blargh

[Kamie]

blargh.

[Dark Knight Zer0]

umm...wow....

DK0

[Kamie]

blargh

[Low-Light]

Your lucky he could speak. lol
Thats the way the world is... Just call back and ask for another m8 to speak ={

[ferret]

First thing you should always say: Please let me speak with someone in the US.

Repeat until they do it.

[Spyder]

Dell outsourced all of their customer support to India, but once they started losing business customers because of it, they brought their business support back to the US... so i say no one evar buy dells ever again until they bring back their normal-people support!

[WangChung]

Baka.

rofl. that's so japanese. ROFL. lol. oh man, one of the only japanese words I understand [seeing as how im chinese. :D]

[Dissman]

I dislike outsourcing of customer support overseas, in fact, i try my best to avoid doing business with companies that do it. The simple fact is that you have to make shipping these jobs overseas cost more than it's worth... threaten to pull your account... there's strength in numbers, you should be bitching to the corporations... they will do nearly anything to keep people onboard.

My personal favorite, while US companies are sending their manufacturing overseas, japaneese companies are opening up shop here in the USA... this is one instance where "buying american" may just mean "buying chineese"

[ThriKreen]

Then also factor in lame ass managers in call centers wanting like 2min call times, vs actually, you know, FIXING the customer's problem.

[stormFury]

Baka.

rofl. that's so japanese. ROFL. lol. oh man, one of the only japanese words I understand [seeing as how im chinese. :D]

What is it? My sister calls me that all the time and she thinks she's ever so smart. :roll:

[ferret]

Baka is the somewhat generic insult of Japanese. "Fool, stupid, idiot, jerk, moron" etc.

[unrequited]

Kamie,

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but I think the whole Apu & Kwik-e-mart comments were not needed.

They're trying. I just saw this long piece on CNN about accent neutralization which the biggest outsourcing group in India, 24/7, uses to make their operators sound more American, sometimes more American than Americans. They train not just to neutralize Indian accents but actually train to develop and practice regional accents depending on which shift they work and what part of the country they're in charge of handling (i.e. a fake Bostonian accent for callers from New England). These classes are quasi-language/quasi-acting classes which showed amazing progress on new students vs. graduates. BTW, these guys run every company in one huge room actually from IBM to Microsoft to Dell to many retail catalogs (I think LLBean don't remember). It's actually quite interesting. I don't support it by the way, but do find it extremely interesting.

In study rooms flanking 24/7's call center and in hundreds of classrooms across India, instructors from as far away as the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and Britain's Oxford University work to ``neutralize'' Indian workers' accents before they ever touch a telephone.

That often means weeks of teaching employees how to flatten out Indian intonations -- to pronounce ``Betty'' like ``Beddy,'' and sound more American or to stress the ``T'' and sound more English.

These ``accent neutralization'' courses incorporate a whole toolbox of geography lessons and introductions to American culture -- even holidays and baseball scores.

In Nina Nair's class at 24/7, employees even act out American fairy tales and perform Shakespeare.

``It's like the difference between `What's your problem?' and `How may I help you?' In India, there's no real distinction,'' Nair says. ``Over the phone, they are not the same. Americans read into the way things are said.''

All of this training is aimed at providing Western companies a seamless response when they send work to the other side of the globe.

24/7 promises to outperform its clients' best internal call center by 10 percent within six months. But with labor costs typically less than one-fifth of U.S. wages, the company usually shatters clients' expectations for savings.

http://www.247customer.com/pages/Article-45.asp

and of course the obligatory google link:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2224%2F7%22+accent+neutralization

[Princess]

Kamie. If you don't understand them, tell them to connect you with someone else. You don't have to be rude about it, just state that you wish to speak with someone else. Besides, you apparently knew what the problem was anyways and usually the internet is updated for your convenience without using the phone. I've handled 3 technical situations through chat online w/companies and it works fine. While you may not understand them, I'm sure there are people who could. I'm not going to say a majority or a minority of people can or can't, because frankly, I don't know who you talked to or what tech support place you called. I also don't know if they even outsource. Just because someone sounds like they're from India doesn't mean the company is outsourcing... I don't really think your comments w/the Kwik-E-Mart are necessary either. If you don't like it, don't use their company or ask to speak with someone else.

[ferret]

Just one note for Princess: She was calling because her boss told her to, and it was because the internet (Earthlink) was down, so checking the webpage or online chat wasn't possible. The guy ran her through the tech support scripts without even listening to what she wanted or was asking about, because that's what they're trained to do in a lot of cases.

I understand they do a lot of work in trying to neutralize Indian accents (I've seen the same story, I believe on CNN, also was interested) for those companies that outsource, but that's only specific companies.. Some don't bother. "Don't like it, don't use it" isn't always your choice, sometimes you're stuck with what you got... If you work for a company that utilizes another company's service, and you have to place a call, you don't have a choice but to deal with them.

[[NAKED] sidark]

For my job I have to call alot in the US and sometimes in the UK.
I just cannot understand all the words of someone in the UK.

As for US, more the people in texas. Some are fine but the one with the big accent wow.

And africans that speak fast, I get 50% of what they say.

[Kamie]

First of all, I appologize for the Apu comment. It was made out of anger and frustration. Yesturday was a bad day for me. I have a cold, bad things kept pilling up, and am quite also hormonal due to being 4 and a 1/2 months pregnant. That is normally not in my nature to make comments like that. Again, I applogize. But I also ask you to back off me a bit on this too. Thank you. No one is perfect.


Also. Here are some other points:

1.) I could not get online. I had to call this specific tech support line. I only wanted to know if there was an outage in my area. That was all. This guy kept insisting that I change certian system settings that I knew did not need to be changed and got ruder and ruder when I asked him what changing these settings had to do with if there was an outage or not.

2.) I did ask to speak to someone else and he asked me why. I told him that I could not understand what he was saying, but I was not rude about it. I was also on hold for 45 minutes before being able to speak to this guy and he refused to allow me to speak to anyone else.

3.) And again, I am not a rascist. I am not judemental. I was frustrated and irritated at the whole situation. Please back off. I am probably going to ask ferret to just delete this post.


Thank you.

[[NAKED] sidark]

Why this is fun, people make fun off me also. All the time

You are right to be frustrated at that time. You call for service in english and the people at the end can't speak it well. Why? cause some corperatif wants to make more money.

Train the guy thenput him at his post. Thats what we do here.
You need to lern english or french compagnie will pay classes.

KAmmie is right, the guy shouldnt get frustrated and awnser the right thing. But he hang up unprofessionnal. Talk slower...it aint that hard.

[unrequited]

I don't think anybody was calling you a racist, it was just an off-color remark. I didn't even focus on it past that one statement, and rather, I'm glad you brought it up because it IS frustrating especially when more and more companies are outsourcing CS departments (the one department they probably should outsource last). What you should do is write a letter to their PR department, and complain, you'll get heard, and I'm sure with enough complaints they'll make sure to review their outsourcing company's procedures.

[steaLer]

outsourcing is a product free markets.
if you take your business somewhere else because dell outsources, then something else will get cut or outsourced. either way someone loses. be willing to pay for more, if you want it in US. why? US customer service costs more. i'm sure they moved because they could not hire qualified tech-supports here in US for money you and me were willing to pay for the service.

it will make full circle and come back eventually to US, because someday the indians will be too expensive.

kamie, i was born in india, and i for laid off from a Sears because they outsourced our accounting department to india. talk about irony...