a second language. Any recent customer support poll you care to look at will demonstrate the low satisfaction rate. And anyone in the business can tell you that outsourcing has only exasperated the problem. And what ever happened to saying �I don�t know�. Many a time I have told a user that I couldn�t solve their problem, but that I would find a solution and call them back. This used to be what second tier help desk people did. But as Geo has already stated, speed at answering and time per call is the standard used today, so second tier is often just staffed with people who talk and type faster. My largest equipment supplier still has it�s call center in the states, and while they may be lacking in technical knowledge or hamstrung by company policy designed to hide major (read expensive) defects, the ability to communicate well helps to greatly reduce the level of stress.

As to Geo�s concerns about being on an American call center, you have my condolences my friend. The Global economy was intended to spread the wealth and raise the third worlds standard of living. But it would seem to have only exported jobs. This will only change when the consumers (voters) demand it.

[douglas]

English is the primary trade language of the world because Great Britain went on a gigantic colonization spree for a century or two and managed to outdo everyone else at it, and everywhere they went they took their language with them. At its height, the British Empire included the American colonies (which became the USA), India, Australia, huge swaths of Africa, and part of Canada. France got a share of Canada, and Spain took Mexico and maybe some parts of South America, but they never even came close to matching Great Britain.

I think I've seen some statistics that Spanish is actually spoken by more people than English, but English speakers are spread out more, so it's easier for non-speakers to find a translator in more places for English than for anything else.

[Renegade 13]

Imperator Fyron said:
You should not apply for a job where you will have to converse with English speaking people constantly if you can not speak English very well.

I agree.