Overseas call centres ...

[dte]

Increasingly more businesses are using overseas call centres, primarily in India because they offer lower rates of pay and fewer conditions than they would to local employees.

I understand that it is not only Australian companies that are doing this.

I could get as many as 2 or three calls from these centres in any one evening.

I use to hang up on them, but now I let them prattle, even though they are sometimes hard to understand. They are trained to speak Aussie English but it just doesn't work. A recent report said that many are now being trained in Canadian English as it enables them to make calls to America and England as well.

I let them prattle until they divulge the company that they are representing then add that company to the list that I will no longer deal with.

In Austalia we don't as yet have a "don't call me list" though one is planned, but there is doubt that this would apply to overseas calling destinations.

What are your views, reactions on the use of these overseas call centres?

 

[trawler69]

In the uk they are used extensively as help lines by Banke, Internet service providers and the like. They seem to be pretty much universally detested as they are hard to understand, they themselves don't understand the scripts they are reading and they rarely seem to solve the problem. There is a move now by some companies to relocate them back to the UK as they have finally realised that customers who are being given a bad service will switch to a company that is prepared to spend more on giving them a better one. I hope this is a universal trend.

 

[hotcbr]

Dell customer service is HORRIBLE about this...their helplines typically connect you to someone in India. Very difficult to get a proper solution to a problem...language barrier is sometimes too much!

 

[pills]

I think it's absolutely horrible. I understand the reason that comanies outsource, but I don't think that they understand how much their customers hate it.

A vendor my company used to work with outsourced their Level I and II Support to India and it was a nightmare. Our MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) shot through the roof. We suffered, our customers suffered, and we dropped them as a vendor after about a year and a half.

I can't imagine that that companies are really saving money by losing customers and increasing the time to repair by 300 - 500%.

 

[_AJ_]

we dont tend to get many of those calls maybe 1-2 a month but the other day some indian lady was trying to sell me something but i couldent understand her and she ended up hanging up on me

 

[uflyguy]

In the US its not just outgoing call centers, but reservations and incoming call centers that have been outsourced. Delta Airlines baggage help was located in India and US Airways has reservation offices in Manila, Mexico City and San Salvador. A couple of the offices are doing ok, but the one in Manila has more complaints than any other office and they are hiring hundreds of people at the old reservation office they downsized in the US because of the complaints.
I recently called a credit card company to get some help and could barely understand the gentleman (in India). I finally just hung up and called back again after having to ask him to repeat things two or three times to be able to understand him.
To upper management its the bottom line about how much they can save by outsourcing call centers. I guess in the end, the bottom line takes a hit after so many people have problems with the outsourced foreign call office.

 

[adzaell]

I worked for an Australian Mobile company in their ibound customer care department for 18 months. The parent company owns another mobile company and offered to transport customers from our network to the newer one. customers would receive their new phones and change.

as soon as any problem cropped up, they called their new company....whose customer care office was in mumbai india. i had an average of 10 calls in an 8 hour day (about 7-10% of my day) dealing with customers BEGGING to be switched back. upper management said it was racists, but nearly everyone stated it was because they could not understand the indians and the indians could not understand them. i liased with many of them and had the same problem. if you asked them a question they didn't know, they put you on hold without notice for over 5 mins or hung up.... actions we were told were appalling in customer service. i now work as a debt collector for a large multi-national, whose cust care is in india....SAME PROBLEM!

When are Australian companies going to realise they either need to drastically improve the quality of staff and training in these overseas call centres, or bring them back to australia. i now ask every company i sign with if they use overseas call centres. if they say yes, i decline their business and explain my past experiences as well as expressing my dissapointment that they want australian money but don't want to generate australian employment or customer satisfaction.

 

[nwdavis]

In fairness ALL call centers SUCK! I hate having to call any customer service number regardless of where it is located.

 

[slobone]

I've had plenty of homegrown idiots over the years, and also some very helpful (and polite) people in India. YMMV, of course.

 

[eddielee]

Well, that explains why all them damn have been calling at odd hours. I have nothing against foreigners unless they call me at 2am and ask me if I want to upgrade my phone service. No matter how many times I tell them to stop calling me, they keep calling.

 

[levenshulme31]

One of my bugbears is this one. Although to be fair, I have had excellent service on occasion from call centres in India.

What annoys me are the sales calls for stuff I don't want. The scripts are very poorly written and ask intrusive questions which I am not prepared to answer.

One thing they often do is give the call centre operative a fake English name, I love that one as it gives you a really easy out. Whenever I hear a someone with a blatantly obvious Indian accent say "Hello my name is Charles Robinson" I put on a friendly mocking voice and say " No it isn't, go on, what is it really?" They usually ignore this and carry on into their sales spiel to which I will say, 'look, you have already lied about your name, I'm not likely to trust anything alse you say or any product you want to sell me.' I find they now tend to hang up before I do.

 

[me12121]

Dell customer service is HORRIBLE about this...their helplines typically connect you to someone in India. Very difficult to get a proper solution to a problem...language barrier is sometimes too much!

Yeah, dell CS sucks, but their computers would cost so much more if they didn't outsource their support. You wouldn't see any $300 computers from Dell if they did tech support from Austin like they used to.

But Dell's XPS support is really good. When I call them, I'm transferred to their XPS line where I always get to talk to an American. But their XPS computers cost more than any of their other consumer lines so they can afford to give you American tech support.

 

[josher]

Dell customer service is HORRIBLE about this...their helplines typically connect you to someone in India. Very difficult to get a proper solution to a problem...language barrier is sometimes too much!

Amen to that, brother!

 

[frankfrank]

I had TracFone (pay-as-you-go cellular phone), and their call centre is obviously in India. I have NEVER had proper customer service from them! I have had my number reset over and over again, and it's been nothing but problems - like the number just stops working (well within the date on my card/minutes), or the phone is given SEPARATE incoming and outgoing numbers, I was once assigned a number that belonged to an unrelated married couple in Michigan, etc.

I really despise this practice, not just because my experience with overseas call centres has generally been unfavorable, but (1) it's taking jobs away from Americans, and (2) if somebody overseas abuses your personal information, there may not be as much enforcement as when somebody in the U.S. does it.

Wish I could remember what else I wanted to add to this...