Rant: Outsourcing Company Call Centres

sith

sith

sith

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Joined
7 Apr 2003
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560
I'm never one to moan in many cases and generally keep my trap shut however ive had enough. Over the last few days my cable modem provided by telewest has gradually died and wont connect anymore, or when it does very common it wont be for long.

So, off I go to call up their tech support. Last time i called a few years ago I had a very good expierience and made me realise i choose a very good provider who looked after their customers.

Que this time, *allo der sir, my names abdul can i take your name?"

"yes mate its tom"

"well thankyou for calling us gary"

"............."

It took me a few times to tell him my names not gary, i guess he never heard of tom before and assigned me a name.

I proceeded to tell him about my troubles with my cable modem, and that ive carried out all the procedures on their site to cut time of the call. I asked if him if they could provide me with a new modem to which i got:

"ahh i know the problem sir, your connections too slow, you need 8mb broadband, would you like me to put through the upgrade"

"im sorry i dont know if you heard my modems faulty, i need a new one"

"well sir i upgrade you and you be fine"

I tried once again politely to explain the situation but he could not possibly understand the simple request for a replacement modem which they supplied at the start.

Until now ive never had a problem with outsourcing phone centres, thats because i have never had to deal with one, they are terrible, the staff arent trained properly and it seems they just read from a screen. In the end i got nowhere and probably spent £5 on the phone call. Thats one company that has just lost another customer.

Anyone out there had similar expieriences?
 
I've called up BT tech support because they nuked my router via a remote update, they were in India and reading everything off a script, I got a new router but it's still really crap. I can't be bothered to call them up again because I know they have no technical knowledge to resolve my problems.

I though Telewest were Virgin Media now?
 
I think that is where you politely ask to be transferred to an english based call centre..

Failing that.. Ask to change your email password, I know that used to work with ntl back in the day, to get past the muppets and onto the trained monkeys
 
It gets beyond a joke

I rang my local takeaway the other night to order a curry, I could have sworn the bloke who answered my call was Indian :p
 
I remember ringing BT once and getting an outsourced call centre. After pressing a few other options I was given a different number to ring. This one had an English woman who knew what she was talking about! It was a great experience but a once in a life time thing.
 
The stresses of call centres!!!

Phoning BT in the evening (evening = outsourced) a couple of weeks ago about why they had charged me my line rental three times in one day... they couldn't give me a straight answer and blamed HSBC.

Had to call HSBC who of course blamed BT, somehow made the poor call centre girl cry - I wasn't particularly RAR!!! So I called BT (daytime = UK) and got told it was a fault with the online billing system that it went out three times and they offered me £10 compensation in my Jan bill.

The whole upsetting call centre girl at HSBC thing could have been avoided if I had spoken to someone in BT in the UK in the first place!!!

Grrrr!!!

Just about to call Orange - wish me luck!!!

BB x
 
I've found that the Virgin offshore call centres are terrible, but all the UK people I've spoken to have been really helpful. If you keep calling, eventually you'll get someone who speaks English, although failing that, you should definately ask to be transferred, because the service really is a million times better. If you were calling tech support, you are entitled to a refund for the cost of the call if the reason for calling wasn't your fault (ie it's their hardware or lines), but the offshore scripted people don't seem to tell you this.
 
sith said:
I'm never one to moan in many cases and generally keep my trap shut however ive had enough. Over the last few days my cable modem provided by telewest has gradually died and wont connect anymore, or when it does very common it wont be for long.

So, off I go to call up their tech support. Last time i called a few years ago I had a very good expierience and made me realise i choose a very good provider who looked after their customers.

Que this time, *allo der sir, my names abdul can i take your name?"

"yes mate its tom"

"well thankyou for calling us gary"

"............."

It took me a few times to tell him my names not gary, i guess he never heard of tom before and assigned me a name.

I proceeded to tell him about my troubles with my cable modem, and that ive carried out all the procedures on their site to cut time of the call. I asked if him if they could provide me with a new modem to which i got:

"ahh i know the problem sir, your connections too slow, you need 8mb broadband, would you like me to put through the upgrade"

"im sorry i dont know if you heard my modems faulty, i need a new one"

"well sir i upgrade you and you be fine"

I tried once again politely to explain the situation but he could not possibly understand the simple request for a replacement modem which they supplied at the start.

Until now ive never had a problem with outsourcing phone centres, thats because i have never had to deal with one, they are terrible, the staff arent trained properly and it seems they just read from a screen. In the end i got nowhere and probably spent £5 on the phone call. Thats one company that has just lost another customer.

Anyone out there had similar expieriences?
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your post shows how much you know about other people on the planet, abdul is an arabic name, and generally anyone called abdul is either muslim, arabic or both, maybe if people like you could understand this simple logic, and educate yourselves about other people, their religions, culture, etc, then they might help you if you treat them normally.

im guessing you rang up found out it was an indian call centre then proceeded to act like a moron blaming it on the other person, the times ive phoned virgin media's call centres in india, the guy on the phone had no problem with my scottish accent and solved my problem quickly

its not exactly their fault is it that british companies are trying to save money, and moving all the jobs to poorer countries, at least this person has learned english and is working, the people you really need to rant about, is all the morons in the UK complaining about the polish invading and taking all the jobs, and call centres in india, you never hear anyone in America complain do you? the real person at fault is yourself and the british public, why dont you calm down and phone them again, and talk clearly, slowly and calmly, after all it is probably the persons 3rd language that they have learnt (in india the national language is hindi but every part of india also has its own language too).

its like a company from germany moves it call centre from germany to the UK to save money, it aint exactly the call centre workers fault, hes just trying to do his best, with it ebing his 3rd language, you should expect a little hiccup, but so far ive had no problems
 
Sonny, I try to be polite and not assume that foreign call centres are going to be rubbish, but I've had almost the same sort of conversation as the thread op with an NTL/Virgin indian call center last year.

Yes it's not the person answering the phones fault that they are usually poorly trained, have no experience of the actual product and often have trouble communicating with the caller, but it is a major problem for anyone who actually needs a problem sorting out if they can't even get the message across in plain, standard English.
The UK call centres are massively better, if for no reason other than the staff might have a clue about the product they are supporting (if just from newspaper adverts), and normally speak English as a primary language which leads to them being able to understand accents better - i've got a fairly "normal" east english accent (think MK/London area), but have had to phonetically spell out every part of my name, address and postcode to indian/pakistani call centres in the past (normally I only need to use phonetics for the postcode, and that is usually overkill for UK call centres).

It also doesn't help that foreign call centres tend to use poorer quality phone connections (in my experience), that certainly don't help with understanding accents etc.


Foreign call centres as a bad idea, pretty much all the time due to the reasons above (for something that relies on the customer being able to communicate clearly with the company reps, foreign call centres tend to fail in every requirement except cost - ignoring the cost in PR and repeat calls).
 
Sonny, you clearly havnt read my post properly. First of all I mentioned it was my first encounter with an outsourced call centre. I never went into the call with the mind set of being a moron, if you had read, i explained politely to gentlemen on the other end the problems I were having with my connection. He clearly couldnt answer my question or do anything for me. Even at that point I never left the conversation with a bad thing to say to the guy. He was polite, and to the best of his ability did what he could. Unfortunatly there was nothing he could do regarding my problem, he just seemed very untrained. I wont go into why outsourced call centres are bad, im not saying its their fault but at the cost of a phone call which must have goner over £5 with no immediate outcome most people wont be happy. Werewolf clearly points out all the problems with outsourced call centres and i couldnt agree more. In the future read my posts before accusing me of acting like a moron when that clearly wasnt the case
 
Rotty said:
It gets beyond a joke

I rang my local takeaway the other night to order a curry, I could have sworn the bloke who answered my call was Indian :p
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I'm not sure if I should admit I smirked at that despite myself, I'm worried that I might just be encouraging you. :p

Werewolf, I find that most of the call centre workers I've spoken to don't even know the phonetic alphabet, whether outsourced or not. Although I've got to admit that although it has taken a while I've usually ended up satisfied with my dealings with call centres. Perhaps it comes from working in one for a while but I'd always try my hardest to be polite, it usually gets you a better response.
 
It also doesn't help that foreign call centres tend to use poorer quality phone connections (in my experience), that certainly don't help with understanding accents etc.

@ the above

it isnt just the call centre - its the whole country, the phone lines in india are extremely poor, its not just the phone lines that are a problem, only 10% of the country has electricity for 90% of the time, they have to use generators, etc, i went for a haircut in the local village and the electricity went half way through, i had to go back the next day so the guy could finish it off, he charged 10p for the haircut, i gave a £1 tip and he was well chuffed, it wasnt the guys fault the electricity went, so no point in me going mental at him, he fixed me up as best he could with scissors before sending me off anyway to come back the next day.

the country is a 3rd world country, only 0.01% of the country lives what you would call a normal lifestyle

its the UK's fault for having greedy companies who are saving a lot of money so they can get richer, one of the workers for my family works say a 12 hour day, hes a servant of sorts, he does the farming, gardening, feeds the livestock, everyday, he gets paid £1 a day, someone working here would expect £150 a day for a job that involves the amount of hard work he has to do, this is how much these british companies are saving, i see indian call centres still being around for quite a few years, so you guys are just gonna have to be patient and deal with it the best you can
 
Psycho Sonny said:
your post shows how much you know about other people on the planet, abdul is an arabic name, and generally anyone called abdul is either muslim, arabic or both, maybe if people like you could understand this simple logic, and educate yourselves about other people, their religions, culture, etc, then they might help you if you treat them normally.

If you read the OP I think you will find that Tom knew that the person he was speaking to was either muslim or arabic. Nothing in the OP suggests that Tom had treated this person any differently to the next. Theres no evidence in the post to suggest that he was ignorant to this guys 'religion, culture.'

im guessing you rang up found out it was an indian call centre then proceeded to act like a moron blaming it on the other person, the times ive phoned virgin media's call centres in india, the guy on the phone had no problem with my scottish accent and solved my problem quickly

This is in your experience, Tom was giving his, so I dont understand why you have ranted on here. The OP didnt come across as 'blaming it on the other person', Tom had told the guy that he had a problem with his modem, but obviously the guy didnt understand. - No fault of his own.

its not exactly their fault is it that british companies are trying to save money, and moving all the jobs to poorer countries, at least this person has learned english and is working, the people you really need to rant about, is all the morons in the UK complaining about the polish invading and taking all the jobs, and call centres in india, you never hear anyone in America complain do you? the real person at fault is yourself and the british public, why dont you calm down and phone them again, and talk clearly, slowly and calmly, after all it is probably the persons 3rd language that they have learnt (in india the national language is hindi but every part of india also has its own language too).

:confused:Again dont understand your response, Tom wasnt blaming this guy for not undertanding, he just simply wanted a problem fixing! and there is nothing to suggest that he wasnt speaking calmly, and taking his problem out on the guy at the call centre.

its like a company from germany moves it call centre from germany to the UK to save money, it aint exactly the call centre workers fault, hes just trying to do his best, with it ebing his 3rd language, you should expect a little hiccup, but so far ive had no problems
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:confused:
 
sith said:
Sonny, you clearly havnt read my post properly. First of all I mentioned it was my first encounter with an outsourced call centre. I never went into the call with the mind set of being a moron, if you had read, i explained politely to gentlemen on the other end the problems I were having with my connection. He clearly couldnt answer my question or do anything for me. Even at that point I never left the conversation with a bad thing to say to the guy. He was polite, and to the best of his ability did what he could. Unfortunatly there was nothing he could do regarding my problem, he just seemed very untrained. I wont go into why outsourced call centres are bad, im not saying its their fault but at the cost of a phone call which must have goner over £5 with no immediate outcome most people wont be happy. Werewolf clearly points out all the problems with outsourced call centres and i couldnt agree more. In the future read my posts before accusing me of acting like a moron when that clearly wasnt the case
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if you get someone who clearly doesnt understand you, hang up and phone again, its the best way, and you should get somone better and more helpful, it shouldnt cost that much anyway should it? i thought phoning them was free?
 
Psycho Sonny said:
if you get someone who clearly doesnt understand you, hang up and phone again, its the best way, and you should get somone better and more helpful, it shouldnt cost that much anyway should it? i thought phoning them was free?
Click to expand...

The Virgin Media tech support line is an 090 number, and it's something along the lines of 75p connection and 50p per minute.
 
oddjob62 said:
Sorry? Did you just say that American's don't complain about immigrants? Since when??
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obviously you get the odd redneck or two, but on the whole, they dont complain about anything near as much as the british do, in fact i would go as far too say, i think its only a problem working class people have, or the majority of the people who have the problem is the working class, anybody with money really doesnt care
 
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