Frustrated with overseas call centres?

missile

RE: 0800 Numbers:


Any time you call an 0800 number (for a credit card, banking, charter communications, health and other insurance, computer help desk, etc) and you find that you're talking to a foreign customer service representative (perhaps in India, Pakistan, Ireland, etc), please consider doing the following:

After you connect and you realize that the customer service representative is not from the United Kingdom you can always ask if you are not sure about the accent), please, very politely (this is not about trashing other cultures) say, "I'd like to speak to a customer service representative in the United Kingdom."

The rep might suggest talking to his/her manager, but, again, politely say, "Thank you, but I'd like to speak to a customer service representative in the United Kingdom ."

YOU WILL BE IMMEDIATELY CONNECTED TO A REP IN THE UK . That's the rule and the LAW.

It takes less than one minute to have your call re-directed to the United Kingdom . Tonight when I got redirected to a UK rep, I asked again to make sure - and yes, she was from NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE .

Imagine what would happen if every United Kingdom citizen insisted on talking to only UK phone reps from this day on.

Imagine how that would ultimately impact the number of UK jobs that would need to be created ASAP...

If I tell 10 people to consider this and you tell 10 people to consider doing this - see what I mean...it becomes an exercise in viral marketing 101.

Remember - the goal here is to get service from someone whose accent you can understand and restore the jobs back in the UK - not to be abrupt or rude to a foreign phone rep. You may even get correct answers, good advice, and solutions to your problem - in real English.

If you agree, please tell 10 people you know, and ask them to tell 10 people they know.....etc...Etc

George_Michael

That's the rule and the LAW.

Which law? and what happens if the company in question doesn't have any UK based call centres?

shaun_from_Africa

missile,
A bit of investigation before you post might be a good idea, especially when the post in question wasn't written by you at all but is a total cut and paste.


http://www.hoax-slayer.com/ask-tranfer-uk-rep-law.shtml

Brief Analysis
There is no law in the UK like the one described in the message. The message is a UK variant of previous false and misleading messages that have circulated in the United States and Canada. While some companies may choose to offer such a service to customers, they are not legally required to do so.

And if you want to see exactly the same comment but with the UK replaced with USA,:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/servicerep.asp

soothyerboots

Stupid post. What if the call centre advisor works in England but happens to come from an indian background? Nonsensical post by the OP.

spike7451

I worked in a call center for an ISP & the was quite a few Indian's & staff from other nationalities there.Quite often,the callers would get quite verbally abusive to the point of reducing the agent to tears.One girl quit after a while,she was very good at her job but because she was Indian, callers assumed that they were talking to an off shore center.
On the flip side,I've dealt with a overseas call center on an hourly basis for the same ISP & they were utterly useless.They would call thru a fault to my department,with no troubleshooting done & the notes copy/pasted from a crib sheet.Quite often we would end up re-diagnosing the fault from step one,which made the caller even more frustrated as they thought they'd already done it.

Jeff_Bridges_hair

This is a brilliant and factual post.

missile

Ah well, it seemed like a good idea.

Tropez

Even if this were true, there's plenty of regional accents in the United Kingdom I have difficulties in understanding sometimes, including the accent of natives from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I have to watch Auf Wiedersehen, Pet with subtitles sometimes.

scheming_gypsy

Tropez wrote: »

Even if this were true, there's plenty of regional accents in the United Kingdom I have difficulties in understanding sometimes, including the accent of natives from Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

I did a contract for United Utilities IT department last year. I spent 5 minutes trying to understand the person from the Philippines on the phone who was reporting a fault; then i realised they were a Geordie.

hcb42

I work in the east midlands. Apart from the guy from Birmingham, who is impossible to understand (Joke!), we have Irish, South African, Egyptian, a spattering of various europeans, and quite a few other nationalities as well as the odd Englishman.

I would hate to think my colleagues were subject to automatic racism on grounds of their accent, when the strength of our team is in our collective global experience!

jb66

Ahh the call centre act 2011