baxter, speak english, i can't understand you!

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

i love languages and linguistics and other cultures but please, for the love of god, if you're going to call tech support, you must be able to speak english and understand what "forward slash," "capital letters" and other such technical terms mean. honestly, it is hard enough to explain this stuff to NATIVE english speakers, and i already have to repeat myself at least ten times to get them to the right website. but if you don't even have the basic linguistic understanding to parse the sentences i am saying, how am i supposed to help you?

i know this sounds horribly racist, but it's true. of course, the flipside of this is outsourced (to bangalore) tech support, and the customers not being able to understand the techs. i'm all for linguistic diversity, but some level beyond basic language skills needs to be in place for us to be able to understand each other. this is why, despite the fact that i can speak spanish, i don't take calls in spanish -- because i don't have the technical vocabulary.

grr.

Comments

[toxico.livejournal.com]

Users always complain of the same thing, and unfortunately as you mention the flip side is true. It takes a higher-than-usual amount of patience to adequately deal with users from a different culture.

One of our biggest pet peeves here is probably something interent to a culture - or maybe just inherent to an international phone connection - that really nothing can be done about: some callers from Eastern cultures will follow every sentence with "Hello?" and tend to interrupt a lot. Sometimes we're lucky if a whole sentence gets finished.

"Yes, I'm having a problem with my Excha -- Hello?"
"Yes, I'm here; go ahead."
"I'm having a problem with my Exchange server, do I need to send you anything? Hello?"
"If you don't mind, send me the log-"
"Hello?"
"...yes, I'm here. Send me the log file in the-"
"Okay, I will send you a log file, which one and what is your email address?"

I'm usually okay with these scenarios; others that I work with will usually need a smoke break after one of these.

[lrdjester.livejournal.com]

This also applies internally.

We have a few employees for whom english is a second language. I do not fault them for that. What does bother me is the ones that after several years of working here are still no better equiped to converse with any complex language skills.

My observation over the few jobs I have had that many ESL individuals do not practice thier skills. Thier sole, or nearly sole, interactuion with others using english is on the job or in class. Othertimes they surround themselves with others whose native languagfe is the same and that is what they speak. As a result, accents do not fade and vocabulary and comprehension skills do not improve as fast as they might, if they improve at all.

[stainsteelrat.livejournal.com]

A company I used to work for tried outsourcing their tech support to Bangalore... only after 2 years of it they gave up and closed the office, the quality of staff there was just atrocious.

[trayce.livejournal.com]

I once had a support call from a lovely opera singer visiting Melbourne - French was her native language and her windows OS was a French one as well. She was so good humoured about it. My french consists of "yeah I think I remember "can I have a hotel room" from high school, so with a lot of giggling and patience we compared menu locations and eventually got her sorted out. I didn't mind that language barrier at all :)

OTOH, when I lodge a support req for my own domain with my domainhosts for an email problem, I expect it to be sorted, not to get a response after 3 requests and 2 months that says in very VERY broken english "have you checked your settings" *bangs head on desk*

[trayce.livejournal.com]

I've been hearing stories like that a bit recently - companies having to admit Indian outsourcing is a failure because of things such as your example, and also some level of corruption and security breaches (staff selling client passwords and personal info to unscrupulous spammers and suchlike). Saw a news article abt this some months back, Aus company saying they will flatly never outsource to India again because of the risks.

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

oh man, i love your pancake bunny.

anyway, yeah i don't have too much of a problem with thick accents (as long as they can spell things out if i can't understand them) or even weird linguistic twitches (like your example). it's where the person has absolutely no way of understanding what i'm trying to communicate to them -- that's when i get peeved.

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

i haven't talked to one person who actually thinks bangalore is a good idea. all these sbc customers hate it, and ultimately end up requesting second or third tier support anyway. i mean, i get the economic savings of it all, but it's still pretty lame. gah.

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

yeah i don't mind non-english speaking calls as long as they recognize the issue. but if they act like it's MY fault they don't understand me, that just irks me.

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I deal with clients in Iraq a lot, I know that pain :(

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

hmmm...i haven't really had that problem at my current job but i see how it could be an issue. it was definitely something i experienced in college, though. i mean culturally it's understandable to want to group together but hen, yeah, how are you going to learn the language?

[jecook]

I understand your pain.

One of the clients I used to do work on site had engineers from Japan come over all the time, and they used the Japanese language version of windows. 200's IME support sucks, BTW. XP was very cool on the few machines that had it, as I could change the language, wait a minute or two while the OS re-loaded everything, and I could do my work.

Often times it would end up being the user at the control (or our Point of Contact at the control), the user sitting behind him, and me walking the person at the keyboard through what was going on. (our P.O.C. was fluent in both english and japanese, and acted as our translator when I had to fix stuff for them.)

Oddly enough, these folks were pretty high level engineers. they built optical inspection systems for silicon wafer inspection after the etching process.

[shirenomad]

I noticed the "hello?" business while staying in Japan. When someone's giving a long explanation over the phone, you've got to give them an acknowledging tone every so often ("Uh-huh," "Mmm," etc.) or they'll think you're no longer listening. I don't know if this is because telephones disconnect a lot in Japan or if they've just got short attention spans.

[lrdjester.livejournal.com]

Yep.

I get a lot of flac for my support of English only workplaces, much like what California instituted. I have been accused of being racist or a facist.

I really believe that if your job requires verbal or written interaction with co-workers or customers, you should be fluent in the language that is spoken there.

An argument I get is, what about interpreters? Actually many interpreters speak excellent english in my experience. But they are well trained, and they are taught the importance of practicing.

If I was in another country, I would take every opportunity to speak the native language. Even with other native english speakers, I would look at it as an opportunity to practice. The only reason in those situations to speak english, is to try to clarify something that I am unable to comprehend or explain in the other language. But you can bet I would be learning that PDQ.

[akage.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's not just on the phone. In face-to-face conversation, the listener will often nod frequently and...well, *grunt* softly to indicate they're still listening.

[akage.livejournal.com]

Amen. I've had this on both sides of the phone. We have a lot of users in Miami who have atrociously thick accents and to use Spanglish (code-switching where they intersperse English and Spanish vocabulary in the same sentence). What galls me the most is that I've called a few of these folks back, and when they first answer the phone, they speak near-perfect English. As soon as they realize I'm with the helpdesk instead of being an outside client, they switch right back to accents that make Marisa Tomei sound like a Shakespearean actress. So it's not an issue of them not knowing how, it's being too lazy to make the effort, because I'm "only the helpdesk guy".

On the other end of that equation, my mother was having issues with her EarthLink email last time I was home, so after tinkering with it for a while, I called EarthLink support and promptly wound up talking to an L1 somewhere on the Subcontinent. She was obviously reading from a script, and frankly almost sounded like a computer. Her accent was also so thick that I had to ask her to repeat virtually every single sentence, sometimes five or six times. (And I'm actually used to deciphering Indian accents, because we have a large Indian community here, and my brother-in-law is Indian.) Good waste of 45 minutes of my life, just to have her tell me someone would call back.

And yet, that's the sort of support I'm indirectly losing my job to. Well, you get what you pay for.

[justsomegurl.livejournal.com]

I am recently finding myself in the same boat. I work for a telephone company in the middle of nowhere, midwest, US. The telco had bought out 2 local ISP's and supports a few others. Anyway, language was rarely an issue until said telco decided to jump on the satellite bandwagen.

We know have a large customer base in Haiti. I've had calls so bad I can't even manage to get the person on the other end to understand you need to call this other number. The person didn't even know English numbers. That was a pain in the ass. And I am supposed to help this person point a satellite dish? I think not.

[shirenomad]

Hmm, I didn't notice that, probably because I already nod during conversations out of habit.

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

yes. but i do wonder how much it costs for all the phone calls to india. i guess if it's sbc they own the cable, so it's not a big deal for them...maybe. i really wonder how much they're saving, and not just the bottom line, but in terms of people quitting their service because they hate talking to bangalore, how long call time is, etc. but my experience with the corporate world is that economics are always very black and white, and they never really consider the customer's happiness as imperative.

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

omg i just got a call from someone the other day trying to call haiti. apparently, he thought i was the telco and kept saying "i need...call...HAITI..." and then rattling off some phone number. i kept saying "no, this is WEBSITE SUPPORT" but he didn't seem to understand. even when i yelled "WRONG NUMBER! WRONG NUMBER!" he still got kinda pissed that i wouldn't transfer him to haiti. um. so the point is, i understand your pain.

[katyism.livejournal.com]

agreed... it's conditioned me to cringe whenever i pick up the phone and hear an accent on the other line. half the time it's alright and their english skills are able to be worked with (i can even make little jokes). the other half of the people are like this:

me: hello, may i have your username please?
them: hello?
me: yes, may i have your username or your email address?
them: my computer it does not work!
me: OK. I need to know what is your USERNAME first please.
them: i sorry i do not understand, i am not so good with english
me: That's OK. What is your email address?
them: my email! yes! it is not working! can you fix?
me: I will try. What is your name please?
them: XHSHRIVIAULINGIJANIO.
me: Spell it please. X like... uh.. xylophone?
them: I am sorry my english is not so good, I don't know what you say. My computer is broken.

And so on, we never get anywhere with these calls.

[justsomegurl.livejournal.com]

that sounds familiar. I got a call the other day and the person started saying something about an order and had some order number I know wasn't ours. I managed to decifer that the person she had been talking to transfered her and dropped off the call. She originally had called some company I never heard of before. I had to tell her 10 times I wasn't even the same company because she kept asking me to transfer her to the right person. and she spoke English as a first language. And when I finally made her understand I don't know the right person or the right number and I have never heard of the company you called, she was mad at ME.

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

yeah. they're always taking it out on us, even if it's clearly not our fault.

i get a lot of calls transfered from bellsouth and sbc and, let me tell you, those folks are always ridiculously pissed off. they usually calm down when i solve their problems in 10 minutes, when they've spent 3 hours with sbc...

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

ah yes. all too familiar with that scenario.
sigh.

You know what's scary?

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

North American accents are getting more distinct from each other (ie southerners and northerners).

[siobheanne.livejournal.com]

It's Oolong! (the bunny) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oolong_%28rabbit%29).

[belovedcrown.livejournal.com]

as an aside it could never be construed as racism [unless suddenly black americans and asian americans who were born here suddenly can't speak english]. no, you could possibly be accused of ethnocentrism or language discrimination but that's it. :)