[gui-talk] Call Centers Return to U.S.

Fri Dec 12 05:31:32 UTC 2008

Hi Joel and all. I think the quality of tech support varies from service to 
service. I do not like buy.com tech support much, but I was never 
disappointed with Dell customer care. Both have call centers in India, not 
necessarily in Bangalore (now called Bangluru) though. The reason in 
difference in quality is the result of the expense the manufacturers want to 
incur towards tech support. I would not expect Joel, whom I know only from 
some balanced e-mails, to be so judgmental about the call centers at 
Bangalore and Manila. For all we know the person who Joel thought was 
sitting in Bangalore or Manila was actually talking from Sambalpur, 
Sikandarabaad or Seoul. I did read the news item in Washington Post where 
the writer specifically made clear that As the businesses in US found this 
opportunity of saving on tech support by using call centers in India, there 
was a mad rush and finally the quality of the call centers suffered as the 
demand exceeded supply.
The reason, Joel, that the quality of the call centers is not satisfactory 
does not lie in the fact that they are in Bangalore, on the contrary, the 
reason for your dissatisfaction and that of many others, perhaps, is that 
they are not based in Bangalore. These call centers are more likely based in 
some other cities in Asia.

Having said that, I must clarify that I am not defending call centers. I 
have been a staunch critic of globalization. My intention is only to clear 
some misconceptions which are sometimes cherished so dearly that they become 
truer than the truth. One such misconception is that the support provided 
from the US soil will be more efficient and less foreign accented than when 
provided from Bangalore. In my interaction with representatives of as 
diverse facilities as Medicaid, Barns and Nobles, Radio Shack, Humanware, 
access lynx etc I did not always find that to be the case. I believe that 
the tech support should come back to the US not because it will give 
efficiency, rather because it will give employment to Americans.
My final point does not add to the discourse of the call centers. I should 
clarify for Joel's sake that Hindi and Bengali are two major languages of 
India However, there are as many native speakers of these languages in 
Bangalore as they are in Orlando, Florida. And you are thousand times more 
likely to hear English being spoken in Bangalore than in Miami.

Hope I could put things in to perspective even though it is almost midnight 
and I am already half asleep.

Regards
TP
TaraPrakash
Dept. of English, Writing Program,
University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL. 32826.

----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Joel Deutsch" <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 4:16 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Call Centers Return to U.S.

> Albert,
> I haven't been as fortunate as you. I've had a lot of horribly frustrating
> experiences with tech support phone people in Bangalor and Manila. I don't
> even want to go into it, because there are portions of that Washington 
> Post
> article that pretty well nail the kinds  of hassles I've experienced. I 
> only
> want to say, in case it's necessary, that I'm not biased in general 
> against
> anybody because of their ethnicity or nationality, and I'm not the least 
> put
> off by accents unless someone's English is actually impossible for me to
> understand. I have friends and acquaintances from more than one foreign
> country, speak and read and write Spanish at a very modest level, and know 
> a
> little Russian, too. It's nothing to do with thinking poorly of people 
> whose
> first language may be Hindi or Bengali or Tagalog. But as I said, the
> article includes descriptions of the kinds of impossible situations I've
> found myself in, wasting a lot of time and being made pretty crazy by
> sometimes extremely polite people who must imagine they're doing their 
> jobs.
> By the way, my worst experiences  have come with making calls to Amazon
> phone support, which went overseas a few years ago, before which the 
> person
> would be in Seattle or Vancouver or Salt Lake city and we didn't have
> problems communicating, even though I sometimes brought the unfamiliar
> problems of being a screen reader user to the call because that was
> pertinent. But since overseas people began to answer that toll free line,
> I've had some really awful experiences. Now I just do the best I can on my
> own, and if I really can't get around some difficult problem or seeming
> malfunction on Amazon, I ask a sighted friend to help me, if that's what
> I've got to do. I'm not going through that stuff at Amazon anymore if I 
> can
> help it.
>
> IMHO, of course!
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "albert griffith" <albertgriffith at sbcglobal.net>
> To: "'NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List'" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 12:05 PM
> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Call Centers Return to U.S.
>
>
> I'll be interested to see if these services are around in a few years. 
> I've
> had good experiences with foreign tech people but I've heard the 
> complaints
> of others.  Sure a well spoken person with an American accent might be a
> little more to my liking but I've never had to discontinue a call because 
> I
> couldn't understand the support person and I wouldn't pay extra for the
> privilege of being assured of an American.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Joel Deutsch
> Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 2:21 PM
> To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Call Centers Return to U.S.
>
> don,
>
> thanks very much for posting this Washington Post article. I read general
> and tech articles in the New York Times and my hometown Los Angeles Times,
> and I'm aware of the issue for sure, but I never would have caught this 
> Post
>
> piece if you hadn't provided it. it's really informative and, in the way 
> it
> handles telling the story, "fair and balanced," although I have issues" 
> with
>
> the popularizer of that expression, I say with a mischievous grin and 
> shoes
> on both ffeet.
>
> I deleted the article text but retained its URL below just in case anybody
> missed it and would like to go to the Post and see it there.
>
> Joel
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121003
> 574.html
>
>
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