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The View From the Ground At an Indian Call Center
A feature story in Mother Jones gives a fascinating inside look at what it's like to work in a Delhi call center. In this area alone, says the author, "100,000 call-center agents make their living selling vitamins to Britons or helping Americans troubleshoot their printers. I am almost certainly the only one who acquired his conversational skills accidentally — by being born in the United States." The slots at the call centers are limited and highly sought; the training is intense, and the infrastructure is poor.
All Your Jobs Are Belong To Us.
I swear, I once heard them laughing after I phoned support for an rma replacement.
No way!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
In what? Choosing a fake name?
Sorry, but every 'Kevin' from Bangalore I've encountered has been completely useless. Not that I fault the individual workers - I'm sure it's a situation much like we have here in the US, where these poor souls are limited by asinine corporate playbooks, and thus, provide no valuable service to customers.
Though the entire 'get the customer off the phone because they can't a) understand you or b) understand you enough to understand that you cannot possibly help them', of course, is a valuable service to a company's bottom line.
I saw this show... it was called Outsourced.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
That'd be great, being powered by AT-class machines, a lack of air conditioning and all, if Peggy is true.
...at the teachings on Australian culture.
I like this quote:
"Truth is, 90 percent of the people there, you will find, they'll do the most stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world."
Sounds like they are qualified!
I wonder if it's possible to bring the jobs back by slapping a $5 tariff on product support calls that get answered overseas.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
When I stopped asking questions, Shail had one for me. "I have experienced some Americans—please don't mind—they don't like Indians. They act rude as soon as they come to know I am Indian. Why is this?" I stammered something about protectionism, but really I didn't know what to say.
Simply put, nobody likes communicating with people who are.. well... difficult to communicate with. It's bad enough trying to overcome a language barrier in general conversation. It's even worse when you're trying to communicate a technical problem or make a complicated request. I don't want to have to spell out my email 3x in phonetic alphabet. Sometimes I can't even tell if the person I'm talking to actually understands my problem because everything they say is scripted.
Plus -- as Louis CK has said -- I know the Indian on the line doesn't give a shit about me and my white people problems.
The slots at the call centers are limited and highly sought; the training is intense, and the infrastructure is poor.
You know you're disillusioned when that assessment sounds equal to or better than most job openings in the United States.
Sure, if you can also find Americans that will work 50 hour weeks for $11/week, which is the wage quoted in the article....
My main frustration with the outsourcing "issue" isn't that I'm talking to someone from India. It's that I'm talking to someone from India that's pretending to be from America. It's really insulting to our intelligence and I'm not sure what they gain from it at this point. Now it's well known that there's a ton of outsourcing, so why do companies bother trying to hide it anymore?
I deal with Indians in two different capacities. One is my professional environment where I communicate with outsourced teams and the other is my personal environment where I contact customer support on various services and products.
I never give them hell, because I realize that they are just trying to make a living, but the communication and cultural barriers are too wide for me. Some of our technical partners utilize Indian software developers and I have been talking to Indians for over a decade and to this day I still have trouble with their accents. Email is a little better, but either cultural differences or something else causes conversations to be circular in nature. I don't think they are intentionally dishonest, but they have an aversion to saying "no" and end up being vague and confusing.
Also, either the companies who hire the call centers or the call center management themselves need to stop having call center reps address themselves with American names. I am not thoroughly educated in Indian customs, but I doubt there really are that many people in India named Bob, Joe, Rick, Ann, Susan, and Jennifer. They aren't fooling anybody and it is insulting one's intelligence.
I am sure working in an Indian call center is hell, and I respect them for making a living, but I honestly wish I didn't have to deal with them.
You pay your money and you get what you pay for. You want service from a company that pays its support staff $900 a year, then don't expect the same quality service as a company that pays its staff $20,000 a year (or more).
if they didn't call my home, uninvited, at dinner time. I can deal with any call centre when it's my business (they're helping me. Thanks, guys). When they're trying to sell me something, uninvited on my home line I have no problems hanging up on them. My home is not their shop.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Why hate Indians? while you have to hate the Corporations that Outsourced the Jobs in the first place. I am sure, these companies would outsource to the next country that provides the cheapest labour. Will you hate your new Call Center employees or Corporation that oursourced?
They have an aversion to saying "no" and end up being vague and confusing.
If you ever get a chance to go to India you're going to hate the head weave. It's half way between "Yes" and "No" but also means maybe, sometimes, all the time, and I don't know.
They do know American society than most Americans and their politicians:
"Truth is, 90 percent of the people there [in the US], you will find, they'll do the most stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world."
They are qualified to rule us. We just need to outsource the Congress.
Its not because they are trying to fool you into thinking you are talking with an American. The issue is lots of those names are really really hard to pronounce for native English speakers who have no experience with Hindi.
I have worked very close with lots of India developers, the ones who actually come here tend to American-ize their names rather than pick a new one like John. Punjababriu becomes Prabu for instance. The later I can say correctly the former it took him helping me many times to learn to say correctly. You know I felt really bad about it too. Nobody likes it when you get their name wrong. Most of us don't want to go around hurting the feelings of or insulting others; or suspecting that we might be. In this case he knew it was not a respect thing and that I was trying really hard to learn to correctly say his name, but still.
Really these call center folks are doing you a kindness by sparing you the embarrassment of having to try and repeat a name that is going to be hard for your say.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I don't think they are intentionally dishonest
Here is where I disagree. Having worked with outsourced Indian software development for a decade now, I have encountered many people and even companies that are outright dishonest. They will claim to have things complete that they haven't, only to fess up months later when the deadline is actually arrived. They will lie about team size/structure/level of effort. They will steal from FOSS projects, despite being directly and clearly instructed not to, creating contractual nightmares. Working with them requires so much micromanagement that yes, you are better off hiring a bunch of fresh college grads, it will save you money in the long run, and the quality of work will be superior.
conversation skills...by being born in the United States...
We might as well throw in the towel right now.
There is no way that we can compete such Indian hightech.
We have a better chance at knocking the Chinese off their lofty perch than with these highly skilled Indians.
Have you tried unplugging it?
Tell me about it. I hate calling tech support and getting people in Alabama.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
ABCD .. stands for American-Born-Confused-Desi ( Desi = Indian ) .
When you really want to understand how BPOs work , you should ask someone who worked in BPOs for atleast 2 years. Not from someone , who just walked in 1 day and sees only negative things around him.
I'm sorry ... if I offended the author in motherjones , but the whole article is simply a garbage in itself.
That drove me nuts until somebody told me what it means. The "bobble head" means "I hear you." It's only an acknowledgement that they've heard what you've said and nothing more.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
American Names? so they have names like Pocahontas or Xóchitl
When I call customer support, I really don't care what the rep's name is. (Nor do I care to discuss how my day is going). I care about how efficiently my question is answered by the overall experience (which is ideally resovled before I have to speak to any human at all).
Does anybody care to know what a CS rep's name is? Does anybody believe that there is something to be gained by noting that they spoke to "Randy". These are huge operations -- no surnames?
Given the evident pressure these call centers are on to churn through calls, I am suspicious of the motive behind the folksy facade that they spend their money creating (I know they don't care about the amount of my time that is wasted establishing a familiar rapport with their rep). I suspect that they are more interested in mitigating my expected disappointment, by appealing to sentimentality towards "Randy", who probably has a lousy job and is at least trying to be nice even if he can't do anything for me.
The slots at the call centers are limited and highly sought
He's stealing their jobs?
Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS. > 500.00 USD ( '80;s vintage dollars ) for a word processor, not an office suite but just word processing software.
Outrageous huh?
Perhaps, but you got a 1-800 number AND when you called it, you got an engineer ( more then likely a programmer on call center rotation ) that really knew the product inside and out and would talk to you for as long as it took to solve the problem and that could be formatting, printing, or their extremely powerful scripting language.
Just try calling Microsoft for help with Office, go ahead I will watch and laugh.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
I think Occam's razor has an even simpler explanation, all call centers anywhere are likely to fail at living up to the customer experience the user wants. They're pissed that the service is broken to begin with and troubleshooting is a long and tedious process and there might not be any immediate solutions either. Particularly many residential users are worse than useless at helping you resolve it, as well as extremely impatient because the problem wasn't solved ten minutes ago. I would think that getting shouted at is a common occurrence in US call centers as well.
That you've reached an Indian call center is their excuse to vent, the reason the problem isn't fixed in 30 seconds is now because they've gone with some low cost bidder in India and screw the customer. Maybe you sometimes will get poorer service as well, but I think the primary reason is that they now focus all the negativity around that fact. Like it or not, as soon as people hear "outsourced to India" they think the first, second and third reason is cost. And I can't' really say this article has given me much reason to think otherwise...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
When I stopped asking questions, Shail had one for me. "I have experienced some Americans—please don't mind—they don't like Indians. They act rude as soon as they come to know I am Indian. Why is this?" I stammered something about protectionism, but really I didn't know what to say.
Simply put, nobody likes communicating with people who are.. well... difficult to communicate with.
This doesn't explain it.
American consumers are watching companies abandon customer service and outsourcing these functions to overseas companies that employ call-takers that have no knowledge of the products they support, no ability to do any real troubleshooting, and no authority to give any help at all outside the script on their desk.
India isn't the cause of the problem; it's the symptom. When we call and talk to someone in India, we're not upset at India, we're upset at the company we're trying to do business with, which has let us down. Talking to someone in India is simply the indication that the company we're working with doesn't care about us as customers.
I am sure I will get moded down for this, but "whateva"... (yes I am American)
I am so tired of American IT workers bitching about Indian tech support. First off... It seems that most of the time, the American IT guy bitching about the support he is getting actually has no clue WTF he is talking about in the first place. Second... Why don't you shut your American-I-am-always-right mouth for one second and actually LISTEN. If you are too stupid to realize that your speaking with a person whose first language is not English and you need to slow down, then you're probably fall into my first point.
"These" people that you are speaking with are not trained monkeys. I believe in TFA most of the people he spoke with were top of their class or had higher education.
Calling a company for help and getting a foreign voice is distressing because it tells you that the company doesn't care enough to pay for a same-language support center, so you wonder where else they've cheaped off that is invisible to the initial buyer. Plus, you now have a language issue which is a problem in addition to the one you are calling about, adding to your stress.
American Names? so they have names like Pocahontas or XÃchitl
Sounds like the Asian colonialists.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This article and many other western publication paint the picture that BPOs are the only game in town for young Indians. Not true. Engineers are in very high demand, especially Civil, Mining and Mechanical engineers. College graduates with degrees in commerce or liberal arts also do well depending on the first job they take up. Jobs that service the local market are tougher but have an actual career path. But you won't get to work in a nice air-conditioned office, won't have a car to pick and drop you back and initial pay will be lower than a call center job. Several of my friends who started working for local banks and selling financial products to Indians started off with low pays and jobs that require a lot of enterprise and leg-work. Ten years later, most of them make more money that I do in silicon valley with a respectable 6 figure salary. People (kids really), who end up in BPO jobs get attracted by the initial high salary, party like culture on premises (free food, chicks, parties thrown to retain employees). So can't really blame capitalism for this mess. These young people can chose - start with a good pay and good work environment but boring job and no career path OR start low, work hard but have a viable career ten years down the line.
If you want decent service don't buy the machines from the companies selling at the lowest possible cost. They all out source to India! The local tech may be incompetent too, rude, and so forth. You at least understand what they are saying even if it does not make any sense to you. If you want premium support find someone who works for themselves or a small business that isn't trying to undercut the competition. Sometimes local computer repair shops are operated by owners who are more competent even if they are generally less competent still then we would like. They also speak English!
Tell me about it. I hate calling tech support and getting people in Alabama.
Wait, there are call centers in Alabama? I thought you needed phones for those.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Outsourcing is a emotional subject as many of us have been touched bu it in a very personal way. The two most common themes I have read so far is 1) Names being changed ( westernized ) 2) Most of the people answering the phones are too dumb and don't know what they are talking about. Well there are several reasons that I think may be behind them For Names: 1) Indian names are difficult to pronounce and to make the customers feel comfortable, they choose names that they are familiar with. The same practice is applied in EU also where call centers going to Bulgaria, Romania or other countries try to keep neutral names 2) Second many people get ticked off when they realized their calls are going to some place outside the US. many of these people have a wrong sense of patriotism or are being protectionists. The second part about most of them being dumb 1) Most of the call center employees are young freshers. They don't have too much experience and they are forced to learn and follow a script. 2) They may be providing adequate support for majority of the customers. If a very highly technical person say from /. where to be on the other side of the phone call, I can understand the frustration.
3) Finally the language of technology is universal even, if you happen to get hold of some support person who is technical enough and you would be able to converse setting aside all other differences.
So says an Indian who goes by Rocky.
In India they teach via route memorization, and if it is not a solution that is memorized and requires analytical skill they are next to useless.
They need to teach deductive reasoning techniques. In the US we used to teach this, but now it is nothing but route memorization so they can pass the silly idiot federally mandated tests so the school employees can get their federal government cheese.
And we wonder why we are losing tech jobs t the third world. That and the whole "I am entitled to free crap without working" mentality that pervades our dumbed down youth.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
How about a friendly 'my name is mahasamatman, you can call me "SAM"' (apologies to Roger Zelazny), starting off by lying to me is not going to engender any confidence in what you have to say later.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
The de-culturation in the article is nothing new. My great-grandfather Jarsoslav changed his name to "Jerry" when he moved to the US from Bohemia in 1912.
I think a better explanation is that being connected to an Indian is proof of quasi-fraud on the part of the company we're dealing with. I mean, we bought the product in America from a company that represents itself in our language and culture. They gave us a support number they asserted would be our connection to that company. The we get connected to someone on a foreign continent and we realize they're using a fake name. So that's the catalyst for suddenly recognizing a whole series of lies.
My experiences with American-based call centers are leaps and bounds beyond Indian call centers. As soon as I know I'm talking to an Indian, I can put in the category of (a) really aggravating language issues*, and (b) probably incompetent or even damaging to my equipment.
*And I say this as someone who had native Indian instructors & advisors all through my graduate math program, and had no problem with them. I'm usually about the last person to complain about hard accents -- but call center support is bottom-of-the-barrel stuff.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
People modded you Funny, but I have been there. Talking with somebody whose southern accent was so thick I couldn't understand them, and I'm from Oklahoma. The last thing I want is to call for help and end up speaking to Boomhauer.
Let me share my experience working in an American call center.
no authority to give any help at all outside the script on their desk
DING DING DING! Give the man a cigar!.
Quite often the people setting up accounts with us are outsourcing because the "girl who handles that" or "the lady at the front desk" is taking on additional responsibilities.
When they give us incomplete information or information that indicated that they really have no idea what kinds of procedures the "lady at the front desk" does to handle calls and schedule service (for example), they often given snippy answers like "you'll never get a call like that."
If we do get extra information, we're lucky to know that Bob's HVAC does refrigeration also. We're also lucky to get maybe a quarter of their staff list, so when someone calls up expecting to be transferred to Frank (because that's what the girl at the front desk always did), we don't even know Frank works there.
So all you can do is say, "I can take your name and number and let them know in the morning :)" and just hope your caller isn't going to be one of the really difficult ones.
If the caller is important enough and pissed off enough, then we'll get a snippy email that says, "I have concerns that you don't know how to answer calls. You need to always be doing xyz. And I'm not going to pay for that 20 minute call where the agent politely took toe-curling, foul-mouthed abuse and sexual harassment with a smile in her voice the whole time, either." Usually then one can cross-reference that with the other email where you proactively asked how to handle xyz and got "you'll never get calls like that" as the response.
The problem is nearly always (but not every time) the client. Don't even get me started about when we spend an hour reaching the only person we're allowed to reach only to finally get ahold of them, and either a.) we're never supposed to call them (along with various insults, etc) or b.) they haven't worked for the client in 2 years.
After all, we're just the call center. It's not like we answer their phones 128 hours out of the week.
(That being said, ask yourself who would want to be a call center agent and take abuse 8 hours a day without any way to even answer the caller's most simple questions and why can't they get a fast food job where they're at least doing something tangible, and you get the other half of the picture.)
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
Assuming it doesn't get overused, that actually sounds like a really useful communication tool. A lot of stress would be averted if you knew someone wasn't ignoring you, but rather had never actually heard you (or understood you).
Oh yeah ? "...difficult to communicate with..."
You think you communicate very well ? Many people with English as their native first language can't read/speak/write proper English. And, of course, as if there are no accents here in the US - see "Traveling with an accent" NYTimes June 8 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/travel/traveling-with-an-accent.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm
Likewise, get off your high-horse...
The issue is lots of those names are really really hard to pronounce for native English speakers who have no experience with Hindi.
But that is easily solved by maintaining a facility in the country that you are supporting and hiring locals. Additionally, it makes people feel better about your company and more likely to buy your products.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
That is insightful.
My name is douglas, try saying that in espanol, when I go to mexico I use my middle name, charles ~ carlos.
When in rome.....
Makes sense
Even if in the case of "Prabu", while easier to say, it's difficult to register casually.
I'm sure it's easier to remember a Robert or Ann instead of Asiburiutoru
how long until
My name is 2 syllables and everyone still gets it wrong. The good news when you're talking to an American of Indian descent is that we don't care how you pronounce our names. After years of correcting people and more years after having given up, as long as you don't consciously mess it up, it's fine.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
They have an aversion to saying "no" and end up being vague and confusing.
who are you calling they? take your racist shit somewhere else
i am an indian, i live here and still i hesitate before calling tech support. the problem is that support people assume that i'm completely clueless. another reason is that some companies' call center people (eg, vodafone) speak only scripted lines, the conversation is never natural and gets awkward when i ask a question that is not on their database.
however, some companies do it properly and their support is really helpful. for eg, when i call up the telephone/adsl help center, they give me a choice 'press 1 for issues related to your telephone line' and 'press 2 for issues related to adsl'. if you choose adsl, you directly get to a person who actually knows something about how adsl modems work and can figure out problems. even if the guy is not able to solve my problem on the phone, he sends a person to my home within 1-2 hrs who WILL solve the problem.
so, imo the problem is that most companies choose their call centers based only on cost, disregarding quality.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
no, it is not easily solved. you are forgetting the ONE reason for outsourcing: cost.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Really these call center folks are doing you a kindness by sparing you the embarrassment of having to try and repeat a name that is going to be hard for your say.
Hello, thank you for calling Newcomer Computer Company. My name is Sam Francisco. How can I help you?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
amen. period.
"The profit margin for the company is the driving force."
"Talking to someone in India is simply the indication that the company we're working with doesn't care about us as customers."
I'm hard of hearing. I can barely understand people on the phone as it is with my hearing aid set to telecoil and it's volume up as high as it goes. Then you add those annoying "your call is important to us" announcements (what at 3:00 am?) machine noise, distorted on hold music due to crappy VOIP software (on their end of things, not mine) and after I wait nearly an hour and navigate your useless phone tree I'm supposed to shout at someone who doesn't understand my voice and whose accent is unintelligible by me?
This is not a situation that is going to end well, no matter how patient and well intentioned either party on the line is.
Sadly, what happens nearly half the time is I get someone who is convinced I am mocking them, and roughly a quarter of the time I get someone convinced that I am retarded as well as hard of hearing. That last quarter of the time I get someone who is able to help me and I and they manage to solve my problem quickly and the call ends with both of us happy. That's a seventy-five percent negative experience over and over again.
So, yeah--it isn't anything personal but when you don't understand me and I don't understand you--I'd rather not deal with you if I can help it.
This isn't racism, it isn't political, it is simple demographics. The people of this country are getting older and losing their hearing. Is it any wonder they get annoyed at not being able to communicate at a time they're already feeling frustrated over a technical problem?
--bornagainpenguin
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
So why not say something like "My name is Punjababriu but you may call me Prabu"? I would prefer an approach that doesn't sound so suspiciously like a really bad attempt to fool me. If that sounds too informal, just use the easier but not entirely fake name.
Harvard Professor Robert Putnam's study showed that the more racially diverse a society is, the lower the levels of trust.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/
I'm Australian and was a bit dismayed to read this bit:
"Just stating facts, guys," Lekha began, as we scribbled notes, "Australia is known as the dumbest continent. Literally, college was unknown there until recently. So speak slowly." Next to me, a young man in a turban wrote No college in his notebook.
"Technologically speaking, they're somewhat backward, as well. The average person's mobile would be no better than, say, a Nokia 3110 classic." This drew scoffs from around the room.
"Australians drink constantly," Lekha continued. "If you call on a Friday night, they'll be smashedâ"every time. Oh, and don't attempt to make small talk with them about their pets, okay? They can be quite touchy about animals."
"What kind of people are there in Australia?" a trainee asked. "What are their traits?"
"Well, for one thing," Lekha said, "let's admit: They are quite racist. They do not like Indians. Their preferred term for us isâ"please don't mind, ladiesâ"'brown bastards.' So if you hear that kind of language, you can just hang up the call."
Bloody Aussies. :)
..to read your opinions and get a view of Indians from a different set of eyes. But honestly, the BPO boom is no longer here, many have shut shop, and it is not so lucrative. With many markets opening up, there is demand for other jobs as well. I dont hear about every Tom (aka Tomar), Dick (aka Dilawar) and Harry (aka Harish) joining BPOs. The story in OP, might have been relevant 5 years ago. You know which job is, and will always be, a lucrative job? A job in the government. You wont be fired, like ever. You will only be transferred for your mis-deeds, and maybe a bad notation in your Confidential Report, by a superior, who might be just as apathetic, as you. Maybe you wont get market salaries, but the perks outweigh the package. (Imagine getting a roof in a city like Mumbai, and you know what I am talking about) I know many top-of-the-class engineers who still appear for [UPSC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Public_Service_Commission), just to get a government job, either at the Post Office, the Bank, the Police department, any arm of the government. They are really just fed insecurity by their parents, who had a bleak future, in the dark and struggling times from the 60s to 90s. And the, after around 20 years of service, you are eligible for pension, and get fat jobs in the private sector, because they have served in the Govt. Yup, this is a partial picture of the real India.
You should try spelling out my Chinese name to the Indian on the line.
I was once working from my office and needed to connect to the office VPN. I was online fine, but somehow, my VPN connection wouldn't work. So I called the Help line, and landed w/ a girl in Bangalore.
My PC was connected to the internet via a hub (yup, not a router, not a switch), which I used only so that I wouldn't have to keep disconnecting it to connect to my office laptop (this was before we had Wi-Fi). My PC was on one hub port and on the internet live, but my laptop, which was connected to another port, wasn't. That's what my call was about, since there was obviously nothing wrong w/ my hub.
The lady asked me whether I was connected to any router. I said no (since a hub is not a router), but that I was connected to a hub. She then walked me through several steps, of which nothing worked. Finally, I decided to connect the link connection directly to my laptop and mentioned it to her. She told me that that was precisely what she had asked, and I told her that she had asked me about a router, which there wasn't one. I asked her whether she knew the difference b/w a hub & a router, and continued. And she was a networking support, to boot!
Of course, when I finally took a course in networking, I learned that a hub is a repeater that transmits its signals to all the ports, whereas a switch will do a link layer look-up, while a router will check whether the destination address is within its network. This, however, that 'tech-support' didn't know. Another thing about them - if your laptop actually got through when directly connected, they won't help you work it out as to why it can't go through the hub, or switch, or router.
I've seen more ridiculous outsourcing - in the last place i worked, conference rooms were usually booked, so we had to use Outlook to schedule them, but that itself was where the problem lay. So I tried calling the help line mentioned there, and landed in India again. So now I have to explain to somebody half way around the world our conference room situation - something that they were in no position to resolve, since it depended on checking on the meetings of different co-ordinators in different rooms.
If only they'd outsource only the really less engaging tasks, but leave the more important ones - the ones that require local attention - alone!
"Twitter. Tweet Tweet Tweet. Twitter. Chicken Vindaloo is good to eat. My name is Scooter, I fix yourï computer. Iâ(TM)m a happening guy and a dope troubleshooter. When you call tech support youâ(TM)ll be talking to me. I got more bitches than Mahatma Ghandi. Check the tweets. And E-mails."
Tell me about it. I hate calling tech support and getting people in Alabama.
It would make remembering names easier, they're all staffed by the same family.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Tell me about it. I hate calling tech support and getting people in Alabama.
Wait, there are call centers in Alabama? I thought you needed phones for those.
VoIP+IPoB (IP over Banjo)
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
This is not just true for India, but for most Asian cultures.
I've dealt with Indonesian outsourcing firms and they are always going to say "yes", whether that means "yes I can" or "yes I cant" is an exercise left up to the listener.
For the most part, this attitude comes from the cultural taboo of starting conflict, so Asians will do incredibly complex dances around anything that is potentially going to cause trouble. There are a few notable exceptions (Singaporean/Malay and some filipinos) but for the most part they'll try to avoid conflict (Thais and Chinese are the worst offenders).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I don't know about America but I have found a difference between UK center call staff (on-shore) and Indian/whatever (off-shore) staff. Off-shored staff will always follow the script, it doesn't matter if you have already listed trying everything in the script you will be walked through it. About 60-70% of UK staff will listen to you and will either escalate your call or move to areas of the script you haven't covered. For example when I called O2 tech support about my O2 Router being broken, I took a minute to explain what I had done, they guy agreed it sounded like the router was fried and asked if I could try one last thing.
The other big difference is non-off shored staff will admit to a situation being crap, or the company making a mistake. For example I started receiving strange text messages about my O2 broadband. I phoned them up and found out I was being disconnected because I was a high user, the guy on the phone went through the notes and admitted that O2 had tried to contact me but not used any of the contact details I had supplied (used my land line number instead of mobile and emailed my O2 email instead of my Hotmail, since the mobile side of my account used these imagine my confusion). He agreed the situation was crap and O2 had failed me, he then offered to try and get the cancellation stopped since I hadn't been properly warned.
When a company off-shores tech support I know they are doing it to provide the cheapest possible service and it shows, so I tend to vote with my wallet and leave. I agree not all local support is good but it does tend to be better.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Either they charge you more and in some for decent service, or take less profit and spend some of it on decent service.
But I guess that's the free market in action - the fat plutocrats might argue that you chose to spend your money with them, nobody was forcing you to spend it on them. You could have looked around for a company that has its service staff in your home country and employs local labour...
Where there is any choice I never deal with any firm that exports jobs in this way, partly because they're evading UK employment law by exploiting people in the third world, and partly because the service isn't up to scratch. By putting customer service in the hands of people who can't speak or understand English they're showing sheer contempt for their customers.
When I used to work at a Cisco callcentre in Sydney, Australia I used to deal with 90% Americans, as they would be doing routine maintenance in the middle of the night and it would go wrong.
I had two gentlemen on the phone one day, and one of them goes "Well siree, I must say I'm very pleased that I'm not talking to a foreigner this time!" to which the other guy on the phone says "... you do realise this guy is Australian, right?"
Funniest moment of my day.
Could someone please post the phonetic Hindi for "I work in IT. Please put me through to second line support."
It would certainly solve many headaches attempting to tell a call centre slave that this is the 7th time I've gone through the script, and have already done everything.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
When ever I talk to a support person who is probably off-shore (from the US) I usually ask them how the weather and other things related to where they actually are. They often have interesting things to say. I have tlked to people in India and the Philippines
I don't necessarily think that we dislike Indians; it's more that we don't like Indan call centers. Reaching an overseas (=outsourced) call center sends the message that the company involved cares more about reducing cost than customer service, because if they really cared about helping their customers, they'd employ trained people who could actually help you. A US company operating a US call center, staffed with knowledgeable, friendly reps (I'm talking about you, DigiKey and you, too, Amazon, LL Bean, and even AT&T) sends the message that they are serious about customer service, serious about being a professional, top-line organization. Not to mention the fact that this kind of quality support encourages repeat business.
We recently had a problem with our Kindle. The Amazon service rep couldn't help us, so she put a Kindle tech specialist on the line. He tried a number of things and ended up telling us to send it back, emailed a prepaid UPS label and the entire process took less than 15 minutes. Contrast this with an experience I had with AmEx's Indian call center, where a simple question about the reason for a declined charge involved my getting passed from one rep to another (complete with scripted apologies and requests for my permission to transfer me to someone who could help), with no one able to answer my question.
Nobody likes it when you get their name wrong.
Definitely not true. I am an Indian American. When Americans apologize for mangling my name, I tell them, I mangled many American names too, so were even. Then I go on to explain that India has so many languages and the names have many variations, and Indian constantly adjust the names of other Indian names from other states and regions.
For example, most South Indian names will have an ending in "an" as in Srinivasan or Srinivasalu. North Indians constantly shorten it to Srinivas. Further they would change Srinivas to Shrinivas too. Most Indian names are names of deities or regular feel good words like brilliant, wise, happiness, beauty, etc. So they would translate the word to their own language. Thus Sundaram meaning beauty in Tamil becomes Sundar meaning beauty in Hindi. Some Indian languages do not have separate glyphs for many sounds. For example Tamil has the same glyph which is used for the sounds of "ka", "ga", "gha" and "kha". So most tamils mispronounce the North Indian and English names, substituting ka for ga or gha. Tamil also has restrictions like no word can begin with a double consonant. So they causally stick a vowel somewhere in the first syllabel. School becomes (y)i-school, Pramod becomes Piramod etc.
So name mangling is so common and widespread in India, most of the time it is ignored. But sometimes people joke about it. One comic suggested that "South Indians should start calling the North Indian state of Haryana, Haryan because Hindi newscasters repeatedly mangle the name of the South Indian state of Kerala to Keral".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I was once chatting to some tour guides in Turkey. They said they didn't have any problem with accented English, even from non-native speakers, except for Indians. It appears most everyone thinks they are incomprehensible.
Add in a little culture shock, and common experiences with Indian immigrants in America, and there's sometimes a strong dislike. (Due to differing expressions of cultural values, Indians often appear greedy and corrupt to Americans.) I don't hate Indians or anything, but I generally try to avoid them. It's just uncomfortable dealing with them.
Difficult to communicate with? If you hang up the phone as soon as they say "Hello, my name is Pradesh", you haven't got a clue as to how they communicate. You're simply hanging up based off the simple fact that his name is Pradesh. Racist bullshit, the lot of it.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
But outsourcing doesn't really save any money when you consider the management overhead, erosion of reputation of company, loss of goodwill from employees and so forth.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
When I stopped asking questions, Shail had one for me. "I have experienced some Americans—please don't mind—they don't like Indians. They act rude as soon as they come to know I am Indian. Why is this?" I stammered something about protectionism, but really I didn't know what to say.
The reason I don't like dealing with Indians is most likely cultural. For whatever reason, they assure and assure that they understand my request and will sear up and down that they can take care of it. Subsequent verification, however, reveals that they did not actually understand my request, and they did not handle it properly.
I'm sick of being yessed off the phone, only to have to call back later. So yes, when I become knowing that you are Indian, I get very less happy.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Tell me about it. I hate calling tech support and getting people in Alabama.
I don't mind getting people in rural America. It's a little difficult to understand them, for sure, but they tend to be very nice and helpful.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
But outsourcing doesn't really save any money when you consider the management overhead, erosion of reputation of company, loss of goodwill from employees and so forth.
In a lot of industries, this is true. My wife works for a major credit card issuer and they onshored all of their call centers a while back. I think the numbers were a little different for them, however. Being a financial institution, their security requirements made offshored call centers more expensive.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
"At least you understand that it's not their location or nationality that makes them useless"
Yes, if you are speaking about racism...
But a thick accent is unrecognizable. I can very well discriminate if I don't understand someone. I don't have to be "sensitive" if my complaint is that I don't know what the hell they are saying over the phone.
I don't have the patience to listen to someone repeat the same thing 8 times because I have no idea what they are saying. And I'm a good listener. I've worked with a few Japanese who's English was so bad, I couldn't even make out half the words. I've conversed with Spanish speakers who only used maybe 1/3 English words and exaggerated gestures. But on the phone, it is different. If you have a thick Indian accent, and especially male voices, I don't understand a word. So when I call the satellite company because my box is on the fritz, I now generally hang up and call back until I get the same nice lady from Minnesota, who also has a thick accent, but who I can generally understand.
It's not about being knowledge. The Indian guy may have graduated from MIT. But if I don't understand what he's saying, he's useless to me. I also have problems understanding heavy French accents.
I'm sure the lady from Minnesota sounds like a Martian to the guy from India. Nor would I be good tech support to someone speaking Japanese or Spanish. The point is that support is about relativity. I rather take someone without a clue, but knows my culture and accent well enough to communicate with me.
It is about culture, language, accent, and all that. That's not the same as someone who is simply racist. Relativism is not racism. I want someone who can communicate in a near relative way with me. I don't have "cultural guilt" and feel that I owe another country more patience or consideration than I have for workers in my own country.
I'm sorry, but if I don't understand you, I don't want to have to rely on you, and most likely you don't want to rely on my either.
I'm liberal, but I'm not some weeping, soft belly liberal. I can demand to speak with someone who makes sense to me if the company wishes to have me as a customer. I don't give a damn if that means they close down the call center. And quite frankly, I think people in India can demand the same thing of the services provided to them.
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It was informative as well as an enjoyable read.
I might even venture to call it journalism. nah. Cool story bro.
Very insightful post. I was not aware of all these intricacies between north indian and south indian names
The post and the comments are fascinating to me, largely because the entire outsourcing endeavor is an example of what Dr. Russell Ackoff called "doing the wrong thing righter" instead of doing the right thing. Call centers are an outrage at multiple levels, not least because CEOs are clueless that these so-called cost efficient centers are culturally incapacitated, technically inadequate, and ultimately insane from a business point of view--they degrade and perpetuate a "buyer beware" business ecology instead of Epoch B "customer as design partner" ecology.
Now here's my idea, and it's one that India, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Russia, and others could implement tomorrow: free cell phones for the poor, and call centers that educate the poor one cell call at a time while serving as a national "brain" that can field warning signals, understand the aggregate concerns, and generally serve to integrate and harness the knowledge of the eight tribes of intelligence: academic, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-government/non-profit. Imagine such as center as the hub for participatory information sharing, policy making, and budget oversight, enabling accountability, transparency that eradicates corruption, and trust.
Call centers today are nuts -- the scripts say it all --because they continue to focus on enslaving the rest of the world to serve the one billion rich whose one trillion a year in income is one quarter -- 25% of the annual income of the five billion poor. I've been trying for a few years to get to Sir Richard Branson with a concept for "The Virgin Truth" that would finally create bonded truthful public intelligence as a wealth-creating foundation for a world that works for all. Anyone knows him, tell him his corporate development people simply don't get that free cell phones to the three billion poorest buys the one resource that is priceless: three billion human brains.
Robert Steele
www.phibetaiota.net
The article shows two pictures of Monica Joshi who is totally hot but the article does not mention anything about her. I want to know about Monica!