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Overseas call-centre experience ???

Purpose of this thread is as it can be easily judged from the title itself............

Sharing your personal experience with Overseas call centre.

This is bearing in mind the crazy trend of hundreds of company's shifting their operation 5,000 miles away merely to save £££, esp. the recent NTL's job cuts.

More importantly, recent statistics showing only around 5% of Britons are happy with their overseas call centre's experience.

There's a small-budget movie (perhaps out already or yet to release) that I came to know either on BBC or some news channel about an Indian call centre guy in India & the way he juggles his working life & the taunts or racism he experiences on phone, affecting his life in general.

Does anyone know which movie ???

By the way, how exactly the government could possibly be blamed for jobs being shiefted overseas ??? Certainly it can't be JUST "cheap labour" since such cheap labour did exist even 5 years ago but we never saw job being transferred to the same country as it has been over the recent years. Could this be to do with the taxation they levy on businesses ???

yup...I'm officially confused...

Reply 3

Ferrus

19

I have a plan: let us nuke India, or provoke Pakistan into doing it, whatever works best.

Reply 4

El Scotto

15

Personally, If I spend money on services from UK companies, I'd pefer the money spent to stay within the UK. so dont use the companies which use foreign call centres. (Only because I've worked in call centres before, and its a cushy job to do)

agree with upstair

Generally pretty poor, but not because the people are rude or unhelpful, it's the language barrier. They're used to you asking certain questions, if you ask something unusual they don't always understand.

What irks me is that they're given English sounding names....like you're not going to notice that Jessica is from India :rolleyes:

And also when you're on to an English/Irish call centre (no names...ahem AOL) who say "I'll put you on to my colleague Bob who's sitting just opposite me" and Bob is obviously in some far flung country....and his name ain't Bob.

Reply 7

Segat1

16

Yeah. I worked in one for 2 years. Call centre people get paid nuffink and I have to say I find accents hard to understand. but why shouldn't companies outsource thier call centres? If I can get the same service for less, then I will do so.... who wouldn't?

What annoys me is customer service from UK companies. I have had CSOs interuppt me, yell at me and sigh at me - for asking simple questions. I hadn't come across this before, as in my training (Australia) we're told the customer is always right, never talk over then, listen, repeat the problem back to them to show you udenrstand etc etc. I just don't get it.

Reply 8

Juno

20

The Debenhams call centre is appalling. Do not have a problem with your Debenhams account card! They tried to blame me for them spelling my name wrong, and tried to steal £10.

The 3 one is OK. The people are very friendly, and generally easy to understand. But they always seem to have computer problems so they can't fix my phone :s:

Reply 9

1013

1

They can usually speak perfect English, and that's fine, but some have really thick accents that I find hard to understand.

Reply 10

j4mes_bond25

OP

Ferrus

I have a plan: let us nuke India, or provoke Pakistan into doing it, whatever works best.

Guess, Pakistan would do better jobs than us, since they would do this job with GREAT PASSION than British due to the ill-feelings that already exist among them with each other :biggrin:

Reply 11

PieMaster

11

If its for anything remotely technical, I allways ask to be elevated to at least a level-2 person. They usually at least can talk to you without a script.

Reply 12

j4mes_bond25

OP

1013

They can usually speak perfect English, and that's fine, but some have really thick accents that I find hard to understand.

The faster they speak the more hilarious it gets, however, more harder it gets to understand them then.

I don't mind speaking IF they use their correct name but if they LIE about their own name i.e. the very first thing they start the conversation is with a BLATANT LIE then that makes them a LIAR & this doesn't set a good example of their company (by employing LIARS ???). And if I'm not impressed with company then there's no bloody way I'll be interested in their product/service they're offering.

Reply 13

j4mes_bond25

OP

PieMaster

If its for anything remotely technical, I allways ask to be elevated to at least a level-2 person. They usually at least can talk to you without a script.

Well, if you ask them certain question out of the blue then EVEN their script won't be of much help & I've often found that chances of them (regardless of how senior the staff is) using their brain to come out with a sensible response, to my peculiar question, is almost negligible.

Reply 14

Northern_Lights

11

As far as I know these so called cost cutting companies are almost killing their brand names by outsourcing some of their most critical front end business operations and customer services overseas.

The customers they are loosing will never ever come back, never.

Its pathetic, :nn:

Reply 15

Juno

20

j4mes_bond25

The faster they speak the more hilarious it gets, however, more harder it gets to understand them then.

I don't mind speaking IF they use their correct name but if they LIE about their own name i.e. the very first thing they start the conversation is with a BLATANT LIE then that makes them a LIAR & this doesn't set a good example of their company (by employing LIARS ???). And if I'm not impressed with company then there's no bloody way I'll be interested in their product/service they're offering.

They're not lying. They have been told by the company to say that their name is that, as then they can be identified if necessary! If there were 20 Jane's in a UK call centre, problably 19 of them would be told to give different names.

Reply 16

j4mes_bond25

OP

Juno

They're not lying. They have been told by the company to say that their name is that, as then they can be identified if necessary! If there were 20 Jane's in a UK call centre, problably 19 of them would be told to give different names.

However, in UK there's often a policy (as was the case with the bank's call centre I used to work), where we were always trained to provide our FULL NAME, even if there's someone else having the same FULL NAME.

If the customer asks for full name of caller, in UK you'll get it quite easily, while Indians would be rather reluctant to do the same.

If there're 20 Jane working in UK's call centre the company's policy would ask their staff to use their FULL NAME (rather than LIE about it).

In case of Indians, it's a bit of a sleazy way to make their customer falsely believe that they are DEFINITELY calling from UK (however, what they don't realise is the fact that their "English name" & "Indian accent" would not only FAIL to disguise their true identity but also would set a rather bad example of the way they're trained to "fool" their customers).

Reply 17

j4mes_bond25

OP

debates_999

As far as I know these so called cost cutting companies are almost killing their brand names by outsourcing some of their most critical front end business operations and customer services overseas.

The customers they are loosing will never ever come back, never.

Its pathetic, :nn:

Well, "3 mobile" has for sure lost me forever & there's no bloody way I'll do any further business with them, since I wouldn't mind paying few extra £££ to other company giving away better service, IF I don't have to ruin my weekend by having to call them, again & again, merely cos their staff were suffering from "incompetency & irresponsibility".

Reply 18

Juno

20

j4mes_bond25

Well, "3 mobile" has for sure lost me forever & there's no bloody way I'll do any further business with them, since I wouldn't mind paying few extra £££ to other company giving away better service, IF I don't have to ruin my weekend by having to call them, again & again, merely cos their staff were suffering from "incompetency & irresponsibility".

I've had a lot of experience with 3 recently, and it's not the staff, it's their computer equipment.

Reply 19

L i b

19

I dunno, they do a lot of cold calling, but I've got nothing really against them.

Except for one at one of the mobile companies in India - said he was updating the credit card details for his phone and did nothing, so the assumption was of course that he'd stolen the details for himself. Data protection laws and such are also obviously far more lax overseas, which is why I don't believe a UK number should be able to transfer you without informing you.

But they do at least attempt to be polite, which no one in Britain does unless they think you'll complain about them.

Overseas call-centre experience ???

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