No Way Bombay

[hopjohn]

Have you ever tried to speak with a company that outsources their customer support to India? I'm no racist and have nothing against the very wonderful citizens of their nation, but I cannot understand a word of their so called English. This is particularly frustrating when you are speaking about things which are often technical in nature and can be difficult to explain even when there are no communication barriers. Throw in a middle eastern accent and shazam you have instant chaos.

In one instance I was so frustrated I actually told the guy I was speaking with that I simply could not understand him. After he disputed that it was not that difficult, I had to do my best not to blow my top. Apparently he misunderstood my use of the word "understand". He seemed to think I meant that I did not understand the procedure in which he was attemting to explain. I on the other hand did not feel I would have difficulty understanding the procedure had I been able to understand the words in which he was so grossly mispronouncing. And in order for me to make him understand my definition of understand it meant it was going to take a tremendous amount of effort to make him understand that the understand I was using was not understood by him. No further explanation of the procedure would be understood until I could understand someone else who could be more easily understood. Unfortunately the replacement was even more difficult to understand than his co-worker, at which point I began to understand that no one was going to understand anyone elses understandings, which is why I posted my experience here in an attempt to be understood.

 

[malvado78]

LOL. I very much concur. Just FYI though Bombay is in India and I believe woul dbe considered Far East not Middle East.

 

[anamorphic96]

Agreed. I have had to deal with my DSL provider several times and its a very frustrating procedure. Very frustrating.

 

[Mr. Lamb Fries]

Did you notice they ALL seem to have "All American" names like mark or steve? Do they think that is going to fool us?

 

[racquetman]

Did you notice they ALL seem to have "All American" names like mark or steve? Do they think that is going to fool us?

You mean that guy I talked to that sounded like Apu from the Simpsons and said his name was Mark really wasn't American!!??

Speaking of Apu, if you can tell me his last name without looking it up, you will get a well deserved chicklet from me (but you will also need to get out of the house more).

 

[nibhaz]

Capitalism at it's finest!

I understand were you are all coming from and there is only one way to prevent the outsourcing of customer services, or production for that matter. And that's to voice your opinion in the only way companies listen...with your money. Don't give your money to these companies and they may take notice. However most American’s could careless about how or where something was made as long as the price is right, so it may be a mute point, or it may provide a new market niche for entrepreneurs and boutique companies to fill. Ah, capitalism isn’t it great!

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

Speaking of Apu, if you can tell me his last name without looking it up, you will get a well deserved chicklet from me

Hapasapenpattapessalon.

 

[Mort Corey]

Just having a service call center in the country doesn't guarantee any better service, or better level of communication, in my experience. There are a lot of American dialects that I find hard to understand. There is also no shortage or morons (sorry, for lack of a better word).

Mort (who's been dealing with the local phone company recently)

 

[racquetman]

Hapasapenpattapessalon.

Good effort, Rock&Roll Ninja, but not quite. You may have the number of syllables right though!!

 

[RJB]

Good call Mort!

I have to agree with you on that 110%

 

[rgriffin25]

Avoid HP! It took me nearly a month to get a hard drive replaced in my laptop. I will say it was a direct result of Hopjohn's comments. Problem communicating with the out sourced help.

Recently I saw a commercial by HP bragging on how great their service is. Talk about a slap in the face.

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

STREEM, a call-help company that wors for whatever company hires them that month opened a location last year near here. With hardly a fer-in-er among them. Last I checked they were doing Win XP troubleshooting.

 

[mustang_steve]

I got annoyed when I had to call in for product support on a server a few yers back.

When I heard the thick accent, and the speech patterns that screamed "Hi sir, I am reading a script for you!", I felt part of my soul try to commit seppuku.

What followed was pretty bad. To get the story straight, what happened was we had a server with dual-processor capability, but one of the CPU modules (P3 Xeon) conked out. I managed to verify that the board was fine, using scraps from the IT junkbin...but I had to get them to get me a new CPU. Keep in mind I was a certified repair tech for that brand of server at the time, but for warranty repair, I still had to call in...however for some reason the direct contact number we had now went to generic support.

(my quotes are in 'these', his quotes are in "these"
'Yes, this is Steve _____ , service tech ID # _________, service account # ________ we have a server, serial ________, which needs a new secondary CPU due to failure, a PIII 1ghz Xeon.
"we don't support that".
'what, how can you not support your own hardware'
"what hardware"
*bonk!*
'I was talking about a processor'
"so what's the problem"
'the second processor on this system is not functioning'
"oh, you have to make sure the software is designed for dual-processor applications"
'I know that, I mean the second processor is dead'
"what do you mean by, dead?"
'it won't work, at all. I have to remove it for the system to boot'
"are you sure this processor is compatible with your hardware?"
'dude...(the manufacturer) shipped it to us with these processors...of course it's compatible'
"uhh...."
*long pause*
"sir, have you checked to be sure the processor is fully seated"
'yes'
"can you reseat all PCI cards"
'easy, there are no PCI cards, everything is built-in to the mainboard'
"is it done yet?"
*sigh*
'yeah it's done'
"so does it work?"
'no'
"hmm...."
'may I be so bold as to make a proposal?'
"what do you mean?"
'how about you escalate this so I can get this done with, it's 3am over here, and I really need to get this done with so I can get home, and get 3 hours of sleep before I get here for a meeting on why this server has went down.'
"I can't do that sir"
'why not?'
"I just can't"
'can I talk to a supervisor then?'
"he's busy right now"
'what's your full name again'
"Wayne"
'Wayne what?'
"wayne"
'nevermind'
*click* (I hung up on him...)

I ended up having to get the server up using underpowered CPUs and having to do another service the next weekend with the replacement part. Needless to say we dropped that comapny after I got chewed royally and they lost about 3mil in annual business over a poorly trained support person that didn't listen, and refused to escalate when he ran out of ideas.

Amusingly enough, from what some of my friends in other companies said, they went back to US support for corporate accts soon after. I guess there were quite a few people that got chewed over it.

I also had great offshore support experiences, it's all a matter of training. In the above case, they probably drug some guy with no education beyond primary school, dropped him in front of a computer, and showed him how to use the automated system. Script readers are by far the worst types of support...anything beyond the norm, and you are pretty much stuck downriver without a paddle.

Trained offshore, OK....untained/scripted any-shore, not OK.

 

[nibhaz]

Trained offshore, OK....untrained/scripted any-shore, not OK.

That's the real problem! Well said, good man, well said indeed!

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

And so the master plan is working perfectly...........

Evil Corporate Lackey: "Sir, our new product is extremely glitchy, theres a 96% chance of software failure in every unit."

Evil Corporate CEO: "Hmm, we need something to distract the consumers from our errors in producing this poorly designed and cheaply built product."

ECL: "Maybe we ould disable the features that don't work?"

ECC: "No, those 733t haxx0r$ will reable them day 1. We need a firewall that is so perfect people will not care about us once they come up against it."

ECL: "Maybe we could get illiterate Florida welfare moms to run the phones?"

ECC: "No, we tried that three years ago, some of them learned to read and a few of them were actually fluent in Spanish."

ECL: "How about we more tech support to some backwater country. Not only will none of them speak English fluently, its practically guaranteed none of them will comprehend spanish, nor will any of them have first-hand knowledge of what our product even is!"

ECC: "My god thats genius! You're simply too smart to be my lackey. You're fired, I'm replacing you with a recent college graduatethat will work for 32% of your wages."

ECL: "oh boss, you're hilarious!"

ECC: "No, seriously, get out of my office."
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