January 25, 2007

Dear Meowers, in response to your last comment,

Once upon a time mama called for computer help to a toll free number that came with her computer. It was still under warranty. The lady, who gave her an American name, was in a call center in India. Mama had some problems understanding her, but she followed her instructions, albeit (that's a word, mama?) hesitantly, and asking for a lot of repeats, and I don't understand, could you please simplifys. When mama's computer was totally dead and mama was even more upset than when she first called in, the lady hung up.

The company that mama worked for before the school sent their customer service calls to India. People were told to pick an American sounding name, and tell people, if asked, they were from the east coast call center (USA calls went into the switchboard there and were transferred to India, so technically they could say that). Genevieve, Oscar, what ever name they used, was not really their own. Just a "customer friendly" one.

Oh, the ending of our computer problems? Mama called back, and this time got someone in Georgia, with a good old Georgian accent, who basically walked mama through putting her computer together again. And, although it didn't probably make any difference, mama reported her first rep. She really got lucky getting the second one to help her out.

Even on line tech help will use generic names. I guess that way, if they do something wrong, they can't be traced. I think that is the real reason. And "Joe" may be used by many people.

Today mama tried ordering food on line again, and she knows she did not screw it up as much as they screwed it up for her....

Well, as my mama says, off the soap box.

love, headbumpies, purrs and scritchies,
brandi

11 comments:

Just Ducky said...

That happens lots. Mum worked with people who did the same thing. But if there were complaints about them, she worked with them to make it better. Speak slower, make things simple.

Plus some of the companies that have the centers in India even teach their employees to speak with American or British accents so they sound 'local'.

Anonymous said...

at one place where our Lady worked, the person you called for complaints used the name "Joe King", as in "joking". our Lady didn't think it was funny at all.

Zippy, Sadie, Speedy and M'Gee said...

Yup, momma calls sum of da beans she works with dumasses. She thinks it's redikulus dat she sumtimes hasta walk a bean thru how to do THEIR jobbie. And lots of times dey blame der mistakes on her, but dats o.k. cuz she keeps reely good rekords of stuff and if sum bean tells her to do sumfing and she knows it's gonna be wrong she will tell dem she can't do it unless they email her or fax it on der letter head (whateffur dat is) and she keeps da copy. Her old bossy man taut her dat he called it "covering yer butt". We want sumbean to hire yoor momma reel soon. We'z been purraying and purraying for dat.

Max said...

That's why the Woman, even when her system was under warranty, took it to geeky kids at Best Buy when it started shutting down on her. She needed to be able to understand when the kid said very slowly GO...GET...CAN...OF AIR...AND BLOW...THROUGH...THE VENTS...

Tara said...

My Mom got lucky when she was having problems getting the local DSL service to work on her laptop. The nice lady was on the phone for almost an hour with Mom and did finally get it working! Mom was quite impressed, and sent a thankyou email to the company. So there are good ones out there.

Dragonheart, Merlin, Devi, and Chloe said...

My dad says that a lot of companies have placed their call centres in India because it's a lot cheaper. Very sad for the people in North America who lost their jobs because of it but good for the people in India who now have jobs.

I hope your mom finds a job soon. We (me and my humans) are keeping her in our purrayers.

Daisy said...

That makes me mad!

ANGEL ABBYGRACE said...

When we had to call to renew our satellie radio we got someone in India too. IT took over an hour to just sign up and pay for another year worth of service. Then they overcharged her and when she had to call them back they kept trying to tell her the double charge was right. She finally got through to them and they said they would 'fix' the problem. But Momma said to herself...I'm gonna be sure and she called the credit card company and spoke to someone here in the US!

Mr. Hendrix said...

hi! we have run into that so ofter! i don't mind calling to india, but i have to be able to understand the instructions and accent! after all, i'm just a kitty! my daddy's work has their entire IT dept in india so whenever they have computer problems, it takes forever to fix. you have to have problems for a certain amount of time before the onsite IT dept is even allowed to help!
ooo that give me an idea! we have a catalog company that takes the customer service calls in our area and they are really big so they are always hiring (frontgate). maybe you have one close by you or something like it. mommy's neighbor worked there and also got big discounts! they don't always place ads, but are on monsterDOTcom or something. Your mommy could help lotsa people and she'd be nice!
puurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs and snuggly thoughts to you sweet brandi

Shaggy and Scout said...

Mom worked at a call center here in Minneapolis. After the company grew bigger they built a call center to help handle the extra calls.....in North Dakota. Now there is about as plain an accent you can find! And they are nice & freindly.

Skeezix the Cat said...

That same thing drives the Food Lady insane. She gits perturbd win thare sintaks is all weird, and win they don't pay attenshun to whut yoo say, they just give yoo a canned response. She sez she'll never buy a Dell becuz of that. But she was an english majer too, so she's sensitiv to stuff like that.