Indian call centres - why?

[AgaPanthers]

Jesus Christ. Just on the phone to Santander to close very old credit card.

Spell my name using phonetic alphabet.

Indian chap: "That's 'D'?" Me: 'No, B as in Bravo'

Give date of birth, Indian chap 'September?' Me: 'No, May'. (how do they sound even similar?)

Indian chap '1992?' Me: 'No, 1982'

Give address, accidentally say 'F for Freddie' instead of 'F for Foxtrot'. Indian chap: 'what is that?' repeat, using 'Foxtrot', and he understands.

Indian: 'I am sorry I have to transferring you to different department'

Me:

New person answers: 'Hello how can I be helping you?'

Me:

Eventually done, but not before he struggled to pronounce my very ordinary street name.

Foreign call centres annoy me too.

It's not particularly the accent as such- more that they are unable to have a conversation that deviates from the "script" in front of them because they quite often don't speak English well enough.

At least someone with a Geordie accent speaks English perfectly well enough to understand and reply.

I'll take Indian accent over Scottish any time

Why do these threads always descend into northerner bashing?

well my post was just to question why is Indian bashing ok?

Quinteszilla

You can't complain about somebody not speaking English when you are in their country and it's not their language.

How's your Arabic?

it's a great big barrier to effective communication which is what companies should want to avoid. clearly, cheap labour is more important to them. from the point of view of offshore call centre employees, it must be pretty frustrating having to spend all day talking to people who don't understand you and vice versa, especially when those people get narky with them.

I've been to India, had no communication rage there. Don't expect it when I call a bank in the UK though.

well you better get used to it honey because that is how it is.....

The whole thing is going full circle. Companies are now reshoring many call centres and manufacturing operations. They say it's because they're listening to their customers when the real reason is that costs abroad have risen and there isn't much difference in price anymore so they may as well bring it home. There was a programme on tv about it a few weeks ago.

I have similar problems when calling AOL broadband. The service they offer is great, very polite etc but I just can't understand a bloody word they say. Can't knock their manners though considering people must speak to them like shit most of the time.

More mature companies are bringing stuff back on shore because..guess what...off shoring costs more
Indian wage rises (remember wage rises!) mean that it's not the cheap labour it once was. Also, as many processes are 4 times as inefficient offshore as onshore, it's cheaper to pay someone onshore to do it once than someone off shore to do it 4 times.

Does it really matter how someone says something? I do speak Arabic and Hindi not brilliantly but my colleagues always prefer to speak English (am abroad) but not only have I stopped giggling at "it's up the backside" meaning its at the back of the building but have forgotten its not correct English. I think this thread is a little bit unfair, are there queues of people asking to work at call centres? My assistant is absolutely in awe of his brother who lives in London working as an "illegal" in a hotel. The whole Tamil village thinks he has really made it big. It is so different, everyone wants a piece of the UK, whether legally or otherwise. You wouldn't bitch about a Pakistani shop worker not understanding you would you?

I've been into Pakistani-owned shops in the UK and it's different because it's face-to-face so communication is much easier.

Also if you go into an Indian grocers in Southall, say, then you should have at least some comprehension of the fact that you are choosing go transact with a business owned by South Asians. That's not the case with Santander.

Santander have always been really good to me. Scottish accents.

Perhaps it was because I refused to use their 0871 number and then stabbed lots of number on the phone because I didn't know my card number.

Kendodd - I am not complaining about them not speaking English, but being passed through to one rep after the other, before being offered a solution: they send somebody out to see me. Would never have happened in the uK!

God, I absolutely loathe calling my bank or O2. Some time ago was answered by someone with a thick NI accent I just could not understand. I shat myself, because I'm phone phobic at the best of times, and ended up being signed up to some contract I didn't want, just because I wanted to be polite and for the phone call to be over. DH called them later to cancel the contract. I live in Scotland, but have had a few Glaswegian encounters that have left me a sweating heap of nerves. It's only so many times that you can ask someone (scary!) to repeat themselves..

Back to the topic of the OP, though. I generally find the Indian accent easy to understand, but I do find it annoying that they are very rigid about procedure and can't think of, or facilitate, "creative" (non-scripted) solutions to a query/problem.

I hate it when they say "Hello, my name is Jason" No it's not, and your employers are being incredibly insulting to both you and me to assume I can't pronounce an Indian name! ( I am Indian, with an Indian name!)

In general I have found the Asian call centres not too bad to deal with but the one thing that really annoys me is that the call centre workers adopt English names. I always ask them for their real names and say that I don't do business with people who use false names and/or lie to me about it.

Well Santander aren't originally from the UK! Although they aren't Indian either afaik!

I also hate it when their grasp of English is poor and you have to stick to the script. I can make my peace with accents because when I lived abroad and spoke the language there my accent was still fairly British! I do expect to be able to converse and solve my problem though.

It might be cheaper but I wonder how much custom they have lost over the years.

Santander run banking for a lot of British brands. This was for a Debenhams store card.

"Perhaps it was because I refused to use their 0871 number and then stabbed lots of number on the phone because I didn't know my card number."

So you deliberately didn't call their UK call centres and are now annoyed that you didn't get through to a UK call centre? Their UK retail banking call centres are all in the UK now AFAIK, so if you got through to an Indian call centre they were probably quite surprised to get your call, which they won't have been trained to handle.

YANBU. I had to call IT support in India on Saturday and most of the time was spent trying to understand each other. I was nearly hysterical by the end

I called a Uk number, and the call handling system said 'welcome to Santander card services' in a British accent. I don't really know if it was their normal system.