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.

The fact the woman was Asian does not necessarily mean the call-centre was abroad. My dh works for a company that has a UK based call-centre in the north of England and staff with Asian accents were frequently being accused of being abroad/given abuse by callers.

I don't believe it's at all racist to expect the people who work in call centres to be able to communicate with their customers. In my experience with Tiscali it was nothing to do with the operator having an accent but everything to do with the fact that she had no understanding of what I was saying to her. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to expect a call centre operator working for a communications company to be able to understand and answer questions about the service the company they work for is providing. It wasn't that I couldn't understand what she was saying just that what she was saying made no sense in relation to what I was asking.
And when this poor service results in me being without phone or internet for three months I defy any of you not to be p***d off in my position!!!

It's the patter that gets me really wound up... They use your first name every other word!

Yes, IloveMyDog, I am going to ask you to turn your computer off, and reboot the modem, Ilovemydog, OK? Now, what is flashing now, iloveMyDog?

No, ILovemyDog, I will not repeat what I just said as my question to you was not replied to...

Ahhhhh!

Why is it racist? I don't care about the nationality, nor accent, but if it's incomprehensible, that's a bit silly....

On the phone to an Indian call centre and the chap on the phone said "I am going to repeat the question please try and understand!!" I had answered his question but I must have been off script for him. It really made me chuckle.

YANBU at all, you were far more patient than I would have been. I used to manage a customer services team comprising people of many nationalities. Race is irrelevant, imo any call centre worker should have the ability to deal with a reasonable range of telephone queries, and also to make themselves clearly understood by an English speaking customer.

If they can't fulfil these basic requirements, for whatever reason, then they either need more training or just aren't suitable for a call centre job.

oh god this reminds me once of when i spoke to a catalogue company that has a call centre in India , due to me being ridiculously english and have to mention the weather at every given opportunity and it having being a very hot day here (well above 50c) i said to the guy on the end of the phone ,'it must be very hard working when it is so hot ' and he answered 'it is always hot in mumbai ,madame !' Doh !!!!

Also you are not being unreasonable or racist ,just caring

i'm so so so sick of foreign call centres, especially for banks and i suffer with tiscali too. it's not fair that as a customer the simplest of enquiries etc becomes a minefield of misunderstanding, takes forever and when you eventually hang up you can't really be sure the issue was resolved.
IME british accents and our way of speaking are so much more difficult for a foreign listener on the phone than another foreigner speaking english. i do actually find it madness all these foreign call centres, i can't imagine french or germans standing for it

YANBU

I have quite a mild Scottish accent and sometimes they struggle to understand a word I say.

I refuse to deal with call centres at all now.

Hmm. Difficult one. I'm with AOL and their call centre is in India but their technical help people were fantastic. Excellent English, unfailingly polite and patient and they got us back on line after leading me through several complicated technical steps involving router configuration

But my British born Indian colleague gets quite upset about Indian call centres. I only have his view on this but apparently European companies take the cream of Indian graduates to work in the best call centres. You might be talking to a qualified pharmacist, optometrist, architect or lord knows what about your insurance, internet, bank account or mobile. It pays more than the jobs they have trained to do and the Indian economy is losing out because of it.

It is also - according to him - changing family life in India as now these qualified young people have good incomes and are choosing to leave home before marriage, rent flats and socialise with each other, where this previously didn't happen. He thinks this is a good thing - as do I - not that I feel qualified to comment really but it sounds very liberating to me. A difficult one to balance though against the fact that these young people aren't doing the professional jobs that they studied to do.

But in line with other posters, I've worked with people from the UK that I've struggled to understand because of their heavy regional accents. My favourite was a security guard at an office I visited in Paisley. He was friendly and smiley and welcoming but the only word I understood was 'hen'. And I'm from oop North!

If by asian you mean Indian OP, I suspect the problem is the script not a failure to understand from the call centre staff. English is the official language of India, so since, like technofairy says, most call centre staff are pretty educated I think it is a combination of accent/not allowed to divert from script. So I think you're not BU to be annoyed, but maybe for the wrong reason. I don't think there's a reason for saying 'poor call centre staff'. Perhaps even condecending there..