Rohail Manzoor, a soft-spoken call center employee in New Delhi, has dealt with many hostile U.S. callers. A survey said the calls are "psychologically disturbing" for workers. (Rama Lakshmi For The Washington Post)
Posted on 02/26/2005 10:45:57 PM PST by CarrotAndStick
NEW DELHI -- Rohail Manzoor thought he had what it took to work in a telephone call center. All he had to do was pick up the phone and answer queries from American customers about their long-distance bills. He was armed with a training to speak English like the Americans -- adjust the r's, say "zee" instead of "zed," "mail" instead of "post."
He even called himself "Jim," and figured he would pretend to be an American customer service agent.
But nothing prepared him for the shower of curses that came his way when he picked up the phone one night on the job.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Rohail Manzoor, a soft-spoken call center employee in New Delhi, has dealt with many hostile U.S. callers. A survey said the calls are "psychologically disturbing" for workers. (Rama Lakshmi For The Washington Post)
I had no problem with talking to someone from another country when I called AOL for service. But without exception each call has been hard to understand and in one case the person hung up on me because he didn't like that I caught him in a lie.
Good old WP...
The market always adjusts....
I find talking to them has been fine and I usually get competent service. It just irritates me that they insist on using phony Americanized names.
"Hello, my name is BOB."
Yeah, sure it is.
As long as the FCC invents fee$ to add to my phone bill, I will NOT give anyone the $atisfaction of accompli$hing anything in the way of selling me $omething.
We couldn't pronounce their real names, if they gave them to us.
The problem is not where they are, but that they are poorly trained, and are given some totally idiotic and useless process to follow -- which is not their fault, but it enrages the customers nevertheless. They are taught to act like robots.
When people call the service center, they call, because they are upset, annoyed, mad about something. Then, when the customer service rep is anything but helpful, it makes people even more mad.
Companies whould train people and teach them to figure things out, instead of follow brainless and useless processes, which won't solve the problem.
It doesn't matter where they are, customer service representatives are becoming totally useless and unhelpful.
yeah, my company is going to be transferring most of our first and second-level support over to India starting next month. In fact, both of the accounts I handle are going over there, and I'm about to have to start looking for another job. The training that has been done for the new techs in India has been pathetic, and this is going to blow up in my company's face real quick once this happens. One of the accounts moving over is our Internal support, but we're not even letting the rest of the company know that they will be calling India.
I just go into my India accent. Tell them they should move to America open a 711 and sell many many Big Gulp. Really, the accent is quite good my friend, seriously. Even you would fooled.
Bingo.
I am a plant manager at a division where IT service has been transferred to India within the past year. I can say from my personal experience that the quality of service from this provider has been nothing short of abysmal. To manage business in the short term, I currently employ local IT resources -- this outside of corporate directive.
My HP rep was outstanding! Patient, thorough, one-step-at-a-time and spoke excellent English. The Symantec rep was coming on to me through the whole ordeal and even gave me his private email addy so we could have a "follow-up". GAWD!!!
I don't have a big issue with them being employed to answer the calls, but I do blame the training. When they don't know an answer, JUST SAY SO, and if the problem is communication please ge5t me someone else - maybe we will do better next time.
When you get Dell in India, no matter what the problem is, the answer is to reinstall windows. I could also just smash my computer. That would solve the problem too. Of course I don't reinstall windows when there is a problem.
remember that idea I conveyed to you, hlf in jest, about you pretending to be Indian and sourcing yourself out to these offshore techsupport companies?
Well Rohail, welcome to the wonderful wiggly world of call center customer service...perhaps he'd feel better if his management team let him listen to some calls routed into American call centers and realize it's not much different. CS Reps are paid to be verbal punching bags for irate customers, whether their belligerence is justified or not.
I've never understood why one business doesn't use these types of situations to set themselves apart from the competition, even at a slightly higher price.
I've wanted to see one domestic airline bill itself as "the most secure carrier in the sky" after 9/11. Charge $10-$20 more per seat and have an armed uniformed employee (not part of the crew) on board as a sign of security. Sure, some will go elsewhere for the cheapest fare but a certain percentage will pay *extra* if they believe they are getting extra hijack protection.
So, I await too one ISP or other tech call center to actually advertise "we connect you with American customer service employees who can identify with your concerns better than someone half a world away". Even if they charge a little extra, a certain percentage will pay for that and think it's great.
Sometimes the best strategy is to do the opposite of what everyone else does. Think of Hardee's and their mega-burger.
I've had plenty of American customer "service" representatives who've been impossible to understand due to their dialect. I'd rather speak to "Bob" from Bombay (whether he says "zed" or "post" or whatnot). It's not a great loss that these jobs are "outsourced."
Yeah.....the only ones happy with this crap is the shareholders who have been told by the company CEO...look how we have cut costs.........
The thing about it is, these guys are our allies to a degree. ALL the Indians I work with love America....or at least really like it.
India may prove our best ally in the war on terror. They've certainly got a lot (everything) to lose upon the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
THEN she connected me to a customer verification center in India and this lady I could hardly understand starts asking me personal questions and NO WAY am I going to give that kind of information to someone I can't even understand. I hung up. Later Verizon called me back and I told them that all my service will be cancelled immediately. They lost a POTS customer and Cingular Wireless gained one. Maybe I over-reacted but I'm not going to give that type of information to a foreigner that our laws can't reach.
I have found that i have rece3ived good service and bad service and in most cases thye people are very diffucult to understand.
The people working these jobs are just tryi ng to earn a living.
I believe all americans should stop dealing with companies who don't use american workers since most of the money spent on the products is made in America.
The corporate whisses could care less where they hire help so long as it is cheap.
When I've had problems in the past with my DSL, I always ended up attempting to talk to someone in India, barely able to understand, last guy I talked to was Dan (yeah right). I always ask where they are from just out of curiosity.
They must have changed because last night I talked to two people (1st and 2nd level services), as always I asked where they were from...Phillipines. Both of these people I talked to were excellent! Their English didn't even have an accent, I thought I was talking to Americans! Excellent job.
The second guy I talked to already had his paperwork entered to immigrate to the US. I asked him why he wanted to come here, he said "because it's the land of milk and honey". Anyway, he sounded pretty neat and already knew his English.
yup, and when it backfires on them (see AT&T Wireless), the executives escape with their golden parachutes by selling the company to the highest bidder.
One clue I had that I was speaking to a guy in India was when he pronounced "San Jose" as it might sound if it were English rather than Spanish.
Why do we even HAVE call centers in the first place? Why not keep everthing on the net? Wait -- they already do that. However, to get technically sound people on the phone the company must pay them, but the customers don't want to pay for these folks, they want something cheap. Hence, the companies look for the cheapest place available.
If it's an imitation Apu accent -- that ain't no Injun accent -- I've got Indian friends and none speak like that. The ones over here in England speak English better than the Brits, while the ones I've met here who've come from India speak nearly accentless English.
I've got several good friends from India. Believe me, the accent is right. Just did not come through in the typed translation.
Same thing happened to me with my Chase credit account. I called to see if I could make a payment by phone and was transferred to an India call center. The woman who answered my call would not address my question, but instead insisted that I update my personal info (social security #, mother's maiden name etc...)immediately on the phone with her. I said I was not comfortable giving this personal info to her by phone and told her to mail me a request for the update and she became very angry. She said this was not their procedure. I asked to speak to a supervisor and someone with what sounded like a spanish accent got on the line and he said they would flag my account as my being uncooperative in giving the requested info! I never received anything by mail and my account was never flagged (that I know of). I just felt kind of creeped out that these people were trying to get information they were not authorized to have.
hey i am sorry to know about the discomfort that you faced while providing your personal information. but you should know this fact in your usa in every 45 seconds there is an identity theft. and we ask this security informaton only to assit you better and to maintain security on your account. and top of that we are forced by your american companies to ask you all abt ur info. so is it really the girls fault who asked you about your information rather i would say its the companys fault and u should blame chase for that and not the girl. see be sure that indians are always the best.
Guess how they pronounce Virginia? "Hello, is this Sue Smith in Vagina Beach?"
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