(no subject)

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~Explain this to me.

~I work with a lady from India. She's the sweetest person in our office and so so smart. She takes a lot of calls, and is very articulate in her speaking. Sure, she's got an accent, but you can understand her and she doesn't mumble. (She does speak very very softly, though.)

~There's another Indian gentleman who's been working at the office...he came over from our office in India on kind of an exchange program. He's very smart as well, and he's the first person to go to with a lot of stuff. He has a great voice and a wonderful personality. Every time I've talked to him, he's been a dear and helped me out with whatever I needed.

~The people over in our India office mostly do web tickets and when we get someone calling in about their webticket and have to look them up, the tickets are well documented--well, as much as any turned out in the offices where English isn't a second language.

~In short, all of my Indian coworkers are great people! Smart, and easy to understand! I enjoy working with each and every one of them except the guy who was really mean to me.

~SO WHY OH WHY DO I ALWAYS GET IDIOTS FROM MICROSOFT OR DELL?!

~Seriously--this isn't just coorporate rivalry. I just called into to revalidate my Windows (I've borked the installation two or three times in the past month...go me!) and the guy on the end of the line mumbled, asked me the same question over and over, and couldn't repeat a string of six numbers if it would save his life. O.M.G.

~The mumbling is one thing...but getting numbers all switched up?! GRAH. I'm sure that's all he ever had to do--just read the damn numbers off. GRAH.

~I tried to be all good n' stuff and repeat the numbers back to him...he'd say them, I'd type them and repeat them. He'd then wait a good minute and a half before repeating the SAME SET OF NUMBERS. Boy, someone's call stats are going ot be IN THE DUMPS.

~Also--joyjoy, no phones for me for two days a week as I just got 'promoted' to project manager...which basically means I get the blame when the world crashes down around my team's ears. YAY.~

Comments

[annamaryse.livejournal.com]

Part of it is the whole negative state of mind that has cropped up in response to this outsource industry.

Most of the people who call these outsourced lines live in the heartland of America and a lot of them are somewhat ignorant of other cultures. Then, there's the 'buy American' headspace, so they're hostile to the Indians from the get go.

This creates an atmosphere where the Indians answering the phones are challenged before they pick up the call.. they're expecting the American to be stupid and rude.

They have to work shitty hours to be on the lines during the hours that US call volume is high. Here or there, call center work is tough and grim, no matter how you slice it. So, it's well paid, but it's a tough, dirty job.

Some of them did speak English before they got the job, others only learn enough to memorize all the phrases they are trained to parrot back to the customers.

Sometimes they're at the point where they just don't care. I had this one woman saying to me "Don't worry ma'am. I'm handling your situation personally." She said this to me right after telling me she had to transfer my call to another department, that was her means of saying "bye". After two or three calls to Indian tech support lines I had no doubt at all why it infuriates people so much.

Because these people are schooled to stick to the script, say the programmed lines, never react to what is said back to them, and just keep throwing out those lines. So you're saying things to someone who isn't really listening or understanding. It is like having a conversation with a parrot sometimes. So we've found ourselves immersed in a situation where the phone workers hate us, and many of us hate them, or are frustrated with them.

I wish this could be fixed. But alas, more and more outsourcing is happening, and in India, they're writing books about the lives of frustrated call center workers.

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~That's all very logical and such...but I don't think people should be absolved of personal responsibilty. Shouldn't you take pride in what you do, even if people hate you?

~I mean...I assume everyone I talk to is going to be a Windows admin. So sometimes I'm pleasently surprised and I get someone who actually knows Linux.

~Maybe I've not been on the phones long enough to be bitter...but dangit! I want to give people the best support I can. :-P ~

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't you take pride in what you do, even if people hate you?

Work in a shitty callcenter (try the cell phone companies) for a few months, theres a point where you loose it and realise that the customers are trying to screw you, your employer is trying to screw you, and you have to care about not loosing your mind more than trying to be nice and flowery and all that crap.

[annamaryse.livejournal.com]

I agree... I always went that extra mile to make sure someone's issue was resolved, but that left me in the minority.

There is a profound negative culture evolving around CSR SVC here and abroad. CSRs are retards. Even your icon supports this attitude. Some take it to extremes. Even many managers frown on a tech who actually gives a crap. They're all like "oh You're New... You'll Get Over it, Don't Worry." :P

Many find the only way to beat the stats is to get csrs off the line before their problem is solved. They call back and get it a little more solved, someone else's stat down the line.

I recently got routed to India after bad csr svc in the USA (isp sales is here, billing in India... rep who signed me up ran my credit card twice, didn't know how to cancel it, and it was better for her to route me to India than call her supervisor over to override the computer and cancel the additional order) and I had a first-hand experience with what everyone's been complaining about.

I don't sound Indian at all and have an American name but I am part of an Indian community (oh I forgot to mention I was of partly Indian heritage!) and when I shared my experience in the Indian community people said "Oh just tell them you're Indian and they'll treat you differently and take care of you right away.."

That is all kinds of wrong, but that's where it's at.

[katyism.livejournal.com]

were you being figurative about the books? call me crazy, but if someone has written a book about frustrated call center workers overseas, i want to read it. title?

[annamaryse.livejournal.com]

I had to search a community for the link... it's dead on Yahoo:

Bestselling Indian author paints grim view of outsourcing jobs
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051229/ennew_afp/afpentertainmentliteratureindiaoutsourcing

I tried to find it through other means but don't remember the name of the author or book... basically it's a runaway best seller in India, capturing the angst of this new privileged segment of their society.

All the links I pulled up were economics and other shite...sorry.

[katyism.livejournal.com]

My google-fu is strong... It's "One night at the call center" by Chetan Bhagat.
I found the ISBN number for the book here.
http://www.sapnaonline.com/MoreInfoBK.aspx?lcID=EBK0143128
But amazon doesn't seem to have it...

yay!

[annamaryse.livejournal.com]

I bow down to you. It is rare anyone has stronger google-fu than I. Tell me, what did you search by? I'm serious. I hate being blonde with google!

Re: yay!

[katyism.livejournal.com]

I searched for that headline you quoted, actually :)
And just now I found the author's site where (I think) sells the book directly:
http://chetanbhagat.com/ontcc

Re: yay!

[annamaryse.livejournal.com]

duh! thanks! u rock!

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

I have a thinkpad here that I did a clean install of windows on, hardware has never changed.. unfortunately it doesn't want to take a reinstall.. accepts the cd-key on the bottom, rejects it for activation.

It's now likely a paperweight, because I will never be able to hear well enough on the phone to get some activation numbers out of someone(I am profoundly hard of hearing)

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~So why not have a friend or family member call in the activation for you? Pretty much all the guy asked me on the phone was HOW MANY COMPUTER HAVE YOU THIS INSTALL ON? And anyone an say 'one' half a dozen times. ;-)

~Heck, send it to me and I'll jot down the new key for ya.~

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

i'll end up doing that sometime, i just need to wipe the system and reinstall it to make sure i put the right cd key in in the first place.. it happens :P

[jecook]

I've had that happen to me as well. I just dig out my warez product cd changer and roll with that.

There are also ways around the product activation as well. :)

Since it's a plug-in, you can tell your XP-post SP2 copy of IE to disable that plugin. Or you can try the stupid Javascript tricks that are floating around as well...

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

well, yeah.. :)

but there's a legit key on the bottom that i want to use for the tech illiterate guy i bought it for, so that i never have to deal with "oh, we don't do updates for 'warez copies' anymore!" :)

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

Personally, I just hit up MSPKD a few times. Buuuttt... yeah, outside of Microsoft, activation is pain.

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

Can't you do the product activation over teh intarweb?

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

it rejects the cd key as being invalid.. even though it's on the bottom, and windows itself accepted it for the install.

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

o.O

That's ... astonishingly unsurprising.

:-/

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

My former desk had one Chinese rep - an older lady who was an absolute sweetheart. Did crochet during the slow parts of her calls and between them, was sociable, but had a relatively thick accent and wasn't so much the life of the party amongst a bunch of younger tech-heads. She also had one of the lowest AHT's in the call center. Why?

Our desk was customer facing and exclusively stateside. For some reason people thought we were starting to outsource the program, which was not true. They would get her and upon hearing her voice hang up and call back for another technician. It's one more reason why I think customers are assholes. At least try - if you've found out they suck, get a manager or then try someone else.

The idiots from Microshaft or Hell are outsourced to the lowest bidder that can put on the best show, just like pretty much every other company. Paying for quality means having to raise the price of the product and affecting margins.

Then again, it's the Indians that got me interested in cricket. So I'm biased, even if I'm an ardent supporter of the Barmy Army ;).

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

The quality of the Indians is directly perportional to how much is paid for (or by, as in getting to the US) them.

Microsoft and Dell pay diddly/squat. And the customers get it.

[louisville-mike.livejournal.com]

I think you are missing another point. The best and brightest of the world come to the U.S. to work. So of course your Indian co-workers are very articulate and talented. The rest are still in India.

[sacredlyprofane.livejournal.com]

Yes, all the best and brightest people go to the US.
*rolls eyes*

[canray.livejournal.com]

"THANK GOD YOU SPEAK AMERICAN! Where you at?" "Winnipeg, Manitoba." "Minnisota, good. Great to speak to a person that's actually here."