Want your calls answered? Better hope it's not raining..

[Stuart C]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07...center_floods/

It seems that several IT companies have had problems with Tech support calls in India. Apparently, they didn't realise that India suffers monsoons. As one of the emails in that article says, it's ironic that they couldn't get an engineer who is based a few miles away because it was raining 1000s of miles away..


Anyway, the older members of this site will remember Russ's experience with 3, and I think Russ (and others who have dealt with 3) will like this:

But the downtime isn't all bad. At Hutchison's UK 3G network 3, "untrained" staff were fielding customer calls, and at least one reader reported a significant improvement in customer service. While 3's emergency staff aren't trained in call center etiquette, they are familiar with 3 phone services, unlike their Indian colleagues.

[nffc]

That's little to do with the Indian staff, merely them not having enough training or resources available to do their jobs.

It's difficult when you need specific information on a product or service which isn't accessible for you - for example, quite often we have to wait a few weeks to get writeups on the latest PCs. A situation I personally find ludicrous but at the end of the day you still have jobs to do. That said in general most PCs will act the same way.

Customer service / etiquette is not to be underestimated, but of equal importance is resolving the problem/query quickly and satisfactorily which needs the required level of knowledge or info made available.

[Stuart C]

I just thought it ironic that 3s service improved when they had to switch to their emergency team..

[nffc]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

I just thought it ironic that 3s service improved when they had to switch to their emergency team..

Yes, but I don't think you can blame the Indian operators per se.

Quite a lot of it depends on who you get through to. I've often sifted through notes at our place which either don't make sense or you wonder why that advice was given. Running Windows System Restore (a tool I feel, 90% of the time, is as useful as a chocolate fire guard - I only really like it, if I know what the cause is, and I know SR will fix it) is a prime example. There are other examples...

In any case I don't think it matters whether the call centre is next door or in India or wherever so long as the person you speak to is pleasant, resolves the issue completely and is quick doing so.

I would rather speak to a good agent in India than a bad one in the UK. The location is a moot point - the problem is that evidently the usual team (which happens to be in India) has one or both of two issues:
- they are inadequately trained to do the job
- they do not have sufficient or current enough information to do the job
which the emergency lot may have had, probably through experience of other areas of the business.

[Russ B]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Anyway, the older members of this site will remember Russ's experience with 3, and I think Russ (and others who have dealt with 3) will like this:

3's CS is rubbish. They have not improved in 3 years. Oh sure, you'll find one or two who buck the trend but the company's biggest mistake was having an indian callcentre. What annoys me is once I've told them what the problem is (or what I've called) they proceed to repeat it all back to me, "Ok thank you please Mr Russ, I am understanding that you wish to change your bank details" - why???

To me that sounds like they aren't sure they understood me correctly and want to confirm it - and if that's the case then 3 have no business having a callcentre in a country where their first language is not the same as my own!!

Honestly I have no time for their CS and the only reason I am with them is because of the good tariff deal they offered me.

[nffc]

Originally Posted by Russ D

What annoys me is once I've told them what the problem is (or what I've called) they proceed to repeat it all back to me, "Ok thank you please Mr Russ, I am understanding that you wish to change your bank details" - why???

To show that you are firstly listening to the problem/query, and that you have captured all relevant information from the conversation, and that you haven't misunderstood. Strictly speaking not language barrier related. A good way of also getting the caller to confirm that is what he/she/most likely it wants.

Also, it has a slightly more subversive benefit - it buys more time to get relevant information into the call notes - I can touch type, but not especially fast or accurately, especially when having a conversation with a customer.

To me that sounds like they aren't sure they understood me correctly and want to confirm it - and if that's the case then 3 have no business having a callcentre in a country where their first language is not the same as my own!!

As I said above, i disagree slightly with that conclusion.

Whole hot topic, Indian call centres - I do seriously doubt you can tar them all with the same brush. Quite often I think some people in our CC act like muppets, and this is in the UK. All CCs will have good and bad agents, that's the nature of the industry.

[Stuart C]

I have to admit, I *do* think indian call centres are a bad idea.

Not least because of the potential economic problems caused by the government first converting our economy to a largely service-based economy (ok, that was the tories), then apparently actively encouraging companies to export those jobs created in the service industries to the cheapest country.

The second problem is the one of protection. We, as customers, get an awful lot of protection from the Data Protection Act. We don't get that same protection if the data is processed outside Europe.

I agree you get good and bad agents in all centres. This is natural. However, when I have knowingly dealt with Indian Call Centres, I will say the service has been uniformly awful. When I had to call the Abbey National about something, not only did the agent refuse to answer my question, he was rude as well),

I mentioned 3 as Russ, and many of my off-line friends, have 3 phones, and whenever anything has gone wrong, the service recieved from India has been awful as well.

As for training, why exactly would 3 make training available to their UK emergency support guys that they don't make available to the frontline guys in India?

[Russ B]

Originally Posted by nffc

To show that you are firstly listening to the problem/query, and that you have captured all relevant information from the conversation, and that you haven't misunderstood. Strictly speaking not language barrier related. A good way of also getting the caller to confirm that is what he/she/most likely it wants.

Fine - but no UK callcentre I've dealt with has ever done that - only the indian ones which leads me to believe they either didn't understand what I said or aren't sure of what I'm talking about. Both are grounds for making me want to use a different company which operates in the UK only.

[brundles]

Originally Posted by Russ D

What annoys me is once I've told them what the problem is (or what I've called) they proceed to repeat it all back to me, "Ok thank you please Mr Russ, I am understanding that you wish to change your bank details" - why???

To me that sounds like they aren't sure they understood me correctly and want to confirm it - and if that's the case then 3 have no business having a callcentre in a country where their first language is not the same as my own!!

In defence of the call center, that's down to their training. My wife (who doesn't work in a call center but does spend a lot of time dealing with customers over the phone) recently got sent on a course which included how the company expected it's employees to manage calls. In amongst all of the psychological stuff (you'd be surprised how much these people have been trained manipulate you ) there is other stuff which includes confirming what the customer has said - in this case done by parrotting (sp?) it back to you.

As others have said, in many cases I don't think it's lack of service training (i.e. how to work at a call center) that is missing but product knowledge. It wouldn't surprise me given the data protection and IPR issues to find that some of these off-shored call centres are specifically blocked from some of the knowledge they need to do their job.

[Chrysalis]

When I ring BT I get a uk callcentre but if they ring me back its always someone from india.

The staff BT pick for india seem to have severe language diffilculties and I have to talk really slowly for them to understand me and use simple words.

NTL India staff seem to know the language much better but have their own problems such as been too script based.

---------- Post added at 13:10 ---------- Previous post was at 13:09 ----------

British Gas are exporting to india soon, ironic when powergen are going the other way.