Even though I may be living in the US of A and generally doing business with/through allegedly American companies, chances are that if I need to talk to a customer service rep on the phone, they will not be located in this country.
After all, if you're some IT or banking conglomerate, why pay someone in the US $25/hr to answer the phone lines if you can pay someone in Southeast Asia $3-5/hr to do the same thing?
And before anyone gets their shorts in a twist, this is not a post to complain about cross-cultural language and comprehension issues!
Rather it's about technology... or the lack thereof.
Earlier today, I needed to make a payment to a collectibles web site in Denmark, and wanted to use one of my US credit cards to do so, because that way I can fund inventory purchases for my rare postage stamp business, sell the goods, and pay off the balance in a couple of months or three.
But first I needed to call the card issuer to make sure they wouldn't "bounce" a payment made on an overseas (relative to the US) web site.
Card number one had the usual automated phone system, but at least they had an option to speak to a live agent. And, to their credit, a live human answered within 30 seconds of choosing that option. "Jeffrey" with fluent but heavily Indian accented English was courteous but the PROBLEM was that it sounded like he was talking to me from the bottom of a metal barrel being rolled across loose gravel. It reminded me a bit of the sound quality when I listened to the 1974 FIFA World Cup on my tiny portable transistor radio. Aside from which, Jeffrey told me that regrettably the card could only be used in the US.
Card number two was a strikeout because there was simply no option to talk to a human being, and the usual "repeatedly pressing 0" didn't do anything, nor did "repeatedly pressing 9." Actually... repeatedly pressing 9 made the system hang up on me.
Card number three also had an automated answering system, albeit with no option to talk to a live agent... however, "repeatedly presing 0" and then just waiting connected me to "Judy" who had fluent English with just a trace of (Filipina, I think) accent... and she was very helpful and assured me that it would be fine to use my card overseas... BUT again what made her hard to understand was that it sounded like she was talking to me from the bottom of a metal barrel being rolled across loose gravel.
And therein lies my beef with call center outsourcing: In my experience, in the vast majority of cases, call quality is lousy because it is limited by the state of the technological infrastructure supporting the connection. And whether the lines are simply antiquated or trying to operate at loads higher than their rated maximum, an already sub-optimal situation really doesn't need to be further depreciated by substandard technological support!
As a consumer, it's just incredibly frustrating!
You'd think that will all the technological advances we've experienced over the past few decades that at least outsourced call centers would be able to provide clear lines for their CSRs to talk on! I don't like talking to someone who sounds like they are sitting at the bottom of a well... while it's raining heavily!
But who am I kidding? I used to work in the IT industry, mostly creating support documents for intranets and user documentation... and we were always ("indirectly," of course!) to bury the actual tech support numbers (as opposed to the main automated switchboard) so deep in the documentation that no user was likely to ever find them.
Alas, it seems things are pretty much the same, 30 years later... only different!
Thanks for reading and have a great week!
How about YOU? How is your experience with customer service calls? Have you noticed that often it's the actual CALL QUALITY that's the bigger problem? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20220321 13:12 PST
0527/1773