[lit-ideas] Re: Outsourcing shinannigans
- From: "Judith Evans" <judyevans@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 12:03:35 -0000
>names like "Stacy Russell" and "Travis"
this is clearly culture-specific (US-market specific); the Indian customer
service people I
talk to who don't use Indian names (some do) are called, say, Andrew,
.
(The Chinese ones could be using their standard English given names -- if
the Chinese still do that.)
>why
may be to try to get you to think you're talking to a call centre in the
US (given all the complaints about the Indian ones), may be because
they think you might not be able to pronounce
an Indian name. One of the management staff at my bank's nearest
branch is called, I thought, 'Ange', it emerges her name's Anjna (Anjnia?), it
isn't in fact difficult to pronounce but it's thought to be.... Brits
and I suppose Americans are pathetic at pronouncing Indian names
so, well, easier if they call themselves Fred, also better than
having their name mangled.
>I mean -- why the pretense?
pretense is indeed undesirable. 'Phone one of the admin depts of
Abbey National Plc and you'll get something that is, though it normally
doesn't admit it, a call centre set up precisely to shield that dept
from you. The dept's in Bradford, the call centre is in, yes,
Belfast. That really pisses me off.
>But why pretend?
well as I said, there's the name problem. Some 'native' English speakers
mangle almost any Indian name and most would get Shilpa slightly
wrong initially, but my late colleague T V Satyamurti, aka Satya, possessed
a name that's really difficult. (He was of course not pretending anything.)
Why should they put up with it?
and there's also the racism problem.
EY>You like a challenge? It's a big one. Don't be upset. Vote with your wallet.
then you too can 'access' Marks and Spencer's superb customer services in, er,
India.
Judy Evans, Cardiff, UK
----- Original Message -----
From: Julie Krueger
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2007 8:46 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Outsourcing shinannigans
Someone please tell me why the customer service folk I talk with on-line re.
eBay, Symantec, Windows, etc., go by names like "Stacy Russell" and "Travis"
while I can almost always tell from their English sentence structure if their
native language is Chinese or Indian?
I mean -- why the pretense? SusieQ is most definitely not from Georgia.
Julie Krueger
Hey -- if you live in another country and English is your second language,
fine by me. But why pretend?
Other related posts:
