Dell Rep. From India Responds To U.S. ‘Assholes’

Ron, I own a Dell computer. I received it from a customer who had broken it, and asked me to build another for him.

As I think you know, I have also worked on a great many Dells for a Dell dealer or two, and for other individuals. Overall, I must say that I believe that Dell is number two in quality, and about number 5 in service, UNLESS you happen to be someone who is working for a large Dell dealer. If that is the case, you get great support (as great as is possible these days).

When I have had to deal with someone in India, it has most upset me that they ALWAYS use pseudonyms (Bob, Larry, etc.). Then, they all have a cadence and timbre to their voices that makes it hard to understand them (this is especially made worse by the satellite delay and noise - who says digital communications are always better?). They seem to be unaware of it.

Now I might also be unaware of the way I speak to them, and so they might not understand me very well. The differences are that I TRY to be clear without being condescending, and most of them do not.

Having many years in customer service, I understand the difficulties dealing with a disagreeable public, but I have found that by being very clearly knowledgeable, it both allays fears and also removes any reason to attack. The Dell reps in India should be trained in this manner.

A simple change in their tone (most of them have what I call a very sing-song cadence and nasal tonality) and greater knowledge of the systems with which they are supposed to be helping would garner them more praise, and fewer complaints.

(The English speakers could also use much in the way of a knowledge upgrade. I remember working on XPS system with an ATi tv tuner card. I kept getting a yellow exclamation point, saying that the drivers were not installed, and yet I had installed all the drivers that the Dell rep said I needed. After about 7 calls over 5 hours, the guy admitted he had never worked on, or done any troubleshooting on, the machine I was working with. I thanked him for his admission, but was very upset that Dell had wasted so much of my (and my employer’s) time, by making me listen to someone who ultimately had no clue. BTW, the driver was found at Intel, and the route taken by me to find it is not one I’m anxious to ever take again.)

The trouble is, most of the help for the large computer companies is poor. And HP though number one in my book, has dropped quite a bit since the merger with Compaq. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get much better at the component level. I have only one manufacturer that I have never had problems with - Western Digital.

I think the Indian d00d is right.

If we bought the warrentay ovar here we get teh US suport and US dolas.

Thanks for the comments and for the opinions. There seems to be enough blame on both sides of the problem.

I guess it all comes down to poor service is poor service regardless of where it originates from. Yes, the language issue is real and can be extremely frustrating. Having been a Gateway customer for a number of years, I’ve never had a language issue, but can certainly appreciate the frustrations I’m reading in this Blog !!

My pet peeve is when talking to a tech rep who obviously is reading from a script rather than offering knowledgeable suggestions and help. I am fortunate in having a few friends that I can call who probably possess more smarts than most so-called techs. I could go on and on, but suffice to say I rarely make a call to a factory rep. Yes, they do try but many are poorly trained and often give bogus suggestions (guesses) that can in fact cause more harm than good.

I work tech support and I see plenty of dells that can’t be reloaded with factory discs, the really obnoxious reload CD’s that you have to guess which drivers work, and calling dell for replacement discs or parts is like asking a starving man to give you his last bite of food.

I have had dell strait up lie to me, and tell clients of mine that I was supposed to give them something, From a technicians stand point they are a nightmare to deal with. I don’t mind ’second language speaking’ tech support - its not really hard to understand, its the lack of skills and limited options they give.

If having an accent made a difference to me, that would mean I am a bigot. Yes I know that the calls are out sourced, but if you look at the computer market to day - a world where laptops can be bought for 300 dollars, not 1500+ - you can see that the price of cheap computers is support. If you want to pay the higher prices for your computer, then you will get better help.

Most people don’t want to pay for what they want. The age of the internet, on demand TV and the 30 minute pizza have all trained people they can get what they want, when they want, cheap or free. Support people have to make money. To pay that wage, computers have to have larger profit margins, something people won’t pay for, and for that we all suffer.

Good Mornin . Ron
Purdy . Funny . and . I wonder where . this . asshole-is
____________________________________________
“___been working with Dell for 6 years now and in my 6 years long career I’ve encountered countless, complete assholes for customers”
________________________________________________
I Hopin . Dell will . OFFER . TO . BUY . BACK .
My . Dell . thats in the . Closet .
with . It’s . 3rd . DEAD . Hard-Drive

Hi Don - good points.

Hello Jeff - maybe Denny will share with us how we had to lie in return to Dell in order to get his computer fixed.

Good morning Denny - the check is in the mail. LOL

I have not had to deal with Dell support issues but I sure went through the wringer with Dish Network’s India call center a couple of years back. Out of the clear blue, and after many years of issue free reception, I was having channels disappear or not be accessible. I called Dish tech support and spoke to someone with an American name who was nearly impossible to understand. He sent me through a drill of turning things off and on, checking obscure settings I had no idea existed, etc. etc. He determined I needed a new receiver and sent me one. I installed it, drove the 20 miles to a UPS store and sent my old one back. The new receiver started acting up in the same manner. Went through the same drill - TWO more times! On the seventh call, I got a young lady in Nebraska who listened to my problem and said; “I know what your problem is and I’ll send a technician to take care it - no charge!” Guy came out, replaced the LNBF on my dish and I have been back to perfect ever since!

But those 6 other calls to India? Oh … my …. gawd … what I went through! I knew the drill pretty well by the third call and would tell Betty Lou or Danny Boy with the thick accent that I had already done all the things to attempt to get my signal back, but they still sent me through the 15 or 20 minute routine. Either they would get frustrated with me and hang up or want to send me a new receiver - that was all the help I was ever offered. I was one last call from switching to Direct TV, but it was that one young lady located here in the States who knew what the problem was and took care of it in a manner that I expect to keep me as a customer.

Hay . Ron . Sorry . TOP . SECRET . STUFF

Hi Bruce,
I hear your pain. I have been fortunate. When I have had Dish problems I also talked with a state side rep.

For those who don’t know what an LNBF is:
http://www.tech-faq.com/lnbf.shtml

OK Den - I’ll keep mum! LOL

I feel the main problem is that the customer service reps based in india haven’t actually used or seen the product so they have no knowledge of how the product works.
they are trained to only answer from the script book which they have been given.

I have had problems with tiscali uk (internet provider) customer service reps who are based in india. I had problems with broadband and they would only send me in a loop trying to reset my ip, profile etc etc.I even suggested do you think the problem could possibly be the router they had provided to me? no they said.
so I just tried out one of my own routers and lo behold it worked perfectly without any issues.

called them back told them that it was their bloody router that they had provided (they still wouldn’t accept it) so I ditched them and went for o2 broadband whose customer service is based in the uk and havent had any issues since.

btw I am indian and I get frustrated with india based customer service so I can only imagine how pissed off everyone else might be with the cust service.

nuff said

sagar

Hey Ron……..Guess what? My new (14 month old and out of warranty) Dell battery just crapped out! Guess I better watch what I say about those Dellreps…………..

oh yeah forgot to mention
it also ticks me off that they give me anglicised names when its obvious that they are indian. (yes I know some indians have anglicised names but not all of them)

Heh Goose,
Take the money you would spend on a new battery and buy a new laptop. Not Dell of course! LOL

[...] This article is featured on the custom Jobs Blog at Auto-Blogs.us. [...]

[...] This article is featured on the custom Lost Blog at Auto-Blogs.us. [...]

[...] This article is featured on the custom Dell Blog at Auto-Blogs.us. [...]

I work at a shop that’s largely Dell. We get pretty decent support from them overall. Commercial accounts don’t have to call India - the worst accent we get is from Texas

The `language barrier’ is an interesting issue. It’s very easy for either side to call the other an asshole. It’s easy for one side to cry racism. In some cases, it is racism. Overall it’s not.

If I were to guess, I’d say this is the result of the bean counter mentality that pervades business. The techs, regardless of country of origin, are going through a script. I’ve had plenty of clueless techs who were born in the same country I was.

Because they want to save money by outsourcing, they’re not getting the quality the customers would prefer. Most of the foreigners I’ve spoken with are very fluent. They do, however, miss all the social and verbal cues. They are taught to repeat back what you tell them (mirroring), even if it doesn’t really solve the problem.

I suggest that if you’re unhappy with a company’s support, tell them. Don’t take it out on the support people personally. They’re doing their jobs, just like you.

My point of greatest frustration is with Dell’s website. Have you ever had an item `fall out’ of a shopping cart? Have you ever searched for COMPUTER and gotten no results? Searched for a 48 port switch and have 5 port switches come up first? I think the web people get the best pharmaceuticals in the entire company

I don’ t think of my self as a racist and do not have problems with people of differnet countries or cultures being employed by any company in which they are suited and qualified for.
However, I do NOT understand the concept of paying additional money for tech support (especially when you have already invested plenty in the computer itself and one to three year or 4 year warranty) to speak to a North American rep.

In my opinion, it is Dell’s manner of “milking” more money out of a sale. It has the sounds of racisim, sloppy tech support management and worse. How does a Dell employee who happens to be Indian feel when he is peddling this promotion ultimately leading to less of a job opportunity for him or herself.

More importatntly, if you are calling for help because you don’t understand a computer function or malfunction - how does Dell thinks it helps to speak to an individual that you also can not understand? How many consumers have called and been re-routed to multiple tech support people because the person at the other end could not understand the problem presented.

It is so much fun to spend two hours on the phone waiting, reconnecting and repeating your phone number, name, computer serial number, customer order number etc. over and over and over.

I sent a bill to DELL for my time when a rep called the emergency line on my office and then tied up twoo hours of my time and accomplished NOTHING because no one acttually read the original complaint.

I think Jeff hit the truth on the head–what my superior has referred to as the business of “customer sat at a profit”. Dell’s support on the enterprise side has been great for years, but part of this is driven by the fact that it’s well-funded. Admittedly, they should charge more to make even that more robust, but the bottom line is until consumers accept that stable operability over long durations of time (and the occasional bum units) is a product that’s as real as the computer itself and requires funding too.

Guys, Interesting reading the blog, been using dell’s for 12 years, yes a few issues on hardware, but I’ve never had a issue with the service support. - most of the above issues sounds like a bunch of users that haven’t a clue how to maintain there machines. how about some self help before blaming Dell for your lack of knowledge.

I bought my Dell because I was told ‘when you call customer service you will get someone in this country!’ I wasn’t told anything about an additional fee. I have an IT background but for the most part - I bought the product I use the warranty. Simple. Last night, March 19th, 2009, I used the customer service number for the first time since I got my PC about 2 days prior - just to asked a few questions about my network and the computer itself. I have a Studio Hybrid and really love it and just wanted to ASK A FEW QUESTION. Hopefully I made that clear to who ever may think its an issue of just getting frustrated over not knowing how to take care of my machine. INSTANTLY got someone in South India - INSTANTLY got the ‘I don’t feel like being on the phone’ tone - INSTANTLY got a person that didn’t even use English during our entire conversation! It was soo frustrating. I realize how this all works because I work for an India based company to begin with and its horrible! But I make it a point to get to the point, be as clear as possible and still be misunderstood. Just because you can repeat my problem verbatim doesn’t mean you can fix it. I realize that 99% of the customer service staff in India are all doctors of something, however, the English language is not one of them!

I finally gave up, remember this was just a phone call for a question not a tech issue, and hung up at about 10pm eastern. The guy was rude, pretending to not even be on the phone, and almost sounding as if he was asleep! I received a phone call BACK AT 12AM!!!!! Two hours after my call was finished! This is unacceptable. I realize the call back was due diligence - but maybe Dell can teach their $1 / 50.64 rupee a person customer service how to GOOGLE the time difference!

What ever it costs - I buy the American warranty or I buy SONY :-).

Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Regards, Ron

Its been more than three years since I left DELL as an XPS tech support agent( yea m Indian). I would like to share some info with u guys:

When Michael DELL started selling IBM computers in there garage, they promised life time technical support for all customers. This was there selling point. This rule held good for all DELL customers later on till maybe 1995 or 97. After this particular date DELL stopped offering lifetime support.
I used to take calls and was obliged to troubleshoot desktops that were older than this date. Rest of the new systems carried a limited warranty, we forwarded them to paid toubleshooting service if there warranty had expired.

By this time DELL customer base had increased to a much greater no. that it would be impossible to provide technical support to all customers from USAorCanada. And the company went into losses a few times, current market competition, etc. resulted in DELL and many other companies to look for an alternative for support based jobs being outsourced to India, cos its cheap and trust me Indian English is digesteable than Chinese Engilsh (probable competitor to such jobs).
Do u know what DELL techs starting salary is?
$2000 per annum, less than a months pay.

Do you know what the average attrition rate is in DELL India?
>80% p.a.The rest 20% continue hoping for a future. Majority of the employees are newly trained for 3months bfore they hit the floor as agents.

Why so high?
Do you think ur gonna make a big career being a Tech agent for life, serving assholes like you.
I joined dell wen I was in final year Eng jus for the sake of making money and hitting on chicks in the sales dept. I quit in a year and now I am doing phd in UK university.

All m saying is if u really want service then cough up some extra dough for the maAri-can tech service. Else learn to settle with the cheap free service that a cheapass like you should really deserve.

Cheers!

Just to add a few things from my end. I had been with dell for quite a while and to tell you the truth it is not only India but a lot of people in the United states who speak a language which is hard to understand as we all kow the dilect changes every 100 Miles.

The thing beeing that Dell and a lot of other companies have changed their policies to go from customer service to profit earning. In todays time when the world is going into recession the companies are looking for profits. I have seen the part when a customer calls in and is crying but the compinies policy says that you can support only after you have charged the customer. If you do not charge the customer then you get a warning letter and may even loose your job. So if i see it right then it is better that you loose the money then me loose the job. You may be very unhappy and may complain to the the president of US but for me i have to save my job.

As per the part where the Tech had called the americans an asshole. i will say that the abuses is equal from the other end also. The techs are just trying to do thair job and still get a lot of abuses y dont we understand that the policies that have bound the tech is more sevier than the customers. In the US you may be able to sit in the house and get money from your social security but in India it is not so. Even for sitting at home the person has to listen to a thousand plus things of not going to work.

As for the language problem has anyone thought that we are not in the US and English is not our primary language as the Indian languages are not yous. Also as one of the comments mentioned above says that at least you have a better understanding than the english you will be listening to once you get in touch with a chineese speaking person.

Hope we all can make peace here and understand that we all are working for compinies that are looking for profits and not for charity.

I just got off the phone with “Customer Service”… in India. I have been a long time customer of Dell. I ordered another lap top 2 weeks from them expecting it to be delivered within a week or so, two at the most which has been my past experience. This is a standard issue, no customization, off the shelf laptop. I hadn’t heard a word so I check my status today and my laptop isn’t scheduled to be shipped until April 20th.

We will be long gone and on our way north (we’re snow-birds). So, I asked to change the shipping address to our daughter’s. I was told they could not. I said, then I would have to cancel the order. I was told I could not. I then asked to talk to Randhir’s supervisor.

He told me the same thing…I could not change the shipping address, I could not cancel the order. I was told that they will deliver the laptop. They will try 3 times to deliver the laptop. Then the post office will hold it for 5 days and then it will be returned to Dell. At that time, upon receipt of the item back, THEY WILL CREDIT MY VISA!!!! I asked why they couldn’t just cancel now. I was told they could not.

Now, whether or not I would get any more satisfaction from a representative in the U.S., is anyone’s guess, but those people in India are totally intransigent. They don’t even attempt to come up with solutions. They just keep repeating their rote responses ad naseum.

At this point, we will let them deliver the lap top and when it has been returned to them, let them credit our Visa after having had use of our money for probably 3-4 weeks. We will NOT buy another Dell.

Hello Micki
Thanks for sharing your experience with us. I must admit it is unbelievable that they can not cancel an order.

This is a rather interesting blog :), pretty much ran into it by accident and then forgot what I was actually googling for !

Well here’s my two cent’s worth

I have spent about 8 years of my life in the call center/outsourced/BPO industry and have been exposed to various types of business, some of which are Credit card Acquisition, Credit Card Customer support, Technical Support, Classified Ad-space selling,etc…

Some of the things that I have noticed right from the days I was on the phones right up to the time I progressed into management and finally grew to running an entire center , was that it’s never easy when your on customer support because you manage to piss off about two customers out of a hundred and they are the ones that come out in various forums to address their grievances, the 98 other satisfied customers don’t bother to do much blogging or express their satisfaction , and mind you I am not saying it’s alright to have any customers who are not satisfied
I would also like to state that these problems are not exclusive to Indian centers but also exist with our counter parts.
Without naming anyone, lets try and figure out what goes into your computer and where these companies buy their hardware from , Countries like “China”, If you buy all your parts cheap have them shipped over to a country like India where they can be assembled cheap and finally back into the states where the can be packaged what would the label say ? Parts from China , assembled in India, Manufactured in USA ? LOL

As for the name calling I think it’s downright stupid, If you have a problem with a product you liable to get pissed of with who ever is on the phone, weather they are in the USA or The UK or the Philippines or in India !!

As for the Indian call centers I believe that it’s not needed to train your reps so much on being able to speak in an accent as to train them on being able to comprehend an accent, and commonly used words and phrases in the country your trying to provide support to ! ” try a website called http://www.urbandictionary.com this may enlighten you and also perhaps provide you with a good laugh.

So ladies and gentleman, I’m calling it a day since perhaps I’ve had one too many and it’s time to make a couple of booty calls

Have a good one !! :))

I would like to apologize for all the bad experience you’ve had from an indian rep trying to resolve the issue or trying to address the issue.

However , there are certain limitations that are implied by the clients (in this case Dell) on the contact center (or callcenter as you may like it) to improve “Customer Satisfaction” according to them.
And majority of the reps working here also know it is stupid still we have to abide by the rules that are set up by the clients to save our jobs.
Like repeating the issue or as we call it paraphrasing the issue, setting up expectation that we will help them no matter what (even if we know by experience as soon as we hear the issue that this is cannot be resolved and will go for a replacement), going through a steps of stupid procedures before sending a replacement for a dead part (like a dead harddrive), a standard opening and a standard closing etc.
All these things can make us sound scripted, but this is what client demands. So we (reps) have little choice.

However also out of 100 calls i would say 3-4% are ignorant or might have missed a couple of t/s steps (which can be as simple as checking if the cable is unplugged)
50% are not tech-savvy and dont know the difference between USB drive and a Harddrive, or where to plug in a network cable.
there have been calls where if asked “what is the operating system” they answer “Dell”
and these are the majority of calls.
There have been calls where the part is physically damaged (like smashed up or used DVD drive as a coffee-cup tray, which is not coevered under warranty) but customers are not willing to disclose that and want to get a free replacement.
(Read T&C on dell website if you have any doubts about replacement policies) and these routine checks actually help us in identifying these posers.
also manytimes a customer says some part is damaged because he feels so.(e.g monitor when actually DVI or VGA port is damaged). we have to handle them as well.
I would also like to mention we are not actually present near your computer to know what exactly is hapening or know what you did last night on the computer that might have caused it to crash , we have to depend on the way you explain it to us.
We cannot see what you see and yes, I admit we might misunderstand or take somethings for granted depending on our previous experiences with some other customer who is not so tech savvy (maybe some 80 year old lady, yes we do get calls from them as well). But i believe that is human. So if we take about 5 minutes to understand the issue please dont get so angry on us. we are human as well.
So I would request you to keep in mind that we also have limitations in our own ways
I would love to hear some responses for this so that atleast i personally can learn something from these suggestions and hopefully improve customer service standard from my end.

(and please if you can ignore my typos and give some real suggestions)

A rep from infian callcenter,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts with us. I hear what you are saying. Having owned my own computer company I completely understand the problems trying to diagnosis a problem while not sitting in front of the computer system.

Regards, Ron

I bought my first and last Dell product last July. It hasn’t been a year yet and I’ve had three hard drives, a keyboard, touchpad and optical drive replaced. Tech support is awful because most technicians are very generic and don’t seem to have an idea of what I’m talking about. I was supposed to have a replacement (finally) sent out in 10 days and that was three weeks ago.

I don’t have a Dell– But I just dealt with an Indian Tech Support for a Major Corporate Website for electronic billing. And I hit the “I can’t UNDERSTAND HIM” wall.

And what astounded me was that YES, the fellow spoke english, with reasonable facility. There was no overbearing accent. (My office deals with a lot of immigrant russians– their accents are way worse!) Yet there was something weird happening. I heard each Word, and understood them each INDIVIDUALLY, but when the Rep completed his sentence, I was hit with the INCOMPREHENSIBILITY of it. What he said, altogether, didn’t make SENSE somehow.

And it didn’t help that when I ask him to repeat, his voice got LOWER. This something else other people have noticed, too. It’s like when stress goes up, Indians speak MORE QUIETLY and their voice goes Flatter, making matters worse.

Before anyone hits me as a racist– I was intensely puzzled and dumbfounded by the experience. And I reminded of the one time I met a Brit guy when I was in college. I remember that Whenever that fellow got MAD, it became hysterical for the rest of us in the dorm because WE COULDN’T UNDERSTAND HIM! And he was Speaking ENGLISH! But he wasn’t using, I Guess, American Tonality. And the fact that we were laughing made him speak faster until all we heard was gibberish. Except the gibberish was ENGLISH.

What I’m getting at is the possibility that URDU, the native Language of these guys is a very Sing-song, Tonal Language– like Chinese. But the WAY THEY train themselves to speak English is by tonally OVER NEGATE-ING some innate English/American Tonality whose absence to an American Ear– Confuses us. Like they are TOO FLAT. Like if someone Spoke a Question– but didn’t finish the question up that Upward Quirk at the end that denotes a Question. You would hear the question. You would KNOW it’s a Question, but it wouldn’t make SENSE without the Upward Question Quirk at the end.

For example– try to say “Where is the Car?” in a complete MONOTONE. NO quirk. NO Upward Lilt. NOTHING. Try to say it like a bad Computer voice program. You’ll find it’s very hard. Except, I think for the Indian Customer Reps, their problem is the OPPOSITE.

Anyways, that’s my take. That being said, I will call back the website Tech Support– and hope to God I get someone from the Midwest!