Overseas call centers.

Spank

Goodness Gracious Me is made by British Asians and not watched by everyone

"plenty of Bollywood films exist if you care to view them." many people don't care to watch them especially compared to the amount of Hollywood consumption that we have.

George_Michael

Mnoee said:

Spank said:

Mnoee said:

Cardew said:

Mnoee said:

I really can't understand how accents can be such a big deal to some people - it's not like people from Essex sound anything like people from Birmingham, or Belfast or Bristol. Why is a Bangladesh or Johannesburg accent so much more difficult to understand than any of the above? If their English is poor in general then call centre work may not be for them, but being from the UK doesn't automatically mean someone will have an easy to understand accent. 

You may not have a problem with foreign accents, but apparently it is a big problem for many people. Just google various management studies on effectiveness of call centres in UK and USA and difficulty in understanding is the major issue. e.g.

'Why Do Customers Hate Your Offshore Call Center So Much?

There’s a real language problem

UK and US companies have been outsourcing call center jobs to India for a while now and Indian call centers employees usually have a rather good level of english. However rather good isn’t good enough! The last thing customers want is to struggle with basic communication when they are trying to get a problem solved. A lot of US customers will now actually hang up if they hear that they are being transferred offshore or spot a foreign accent when the representative answers. Your customers are not being racists, they are just looking for a quick solution to their problem, they don’t want to struggle. A strong foreign accent will make the communication harder, especially over the phone when voice is the only thing people can rely on. Phone communication can even be challenging between people from the same country.

Lately, India has lost a lot of call centers seats to the Philippines where children grow up hearing and speaking American English. Accent and cultural knowledge matters! Working in a call center as an entry level employees is a far harder job that it seems for non-native speakers. It requires an excellent knowledge of another culture that even most intercultural communication experts don’t fully have.'

So... People in the UK can't understand Indian accents, but they're fine with American and Australian? Weird how we have no issue with different accents until they're from a low income country. 

Has it occurred to you that we have grown up with American and Austrailian accents on TV and films? Do you not think that would help us?

Did we? Oh OK then. There was 'Goodness Gracious Me' on the TV too, and plenty of Bollywood films exist if you care to view them. 

How many Bollywood films have been shown on mainstream television in the past month? and how many American made films and episodes of series have been shown over the same period?
Personally, I've no idea but if I could be bothered checking, I bet that it's probably no more than1 Bollywood production to every 100 American productions and even that may well be a gross underestimate of the American showings.

Mnoee

You can just say you can't be bothered to understand a different accent, it's fine. If you only get your information from TV then I'd start watching Derry Girls to brush up on accents closer to home. My point about 'overseas' accents being no more or less difficult to understand than the hugely different accents all over the UK still stands. 

Tippytoes

Some time ago I was on the receiving end of regular calls regarding problems with my computer.  Told to switch it on, go into this screen and so on.  The "experts" from Microsoft were obviously calling from overseas; I suspect India.  Depending on my mood, I sometimes ended the call quite abruptly, sometimes strung them along.  The one thing that I did find amusing, was that they were all named either David, John or Michael!

Rogerrabbit

I had to phone 3 helpline regarding the internet on my phone the other day. She was in India but I understood her pretty well and the problem was sorted. However I do agree sometimes it is very difficult to understand what the foreign call centres are saying and it is embarrassing to keep saying "sorry could you say that again"

IvanOpinion

When it comes to complaining about accents I usually wonder at which end of the phone is the problem accent.

jon81uk

diaCardew said:

Over the years there has been dissatisfaction expressed in the UK and USA with many of the call centers based in the Far East.  I used to have particular difficulty with the British Telecom(BT) call center in India.

India isn't the "Far East".

Far East is the countries of East Asia, including China, Japan, North and South Korea, and Indonesia

the Far East | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary

silverwhistle

Mnoee said:

You can just say you can't be bothered to understand a different accent, it's fine. If you only get your information from TV then I'd start watching Derry Girls to brush up on accents closer to home. My point about 'overseas' accents being no more or less difficult to understand than the hugely different accents all over the UK still stands. 

It's not a question of can't be bothered. Some accents are more difficult to understand than others. I taught English as a  Foreign Language and am used to mangled English. The biggest difficulty I ever had was a Scouser at a utility company, and had to ask him to repeat something about 3 times, which was a bit embarrassing. But some accents and some speakers are more difficult to understand. There are various components to accent and often a different stress pattern or rythym can catch us out, and those tend not to vary so much amongst native speakers.

lincroft1710

Tippytoes said:

The one thing that I did find amusing, was that they were all named either David, John or Michael!

They just adopt an arbitrary English name or those a name which sounds closest to their own name

Mnoee

silverwhistle said:

Mnoee said:

You can just say you can't be bothered to understand a different accent, it's fine. If you only get your information from TV then I'd start watching Derry Girls to brush up on accents closer to home. My point about 'overseas' accents being no more or less difficult to understand than the hugely different accents all over the UK still stands. 

It's not a question of can't be bothered. Some accents are more difficult to understand than others. I taught English as a  Foreign Language and am used to mangled English. The biggest difficulty I ever had was a Scouser at a utility company, and had to ask him to repeat something about 3 times, which was a bit embarrassing. But some accents and some speakers are more difficult to understand. There are various components to accent and often a different stress pattern or rythym can catch us out, and those tend not to vary so much amongst native speakers.

I look forward to your thread about how Scousers shouldn't work for utility companies based on this single interaction.