Customer Care and India

[t6dpilot]

Why, why, why are we still talking to India for Customer Care issues!? I am so f^{|
Yesterday my ATT fiber goes out and it is the PON not getting a signal. Reset the gateway and the ONT several times to no avail. Knew it wouldn’t help but tried anyway. Call customer care and speak to a guy who has very good clean English so I think US, cool. But there is something odd about how he speaks. Like in constant circles about my issue. I can’t even go into it here it’ll take too long, but you gotta be fckg kidding me. He basically tells me that I need a technician to come out in four days to make sure everything is OK after the system fixes itself. It will be running in 2 or 4 or 8 hours but guaranteed within 24 hours. Seriously how stupid do you think we are?

I question him about the runaround I think he is giving me. First I am the only one with the problem, but techs are out fixing the issue. Oh and it is probably a hardware reprogramming that it going on and will reset soon. And some other stupid a$$ excuses. In reality my system is down and the soonest a tech can come out is 4 days. Really? Not that I have any work to do ATT. Normally I just take the India CC lumps and try to forget it, but this was the worst experience I have ever had by a large measure. I just need to vent. Too bad we can’t do a damm thing about it.

Oh yeah, it’s been over 24 hours. Do you think my fiber line fixed itself?🤣😡

[SCadaddle]

Once upon a time when speaking with Comcast tech support and having trouble understanding the fellow, I just up and asked him:

Are you from India?
Why yes I am.
Oh, I see. I've been there before. South Bend is really nice this time of year.
What?

[Fly Mach .86]

The last time I called about an ATT problem, the phone was answered in the Philippines. The Philippines???? When a tech. came out to fix the problem, I complained about having to talk to someone 10,000 miles away. He told me next time ask to talk to someone in the states. I did and was immediately connected with customer service in the US. Give it a try next time.

[t6dpilot]

Oooo good idea. I am going to call them shortly to explain yesterday and see about getting a tech sooner.

[Fly Mach .86]

Do you fly a T6?

[t6dpilot]

I sure did. The North American version 1943.

Oh and I called a hotel customer care number today. Where do you think my call went? To someone with a thick accent and a crackly phone line. Sheesh.

[Deschodt]

Most of the time I struggle to simply understand them... It's an accent I have difficulty interpreting over the phone...

It's worse in IT where outsourcing to India is the flavor of the decade, with bonuses for management to pull it off.. almost invariably customer service or tech support ends up coming home after 2-3 years or so when customers complain and costs go up... I guess people get tired of "doing the needful" ;-)

[Por_sha911]

I don't care if you are colored purple and from the Mars. As long as I can understand you and you give me correct information I am happy. That said, some countries have accents I just can't understand. Dell Computers CS is in India and there is NO way to talk to someone in Corporate in the USA. Their service (and attitude) was so bad that 10 years ago I vowed to never buy another Dell because of their bad customer service. I have bought computers multiple times since then.
I have talked to ATT folks in the Philippines and most speak so well it is hard to tell they aren't in the 48 states.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Fly Mach .86

The last time I called about an ATT problem, the phone was answered in the Philippines. The Philippines???? When a tech. came out to fix the problem, I complained about having to talk to someone 10,000 miles away. He told me next time ask to talk to someone in the states. I did and was immediately connected with customer service in the US. Give it a try next time.

Because so much stuff went to India, the prices went up, so the next spot that got "hot" for off-shore cheap labor was the PI.

The problem is that we all want super fast Internet super cheap, but we also want highly trained experts sitting around waiting to fix our problem. Something's gotta give, so it ends up being our service because most folks aren't willing/able to pay more (or scream bloody murder when the price goes up).

Of course, now that we're all used to it, if the price went up, the companies wouldn't enhance the service, they'd just pocket the extra $$.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by t6dpilot

I sure did. The North American version 1943.

Oh and I called a hotel customer care number today. Where do you think my call went? To someone with a thick accent and a crackly phone line. Sheesh.

I used to do support for Cisco. We worked weekends, but with more limited staffing. It's funny, one weekend some guy called wanting to talk to a native English speaker. He was having a hard time understanding the tech in Mexico that he'd originally been routed to. The funny thing is that when they called Cisco in San Jose, CA, they didn't have anyone that didn't have an accent. He ended up talking to a Vietnamese guy (with a very Vietnamese name, but no accent) sitting near me in Houston. I thought that was pretty funny.

Many of the good support places require their folks to go to school/class to help with their accent.

"Crackly phone line" hahahah. I've had to call the telephone company in India many times in a past job about circuit issues. Invariably, calling the telephone companies own help desk is a horrible experience with tons of static. The telco can't even get their own crap right. "Tata" is kaka as a Telco.

"do the needful", hahahah.

[GH85Carrera]

My wife used to work at a university nearby. The had an entire tech support staff. One of the best of the lot was from India and had a very noticeable accent, but he was easy to understand. He had an issue with a new computer and called Dell tech support, and got connected to India. The tech he was talking to had a very thick accent and he could not understand him. That was funny enough, but then he asked the guy on the phone, asked what province are you from?, and they were both from the same place. So they spoke in that Indian dialect and got everything fixed quickly. I told him that was cheating!

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by Por_sha911

I don't care if you are colored purple and from the Mars. As long as I can understand you and you give me correct information I am happy. That said, some countries have accents I just can't understand. Dell Computers CS is in India and there is NO way to talk to someone in Corporate in the USA. Their service (and attitude) was so bad that 10 years ago I vowed to never buy another Dell because of their bad customer service. I have bought computers multiple times since then.
I have talked to ATT folks in the Philippines and most speak so well it is hard to tell they aren't in the 48 states.

I have bought a few hundred computers for work over the years. Not one was a Dell. We do have one Dell at home and it is a piece of junk, but it was free for our at the time it was given to us 6 year old.

[John Rogers]

The last company I worked at as a senior Oracle DBA was run from local here in San Diego. We had a group of programmers under contract who were all in India and did fairly good work. We hosted Oracle apps and database servers for Mexican PGR, French MBS, Egypt airline and some others. When the company folded and all the source code, ETC was bought by a company based in India, ALL the companies just mentioned pulled their servers and took them local as I was told they did not "trust" the computer people in India?

[t6dpilot]

PI - yeah that was where he was. Had a good spiel I have to say. Almost made you think he knew what he was talking about. And in the US. Whatever. “Here, let me ping you to make sure your line is working.” No DA, it is not working. I told you that. OK so if I am the only one reporting an issue, why are you telling me that a team of techs are out there working on it? Effer. He had to be laughing his a$$ of after he hung up thinking he pulled one over on that dumb customer. I’ll go with, whatever....

So moving the customer service group off shore is only about being one small cog in the wheel of improving EPS on Wall Street. At what cost I ask? That is such a minimal percentage of your cost structure. It would make much more sense to keep the group that interacts with US customers in the US. Call that a cost of maintaining good customer relations. Bring the CS jobs back on US soil please.

Off soap box now...