Overseas call centers.

MACKEM99

Calm down La.

Jumblebumble

Cardew 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. I had problems from time to time with the line to my house which was an Open Reach problem and not BT's fault; however only BT could contact Open Reach. This entailed lengthy calls whilst the obviously non-technical operator went laboriously through their protocols. At times the difficulty was exacerbated by being unable to understand the accents. BT call centers are now only in GB and Ireland.

I read that when call centers initially went 'out East' only university graduates speaking excellent English were employed, but as the number of call centers drastically increased the net was cast wider.

I am now dealing with a Call Center in South Africa, and I read on line that this country now has thousands of call centers:

'India's global call centre outsourcing industry is under increasing pressure from offshore competitors such as South Africa where call centres serving foreign firms are high on government's job-creation priority list 

Yusuf Timol, head of economic affairs at the SA high commission in London, says:  "There  are definitely concerns in the UK around India as a customer service location. Concerns go beyond security. A big threat is dissatisfaction with customer service. Workers accents and lack of cultural affinity with UK consumers, in particular, are coming in for harsh criticism.'

Now I love the South African accent, it is music to my ears when they bleat after losing at cricket or rugby but on a couple of recent calls I could hardly understand the accent, and neither could my daughter who was listening in to the call. Also there was a lack of flexibility and apparent indifference on the subject of the calls; I have withdrawn my business.

I hope South Africa learn lessons from the Far East experience.

There is also the language barrier and grotty VOiP lines
My favorite was the man form Bangalore who worked for one of the big four banks and was "helping" my other half to reset an online banking password.
He asked her 3 times if she was holding plastic and each time she said yes I have a debit card in my hand
He then told her she had not answered his question correctly and locked the account
The complaints dept were as astonished as I was by this stupidity and offered to pay for a cab to take her to the local branch as this was the only way to unlock the account
No way do I think this would have happened in a UK call center
We also met the non technical man at BT who swore blind that it was expected behaviour to to get a ping reply from the static IP at a site where there was no router/modem connected
( It took 2 days for BT to admit that the end user had 3 sites and BT had given the same static to two of them)

tealady

When I was with VM, I struggled to understand the people in the call centre. In the end I was so frustrated I shouted that I wanted to speak to someone who had English as a 1st language.
So they put me through to a Scouser 😁

pollypenny

Mnoee said:f

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. 

I struggle with strong Scottish accents. 

Ganga

I spoke to a lady who worked for TalkTalk who told me when the broadband went down  " To take the BT socket plate off the wall ,find the second set of wires inside and change them over with the wires attached to the frontplate " you could not make it up ,i put the phone down ,switched all the equipment off ,waited 5 mins ,switched it back on and the broadband worked ,the lady called back and told my wife that i was not to put the phone down on her again!

Mrs_Ryan

I had a lot of issues with overseas call centres when I changed my name. I had a civil partnership and a lot of the foreign call centres hadn’t heard of them and kept insisting they needed to see my marriage certificate. I kept explaining that I don’t have one but they kept saying ‘we can’t accept your certificate as change of name as a civil partnership is just living together’ One company eventually googled it to find out what it was then accepted it, another one I asked to speak to someone in the UK and I got through to a very helpful lady in Leeds who had indeed heard of CP’s and was very apologetic. The third company was based in the UK but the person I was speaking to did say she was of a different culture and I kid you not said ‘there’s no such thing’ I hung up on her in the end and rang through again- I had the fortune to get through to someone else  who was in one himself and so at least he understood and was quite horrified what had been said.

It’s not always about the accent, sometimes it’s about the culture gap as well. 

[Deleted User]

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. 

Not forgetting 'Citizen Khan'

lincroft1710

profile/Deleted User said:

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. 

Not forgetting 'Citizen Khan'

Never watched it myself, but some reviews intimate it would be better to forget Citizen Khan