English please?

[methedras.livejournal.com]

We just received this email from our Customer Service department :

Hi Guys

I have received a request from the above account to cancel the account

Customer is aware of fees and charges that will imply on the ancaltion of the broadband contact

Many thanks

Customer Service Rep



After a brief moment of thinking "what the fuck is an 'ancaltion'?", we realised that he meant cancellation. That just isn't forgiveable, even as a once off.

The quality of front line reps in customer service being hired by large companies is just dropping lower and lower. No wonder they love sending jobs to India.

Comments

[docskurlock.livejournal.com]

Oh My God. How in the hell do you get ancaltion out of cancellation?

This is one of my pet peeves. I've seen this in online areas, such as WoW and other areas. Basically, a large disregard for *attempting* a proper spelling, or even proper grammar usage. There are so many runon sentences with no punctuation that I want to scream. I know I don't always get it perfect, but I *try.* This idiot should be sent back to grade school so he can learn his abc's all over again.

*sigh*

[methedras.livejournal.com]

To add insult to injury, the guy placed the following in the subject field :

Brad band Cancelation and cancelation of contract

[docskurlock.livejournal.com]

Oh come on. How educated is this guy?

That's just horrible.

[methedras.livejournal.com]

Well, the customer service guys aren't of the highest intellectual calibre unfortunately.

Something that amused me is that we have a group named TAG - Technical Assistance Group. One rep spoke to me the other day in regards to a customer's DSL connection being completely down.

I asked "Oh, ok, has the customer performed a power-cycle of their equipment yet?" to be replied with "Uhh... sorry... don't talk technical to me, I don't know what you are talking about."


Ummmmm...

[docskurlock.livejournal.com]

Oh man that's just horrible. How do these people get these jobs?

[methedras.livejournal.com]

I blame HR.

[docskurlock.livejournal.com]

I think we should nuke the HR's of the world.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Uughhh.. Dude, get me a job in TAG.. I'll be running the place in a couple of days.

[methedras.livejournal.com]

See... I think these guys deal more with telephone faults than internet related stuff. Making sure that exchanges are configured for customer preselections and that sort of shit, but come on, that title just implies some some knowledge of hardware.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

It doesn't really matter about the particular technical details being dealt with, the point is that they said "Don't get all technical on me".

First off, that's just pure customer.

Second, this displays a mindset unwilling to deal with details or to learn new things. Anyone who was doing their job would say "What do you mean by powercycle?".

Ignorance is forgiveable, wilful ignorance is not.

[methedras.livejournal.com]

Well true. If you want to deal with telephone related work rather than internet, I can keep an eye out for the next position. Though you will have to work in the Darling Park building... and wear corporate asstire.

[tmercenary.livejournal.com]

TAG should be an acronym for some of the tech teams around here. We've got dozens of specialists, desk side support, and 2nd level groups that love to throw tickets back to fist level support out of pure spite sometimes. Other times a lack of desire to do the work that they support. Watching some tickets where the issue borders two groups specialties bounce back and forth is amusing to say the least, (Say nobody can say for sure if it is a router or server issue. Neither team wants to check thier equipment until the other group does their checks first.)

[saintrigger.livejournal.com]

If you are going to pick apart en e-mail for typos and spelling, then you must understand that the words you are looking for are "realized" and "forgivable".

To err is human, to mock is tech-support.

[saintrigger.livejournal.com]

this is where you jump on my typo ;)

[methedras.livejournal.com]

Heh.

I em not en da mood. =P

[codedigital.livejournal.com]

EN!!?!?!! Damn you! :-P

[invader-kitty.livejournal.com]

Actually "realised" is correct in this instance, methedras is in Australia and that's how we spell it here. :)

[methedras.livejournal.com]

Haha I'll pay 'forgiveable', that's pretty bad. Though 'realised' is the correct spelling in these 'ere parts.

[saintrigger.livejournal.com]

CURSE YOU AND YOUR GOOFY NON-STANDARDIZED SPELLINGS! Conform to american imperialistic spelling treatsies! Mr.. OOOOo look! Christmas is my favorite SUMMER holiday! ;)

Seriously, you guys in Oz are having trouble with off-shore outsourcing too? How many jobs can India support?

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

The colour and flavour of your comments is quite humorous.

<3 UK's redundant "u"'s.

[methedras.livejournal.com]

Hahaha we are standardised! America is the only country that uses z in those words, and doesn't include the 'redundant' u's.


Ummmmm I haven't seen/heard too much of it occurring here in Australia, though one of the two major telecomm's here, Optus, is starting to send alot of their DSL/Cable support jobs to India, and I think maybe some of their other customer service teams... which is really disappointing because I always found them to be a better company than the bastard that tries to monopolise the rest of the country, Telstra.

[swwinchester.livejournal.com]

*coughs* They get what they pay for, and they pay a little bit less than McDonald's around here.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Check the amount of calls being processed fully and correctly first time. It's interesting to note that over a certain salary range, the number of correct calls per dollar remains about the same.

This being the case, a smaller number of high-powered and high-paid techs can do the job of a boatload of incompetant burger-flippers, but with less overhead, less office space, less delay to go look up stuff they should already know, and less customer runaround.

Additionally, office morale and confidence jumps due to the higher average competancy, and team problems find faster solutions. There's less HR overhead for the management, less frustration and stress-related time off work, and the techs are more willing to go that extra mile.

The problem is communicating this to the kind of manager who thinks more staff = more budget = always better, even if the majority of said staff are drooling wastes of space employed solely to shuffle paper and fill in forms.

[swwinchester.livejournal.com]

I wish we HAD that kind of management around here - I am currently NOT working in tech fields, but rather, operating as a Pharmacy Technician and working on getting my license in that field (WITH my employer paying to get me said license).

Reasons?

No one was willing to pay me remotely what I am worth as a technician. I'm a desk-side / hardware specialist by training, complete with a Buddha disposition, and WAS working on expanding my skills sets, but I couldn't find anything that would pay me even 2/3 of what I was making as a Geek Squad in-store tech.

Those places that were even LOOKING for technicians were no less than a 6 hour commute each way from here. Relocation is not presently an option I have, so I was effectively screwed.

And so, I'm currently re-inventing myself to survive the economy I am in. Will I ever tech again? Probably not, in all honesty - I've got a good 7 year's worth of work ahead of me to reach the top in this field.

[tmercenary.livejournal.com]

No kidding.
Several of the people around where I work constantly complain they are being outsourced. I tell them "Have you seen how crappy the tickets you take are? They aren't much better then what the reps in India are doing."
That sets them off, so I tell them, "Do a good job, so when they compare outsourcing more, they have to see the terrific work being done state side to prove that the more money they spend, the better service being provided."

[methedras.livejournal.com]

Hah, that's a very good point.

We get some terrible tickets logged here.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

This is exactly why a real-time spellcheck module was shoehorned into our ticket logging system. There was a time such an addition would have been rightly derided as a waste of money. These days, I am only grateful that the torrents of egregious illiteracy are at least partially countered.

Spellcheck is not always the answer

[yduras.livejournal.com]

I have a friend we had to make stop using spellcheck, because he'd always agree to whatever the first suggested word was, whether it was right or not. And he typed badly enough that the spellcheck guesses were not reliable. This meant that we would have to think "OK... what misspelling of what word could have caused spellcheck to make that guess..."

Re: Spellcheck is not always the answer

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Ah. I see a need for "intelligence check", or at least "coherency check".