To expect people in a call centre to speak English...

[SnowBells]

... in an understandable manner????

I have been calling BT today. No one spoke English fluently. One person, couldn't solve my problem and transferred me (apparently) to the wrong department with a woman I could barely understand. Her supervisor also spoke in broken English and - to top it off - lied.

WTF. No. 1 recruitment guideline in a call centre should be "recruit someone who speaks fluent English... because, really, the main requirement is that people working in such environments should be able to speak in the customer's language. No. 2 should be "recruit someone with at least a few brain cells", so that they can actually solve people's problems.

What is going on?!? Has BT outsourced its call centres???

was it rather a strong accent than bad language skills?

Bad language skills. Grammar was so way off that sentences didn't make sense.

Regardless - early on in my career, I did interview for large international corporations who for roles including a certain amount on phones made a point of you having to be understandable on the phone. They actually called you from another room during the interview.

No political correctness gone wrong thing of having to accept candidates with strong accents many people won't understand on the phone.

The trick to BT is to go via Twitter. Their social media team has a small UK based CS department who can arrange visits etc and contact you directly.
I've used them a couple of times and they have had engineers out within days and have always called directly from that department.

Not the people in the call centre's fault, but I did have difficulty with understanding some of the bt call centre people I've talked to. Worse than other call centres. Standards of English seem very low.
I talked to a lot. Do not go with BT if you can avoid it. They are from hell. Didn't get my broadband sorted for around 3 months. Kept saying we were connected when we weren't.
BTW I noticed that you got through to a British call centre if you choose the cancellation option on the phone.

The OP is right, but I hope you channel you frustration at BT rather than the call centre workers. They don't receive proper training and BT employ them because they are cheap, not because they give a shit about their customers.

"If you want good service then you'll have to pay more."

Not necessarily. A transaction handled swiftly and efficiently and in a way that leads to repeat custom is cheaper and more profitable than a simple issue that takes a dozen long international calls to sort out and leaves the customer determined not to do business with you again. Compare HBOS with First Direct; different planet.

I used to work for a car insurance company with some departments in India. Our guys over there were pretty good but it MADE MY DAY when they referred a claim to our fraud team because a crime had been committed and there was an injury. The circumstances? 'Policyholder ran over a sleeping policeman too fast and scraped underside of his car' guess there aren't many speed bumps in India