to think that if you are going to be using a foreign workforce to do your telecanvassing you could at least spend the time to teach them how to pronounce the words

[fattiemumma]

I have just spent the most painfull half an hour listening to some poor asain lady try and do one of those government backed survey things.

she was asking me about Opthometry and vasectamy and all sorts of other medical stuff and the poor woman didn't have the first idea of how to pronounce the words.

Now this isn't a rant about using outsourced call centre's ( though the fact that this is a government backed survey has angered me slightly) its more to do wuith the fact that it was unfair on this woman to be asked to do it without some advice at least.

I was patient ( i hope) but i know a fair few people that wouldn't have been.

they were probably scared of being sued following the hairdressers fandango so had to hire her.

Call centres manned by people who can't speak English is a pet hate of mine. It's the result of spending several months trying to get an understandable answer out of Tiscali's customer services. I don't hold the poor person on the other end of the phone responsible but the company's lack of training and support for those workers. I had one poor woman who just kept repeating the same obviously rehearsed response to me even though it was completely inappropriate to the questions I was asking.

I hate it when you phone up to try and resolve a problem and you can't even understand each other, just makes the whole thing a million times more stressful

Am on the phone to Barclays as we speak and am close to tears. I am ill and can't deal with the lack of understanding as the issue isn't just a standard query.

Poor man is very nice but I'm close to losing it!!

YABU, unpleasant and IMO indirectly racist. She was only doing her job, why do you insist on patronising her and referring to her (twice) as a `poor woman'

Also before you criticise someone else's English maybe your own should be above reproach? Your spelling is terrible -Painful, Asian, optometry, vasectomy, with

If you know a fair few people who would be unhappy to receive a call from someone doing their best to earn a honest living you ought to find some new friends.

how is she being indirectly racist?

Imagine a you worked for an English all centre and a Polish company out-sourced their work to your call centre (unlikely I know). You only understood absolute basic Polish but were expected to do long telephone calls all day to people who only spoke Polish with very little training - I think you'd feel like a "poor woman" too.

FWIW - I sometimes find it just as bad when I get someone in a British call centre answering my call and they have a heavy British accent from a region whose accents I'm not used to.

Its amazing how quickly one can be unfairly branded as rascist - it makes one scared to talk about people of a different race, colour, country. Can't be right.

I would'nt say it's racist at all.

YANBU it does my head in when you get a phone call or phone a company who have workers abroad simply because they will work for less, that is one point that annoys me but I'm not going to lie and make myself out to be an angel it pisses me off when we can't understand each other I might as well have phoned a brick wall half the time.

Like when I phoned my broadband company to say that it was brokenand they proceeded to cancel it because that's what was on log

I'm sorry but it's aggro for everyone involved.

YANBU - I find it really irritating too - mailing companies often call the ofice to confirm our details and I really can't be bothered to deal with them when they can't understand my answers to their questions.

don't think this is racist TBH, it annoys me too and it is the big companies not the telephone workers who p* me off

poor woman is right, she is in an impossible situation, trying to do her job with a huge communication problem

you would not expect a call centre employee to have a really bad stammer or tourettes, and people not to comment on it, same thing applies here

typo's rather than spelling but your right my spelling is awful...probably down to the fact i have dyslexia.

Im not being racist at all. she is a poor woman as in i felt sorry for her having to struggle with pronouncing words she has probably never heard used before and has no idea of their meaning.

I feel sympathetic for any poor sod that has to do telesales/marketing/surveys from abroad.

There are a lot of people out there who will be rude and abusive to them for what it their employees failing to help prepare and train them better before they start working.

Maybe she's grateful she's got a job and doesn't feel poor at all - she's still being lined up for abuse because her employers don't care. It's not fair.

The terms and cvonditions that CC workers have to endure were not in question in the OP. The tone of the post was patronising and the final sentence unpleasant.

I did not brand OP racist - her remarks were indirectly racist - again a different matter - indirect racism stems from lack of undertanding/upbringing and fear of the unknown/strange/exotic and that seems to be displayed in the OP.

How did OP know the call was outsourced - have you listended to the range of accents in towns and cities nowadays. Overall it was a dig at `foreign workers'. If you have a problem woth NHS or DoH staff take it up with the Giv't Department don't winge on here.

IMO OP was and is BU

not unreasonable at all

nearly got in trouble with mobile company recently

some woman phoned and her accent was so incomprehensible that i had no clue where she was phoning from or what she wanted, so assumed it was a soliciting call and hung up

a few days later, same thing happened, hung up again and asked not to be phoned again (reverse order obv)

a few days later received a letter saying i hadn't paid my mobile bill

which is bollocks as it goes on my credit card

phoned mobile co to clear this up

was told cc expired, and that i'd been phoned twice to be asked for new card #

i said no-one's phoned (and i'd know as i've been home afer an op for 2 wks)

was told dates and times of call and that a note had been made that i'd hung up on the caller

ffs!! the woman on the phone couldn't even pronounce "Rogers"!! it sounded like "rrrroooooyyy - waaahhhhhh"

and the rest of what she said was completely incomprehensible

problem explained and straightened out, i said it would be an idea to hire people who can actually make themselves understood and that perhaps they should check this woman's call history to see how many calls she actually made successfully

i'd have been livid if they'd cut my mobile off!!

person on the phone said "yes but then we'd have to pay them more"

WTF???

numpty

thats what i meant law.

there are bound to be people who will be rude about the fact she found it difficult to pronounce some of the words.

her english was actually very good indeed but i wouldn't expect anyone to find the owrds she was using difficult in another language.

I would have thought that given she was reading from a script someone could have at least run through it with her ( and her colleagues as im sure they were having as much difficulty) and explain how they were to be pronounced and given them a brief idea as to what the words meant.

I am not berating her at all. i feel that her employers have done her a disservice.

am now berating myself for poor spelling - I meant conditions (serves me right for being preachy)

imo not training people who have to make customer calls is doing everyone a disservice

aggravating for the customer and no doubt makes her job hell

LMAO @ Blueisthecolour.

op....yanbu at all!

im glad its only Blue that feels i was being racist.

im not sure what it is im meant to be ignorant or frightened of?

I dont think this is racism.
And this comes from someone who is not English herself. But it is my pet hate too.

When i lived in UK and had a strong foreign accent and not perfect english i would never consider working in a Call Centre. Not fair on me and not fair on customers.

And considering that UK has a huge population with people who speak english as second language, you might have the hilarious situation where the customer doesnt speak good english either so you have two people with bad english trying to communicate. It happened to me.
Because of my bad english, when i m in uk and phone a call centre i expect the other person to speak fluent and very clear english so at least one of us speaks the local/formal language. Is this racism?

We have had call centres hang up on my husband as they were struggling to understand what he was saying through his thick as set honey brogue - sometimes I struggle to understand what he is saying...

YANBU.

I was trying to sort out some new home insurance the other day on the phone and was put through to a Glaswegian lady. tbh, didn't have a clue what she was saying half the time, hope i'm covered!

the thing is it wasn't her accent that was the problem (although it has been in the past) it was just that she was trying so very hard to pronounce words when she had never heard them before so had no idea what theyshould sound like iyswim.

she sounded like a reception child trying to read for teh first time.

at the start i didn't want to interject and offer the word as i didn't want to sound patronising and rude.
in the end i offered her the word once i'd figured it out, she seemed gratefull.