Costumer Service

[Kaiya-Sky]

Pretty much everyone has had to make a call to costumer service for something.
For the past 5 years iv had to phone in a lot to get my Internet working again, i have dial up, and it keeps messing some how and I have to keep phoning in to get it fix.

I just got off the phone with them about 30 minutes ago, and they guy i was talking to was Indian, i could understand him pretty well, the best so far, any ways he was spelling out my password for me which was Maverick (my cats name) and went threw like M for this and A for this and I for India, and then he got to K, and he couldn't think of anything for K, he was like "K for....K for....whats K for?" It was kind a funny, i was trying to laugh away from the phone. Another time a few years ago i was talking one guy and i was trying to get my Internet working again, and shorty before i was about to get the phone, he asked me how old i was, i don't think my age has anything to my Internet not connecting... and then after then he was hard to get off the phone he kept trying to find other things to help me out with.

Any one have any interesting costumer service stories?

(I'm pretty sure Customer service is the right word i couldn't think of it and had to ask my Nana and 2 friends all with different answers - and just to clarify i have no problem with foreign people, I love them and their accents and language and their not so complete understanding of our language and their food, so I'm not complaining its just they happen to be on costumer service a lot and are hard to understand sometimes and their mistakes are sometimes Funny, so no offence ^^)

[CatsWithMatches]

The problem that most people experience with customer service people of different backgrounds usually isn't actually the accent (which gets the blame) or their background, it's their actual lack of training and understanding of the technology, which is much more the fault of the company that they work for. Basically, if they know their stuff, and you can at least understand them, you'll have no trouble.

I do IT work for a small shop, and I have often had to contact the support people for a number of large hardware manufacturers. My favorite is Intel, because even if the person I talk to has a really heavy accent, they're all REALLY well trained and almost always know more about the hardware than I do. We always end up having an intelligent conversation about what's going on. And conversely, I've talked with internet support people that had no accent (to me) that had no clue of anything beyond their script.

The script is the real problem. There is no substitute for critical thinking.

And I love that if you call Intel's server support before 9am, you get the support office in england. Some of their techs are girls. mmmmmm I love british accents.

[Dark_Fairy]

Try calling Virgin Mobile. Those are the best people to talk to. >_>

My mom and I use pre-paid cell phones, even though I hate VM and want a better phone and service, but whatever. So, the first time we were trying to activate our first cell phones from there we got a person from India that couldn't speak English well. My mom had to keep asking the person to repeat herself. Finally at one point my mom handed me the phone because she couldn't understand the person. It sounded like the person was saying "vein number". Finally I figured out the person was saying "PIN number" but geez, it took like 5 minutes to figure it out. It was funny though since the person was like "VEEEEEEEEEN NUMBER! VEEEEEEEEEN NUMBER!" After we got off the phone my mom and I were laughing. We still joke about it. XD

We've been through like, 4 cell phones since then. Three of which have been done online by me (my mom isn't that good with computers) and one over the phone again because we got a defunct phone. At least the second time on the phone with them we got somebody understandable. ^^;

It's fine if you talking to somebody you can understand, but I just get irritated when I can't.

On a side note, my mom works customer service for our local paper. She actually does a really good job at it, but she gets yelled at by people for things that aren't her fault. You'd be surprised how many rude people are in one town and how fired up they can get about a paper.

[phyco126]

I called cisco's customer service once because we couldn't get the router to work. The guy ended up yelling at me because I couldn't find the mac address on the router. I could understand if I was some prick and was being a jerk to him, but I was very polite and even said sir. He still yelled at me. I guess patience doesn't exist in the tech support world.

[Silver Phoenix]

It's absolute bullcrap with the amount of outsourced customer service help in this country. If it's a local issue forget it. How the hell is someone in India going to understand the service nuances of something specifically "local." It's very rare that you can call a company and have someone from the U.S. answer your call, or you get a damn automated message.

I also love how every person I talk to ends up with a name as simple as Mike or John when you sure as hell know that is not their name when calling another country. I guess they are given a name to sound more "American." Granted, sometimes you can luck out and get a genuinely nice rep that knows what they're doing. However, that is the exception and not the norm.

This is not a prejudiced or racial response, it's a general statement regarding outsourcing to foreign countries.

[phyco126]

I dunno, I never had an Indian yell at me, but the cisco guy, who sure as hell was an american, sure did.

Another story, I was talking to tech support (again, a fellow American). After I was all done on the phone and the problem was solved, he actually thanked me for being kind, patient, and not yelling at him. Never before have I ever felt so sorry for someone in tech support. I mean, how horrible is it that you thank someone for being nice to you, because everyone else hates you even when it really isn't your fault?

[Silver Phoenix]

Customer Service, Telemarketing, and Tech Support are all thankless jobs. I took a job telemarketing and quit the next day. You can understand why people hang up, because the caller has to read a script and no one wants to talk to you in a limited amount of time to get your spiel out. I always try to be nice when calling a customer service line, but sometimes you just get a bad rep on the other end and you want to punch them in the face through the phone.

It also doesn't help that the majority of people calling customer service are idiots and make their jobs infuriatingly difficult over the most mundane things. It's a double-edged sword, and someone is always bleeding on the other end.

[Kizyr]

I've found that any customer service rep you call has about the same chance of being helpful or useless regardless of if the rep is in the US or outsourced. The only difference is that if they're useless and outsourced, the person calling will attribute their uselessness to being foreign (while if they're just useless, the person calling will attribute this to general incompetence or carelessness).

It's like the whole "You suck at math" / "Girls suck at math" thing that XKCD pointed out way back. KF