Call centre outsourced to India
02-September-2010
*
* Your Gripe Gripe List Quick Gripe Comments Gripe Poll Resources Contact Us Advertise Home *
* prev
next *
 

Call centre outsourced to India

Your Ad Here Post a comment Post a comment 
Related Gripes Related Gripes 
Random Gripe Random Gripe 
Feedburner Gripes by email 
 
 

Calling customer services or a help desk these days seems to be getting increasingly frustrating. It used to be the case that it was just a real pain because you were transferred from pillar to post and left hanging on for some time.  These days however we have the added difficulty in that the person on the other end of the line may be difficult to understand because of their strong accent.

So many companies have outsourced their call centres to India now and we were of course given assurance that the quality of service would be the same.  We were told that the young professionals in India were well trained and fluent in English and that the service they provide would be seamlessly integrated.  Well, I guess some of that is kind of true.  It was smooth all right.  If you blinked, you would have missed it.  We picked up the phone one day and instead of Manchester or Glasgow, we found that we had been routed through to a centre in Bangalore.

India call centre

Okay, it’s true are skilled workers out there, and some of them do speak quite good English. However, my experience so far with Indian call centres hasn’t been all that good.  On one occasion fairly recently, we had such difficulty understanding each other that we decided to communicate on MSN Messenger instead.  To be fair to the help desk operative, they did in fact solve the problem reasonably well, but I don’t think that the average person ringing up their bank could be expected to do this.

Some people naturally speak louder when they are on the phone, and sometimes if there is a bad signal they will often repeat what they have said several times.  Perhaps one of the main reason we resent people using a mobile in close proximity to us is because we only ever hear half the conversation.  It doesn’t make sense.  We are naturally curious and like a puzzle with half the pieces missing we frustrated by being unable to see the complete picture.

I completely understand why a company would want to outsource their customer service department to India.  It’s about saving money.  We all want to save some money don’t we?  The call centre employees have an average salary that is about one fifth of their UK equivalent.  You can save a whole lot of money just by using some cheap foreign labour and who cares about the jobs that have to go here in the UK?  Come to think of it, who cares about the customer suffering thanks to this, the latest bout of managerial stupidity?

Time to come home and call home!


Other Related Gripes

Fed up with call centres and their staff?
Frustrated by inept support staff
BT took money when they shouldn't have
The immigrant hierarchy in the UK
Working in a call centre
Western coprorate culture
Sky - No Satellite Signal Received
Call centre staff suffer abuse too
Sky plus recording problems
Automated telephone services
Time we withdrew from The European Union
Asylum seekers in the UK
Insurance companies are nothing but sharks
Customer service hell
Broadband - superhighway or dead end





Visitor Comments

Please read this before you post

Enter your comments in the space below

Name or nickname


Remember my name



 
Hi,



This is Gaurav And I m From India and I m running my BPO in India and I m looking for new process for debts and mortgages ....... If you have then just let me know thanx

Email -> gauravchopra27@gmail.com
*Gaurav Chopra  12-Aug-2010 16:06

 
MikeP,

You see:

"It must be so restful for you to take out your box of banalities and choose from them each time you post, it saves so much time and is so much easier than thinking." (from Incognito)

All the educated people here onto you. So, you had better embrace those whose English you deride. Perhaps they are your only supporters.
*pete  09-Aug-2010 02:59

 
Mike P,

" Having fun packing shelves at Tesco or whatever you do."

What a silly, pointless and childish comment.

I suppose you think that if I have a good job my pride will be wounded and that I will rush to tell you what a great job I have and if I do pack shelves in Tesco then I will of course slink away, crushed.

If I packed shelves in a supermarket what would be wrong with that? It is an honest, underpaid and necessary job and nothing to be ashamed of. You are always looking down on those who don't work and now you sneer at those who do if they don't have a well paid professional job.

Why don't you just admit that you despise those whom you think are your social inferiors?
*incognito  08-Aug-2010 22:51

 
Mike P,

I have been away and have only just seen your reply. Where to start. Yes, Murchison was right that you over react and are pointlessly aggressive when it was pretty obvious (or should have been) that it was a jokey response. You could have responded in kind you know but I think that you perhaps don't have much of a sense of humour and prefer to verbally slap people around a bit.

29-7-2010

"Has it perhaps occured to you, for example, that unqualified and uneducated people would not have the resources to travel overseas, and even if they did, they would not get visas or jobs. No, I didn't think you'd have thought that through."

Actually, I live in a part of London where I am outnumbered by immigrants, both legal and illegal, and so I may well have rather more knowledge of the realities that you do. Many immigrants, including some from India, are illegal and work with no visas or get National Insurance numbers ( often using fake papers) rather more easily than you might imagine.

It is not only the well off and well educated who arrive here; the poor and poorly educated also make the journey . It just takes them a lot longer and is fraught with more difficulties than the comfortable air journey taken by the educated and relatively privileged. Sometimes their families club together to help fund the journey as the mostly young migrants regularly send money back home.

My original point was that it is rather silly to make sweeping judgements about any race. You of course consider this point of view to be "politically correct claptrap" because knee jerk judgements are your preferred mode of expression. Indians are hard working and law abiding while the English are " fat lazy uneducated Poms."

It must be so restful for you to take out your box of banalities and choose from them each time you post, it saves so much time and is so much easier than thinking.
*incognito  08-Aug-2010 22:44

 
Gainsborough lad:

No, it was an Indian restaurant that also did take away. It was over a year ago and I was only there about 36 hours but it was near a big shopping centre with a fountain. Don't know if that helps you place it.
*Murchison  03-Aug-2010 18:49

 
Romanians are angels compared to scousers. Maybe we could export some or all scousers to Romania? No, you're right...that would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
*Rivers of blood  01-Aug-2010 03:42

 
I hate Romanians dirty shoplifting, purse stealng filth, I even saw one of the ugly gippo looking old hags trying to sell cigarettes for a £1 each in the street the other day, a gang of youths came up to her started swearing then spat in her face and ran away.
I was going to run after them and buy them a pint for making me laugh so much but they were too quick.
*Enoch was right  31-Jul-2010 21:12

 
MikeP, yes I was a bit harsh on them, the Romanian scruffy pickpocket come robbers do stand out a bit as they tend to dress cheaply and go around in groups intimidating people in markets etc, no doubt there are some decent hardworking ones as well that go un-noticed.
*Gainsborough lad.  31-Jul-2010 20:06

 
Murchinson, was that the chipshop takeaway on Lord street?

If you have a re-read of my post I did state that I lived in a city,

I did live in Gainsborough years ago, still a lovely place.
*Gainsborough lad.  31-Jul-2010 19:51

 
"Corruption Bleeds The World"

Sorry but I've completely missed your point, if there is one.
*MikeP  31-Jul-2010 00:02

 
Romania clean as a whistle? I don't think so. Look at the list of the world nations on their corruptin index. Only Serbia might fare worse that Romania.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
*Corruption Bleeds The World  30-Jul-2010 22:51

 
This has really digressed from the original topic but as someone who has very close associations with Romania I'd like to place a different perspective on GL's rather harsh judgement of the Romanian community in the UK.

A lot of the Romanians in the UK are hard working people who do not stick their head above the parapet and thus do not get noticed. There is also a sizeable community of Romanians who immigrated during the Ceaucescu era and have established and integrated themselves into British society and are respected and succesful. Many second and third generation Romanians have 'Anglicised' their names so you would not know that they were of Romanian descent.

Of the more recent arrivals, there is regrettably a proportion who scrounge off the state, and live off the proceeds of crime, some petty and some serious. Romania is a member of the EU and Romanians have the right to live and work in the UK.

A lot of the criminals who are pervceived as Romanians are in fact not Romanians. Some are Roma from elsewhere (the Roma people are not necessarily Romanian) and some are Romanian Roma who live a nomadic and parastic lifestyle. Others are Moldavians, who are ethnic Romanians, but come from a neighbouring, and very poor, country which is not EU. Many of them carry false Romanian passports, as do many Bulgarians and Ukrainians in the UK.

These are some, not all, of the reasons why Romanians get such a bad press in the UK.
*MikeP  30-Jul-2010 08:26


View more comments on this gripe


 
*   *
* © 2000-2009 The Weekly Gripe. All rights reserved. Please see our privacy policy and disclaimer.   Site Map *