Ne hablo pas Espanol

[afreak2600.livejournal.com]

(I am sure that my attempt at Spanish here is terrible)

One of the lovely issues that come up from time to time is do we support $LANGUAGE? We're based in Canada, so we could support French alongside English and we do have a few employees in Montreal, but our official policy states English. Because we have contracts in the United States, we get asked from time to time if we have anyone speaking Spanish in our office, to which I reply "no." In most cases, they're happy to speak English with me, and to be honest, the majority who ask actually speak the other language quite well.

However, this call was pretty terrible. Keep in mind, I don't remember what the literal translations worked out to here.

User: Do you speak Spanish?
Me: Nope. We only have English support available.
User: Okay. I cannot get online.

So I run through some basic diagnostics and determine that it has nothing to do with us.

So we then start to look at the likely suspect.

Me: What errors do you see when you open up Internet Explorer?
User: The remote computer is not responding to a connection.
Me: What versions of Windows do you use?
User: Windows XP Home Edition.
Me: Okay...
User: It's the Spanish version.

At this point, I know it is going to be painful. Just imagine computer errors like "limited or no connectivity" or what have you in Spanish and have them translated to English. Needless to say, this was a frustrating call and she was not a very patient person. Half-way through the call, I get this:

User: Why don't you offer Spanish support?
Me: Because we only offer English support.
User: That is not right. There has to be a reason.
Me: We are not mandated to speak Spanish, nor do we have Spanish-speakers here.
User: I think that I will cancel my service then.

I checked her account today because I recalled her name, and she's still around. In fact, she has called twice since and apparently she installed English Windows XP.

Comments

[taleya.livejournal.com]

............god, I'd love to know the logic of a fucktard's brains.

"I speak english! You don't speak spanish! I am going to cancel my account!"

ON WHAT PLANET DOES THAT MAKES SENSE??

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

Try in Quebec and replace Spanish by French.

:-)

[afreak2600.livejournal.com]

At least in Canada, French is an official language and if you're operating in Quebec, having no French support would be highly stupid.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Not to mention against the Language Laws that Quebec has.

Honestly, I pity a Seller of English-Language Books in Montreal.

In Quebec City, there wouldn't be any. They'd be tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail... If they were *LUCKY*!

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but at least you have two official languages!

[canray.livejournal.com]

Yep! English and Newfie!

...

...

*OH*! You said "Official", sorry.

[taleya.livejournal.com]

(and now I have an urge to watch Lexx. Damn you.)

[canray.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of (dis)service!

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

On the planet where paying for English-only support for a Spanish-language product doesn't make sense.

I'd be annoyed if the support techs couldn't figure out my error messages, too.

[canray.livejournal.com]

I was in a small department that served a very large portion of the US.

No language line at all, English only. Translators needed.

I know two languages, English and Bad English.

Some of the Spanish-Only people were *RIGHT* pissed off about that.

[abstrak-tokatl.livejournal.com]

Sí tu España sta malo.

[dkphoenix.livejournal.com]

I took a call once where the guy didn't want a Spanish speaking tech, he thought his English was plenty good enough. (Sweet Zombie Cthulu on a Hydrogen-Cell Pogo Stick, it wasn't.)

Another time, at a later job, I got stuck with a support email, sent from Brazil, entirely in Portuguese. Do you have any idea what Babelfish does to "the media converter will not auto-negotiate"? It isn't pretty, let me tell you.

[turningallblue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, those moments would cause me to wince.

Cx: My computer, it not working. The Internet no work.
Me: Okay sir, we can take care of that for you. Before we start, would you be more comfortable with our Spanish support line?
Cx: No, no, I okay, I okay.

Bear in mind that I speak Spanish, but because I was working English support I could not use it, not even to tell a caller I was transferring them to Spanish support. Why? Because the people who monitored our calls weren't bilingual, and they couldn't tell if I was saying something naughty to the customer.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

Ne...pas is a french thing. Ne hablo pas is just soooooooo wrong. The baby Jesus is crying.

[keithdok.livejournal.com]

"So I run through some basic diagnostics and determine that it has nothing to do with us."

Why did the call continue past that point? "Not Our Fucking Problem (said preferably more diplomatically). [Click] [Move on to next call.]"

[afreak2600.livejournal.com]

Policy dictates that we at least help them get their computer connected. We have basic routines that we can help a user with if their computer will no connect. We will not, however, help them fix their computer beyond reinstalling drivers and checking network settings.

[brothersterno.livejournal.com]

It's "no hablo espanol." the frenchie stuff is just frosting.

I have cow-orkers who speak spanish. East LA spanish. It's funny when someone asks to speak spanih with them, because they know a lot of bad words. There used to be korean language support available, but that guy moved to las vegas.

[attackgypsy.livejournal.com]

We service parts of New York City and all of New Jersey, so it would be suicide for us NOT to have foreign language support. We can do just about any common language out there. We're a big cable company, so SOMEBODY in the company has to speak the language.

We have a dedicated Spanish queue. The only problem is that its a bit understaffed right now. And when they wait too long in that queue, they roll over into English.

It used to be a callback in 24-48 hours.

That was 9 months ago.

Now its a 1 hour call back.

Guess that's what happens when your Call Center Director family is from Mexico.

[justwalker.livejournal.com]

English may be the language of the majority in the U.S., but we have no official language. You may already know that, but many people forget or assume otherwise.

I'm in Florida, and you just can't operate a call center here without offering a Spanish line. Thankfully, there's no shortage of Spanish speakers in Orlando. I've even taken a few calls in French and Chinese. (Not very successfully with the latter, but between their broken English and my broken Chinese we worked things out.)

[harry-whodunnit.livejournal.com]

With us, it was Chinese. All the immigrant callers wanted to know why we didn't offer Chinese language support. It was because there are eleventy-some dialects and even the Chinese techs who worked there used to pretend they didn't know any of them.

[davesmith42.livejournal.com]

Once, a customer brought in his laptop, and I set it up to use my then-employer's dialup Internet service and Outlook Express, despite the fact that the whole machine was in Japanese. All the prompts are in the same places, all the choices in the same order. I'd hate to do it over the phone, but in person, it was actually relatively simple.

[afreak2600.livejournal.com]

Well, for the record, I use my computer in French, and I tend to agree. However, over the phone, it sucks. :)

[mariasama16.livejournal.com]

This makes me grateful we have a language line, though I do wish some of our customers would take advantage of it more *wince*. Reverse of your problem, the company I support has their world headquarters here in the US, the call center is here in the US and gee... a large majority of the north american domain (thankfully, all that we support here) are also in the US. There are a few canadian locations, with french language computers, but luckily, command prompt uses the same commands regardless of language and they can figure out what I need them to click. Having a customer get indignant because their problem is low priority, its Thanksgiving Day in the US and the people who can work on the problem won't be in until Monday morning is also quite fun. Especially when they already knew it was a holiday when they called in.

(Admittedly, that's better than the annual call from the International Help Desk asking us to do something that we have no ability to do, but should be standard for them).