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!

Regards, Ron

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)

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 !! )

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.

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.