Offshoring Customer Support Calls

[Maher]

I had a similar tech support problem with my TV, Internet and phone, all are provided by a local company, Telus, moved to them a few months back and took the bundle to make life easy, sure. When we started, TV and internet will drop suddenly for 5 minutes and then back up again, always at night, always at the highlight of the series plot, said ok the fist 100 times it did that, rebooted everything, still the same. Called Telus and after 50 min wait and the usual 15 minutes pass around from rep to rep finally got his majesty on the phone, a Canadian but in Ontario, on the East side of the country, anyway, reboot and recheck connections, he came up with the conclusion that I have faulty wiring and that I need to pay for that, I gave it to him right then and there, told him that I have Shaw before and that never happened so don't tell me wiring, it is not!!! he then said OK we will send you a tech to your ho,e, free of charge, to check things up, and said that it will be a week, I was not happy with that but had nothing to say, so the tec is in and he says nothing is wrong with wiring and connection but he changes the TV box just to be safe, leaves and 5 min after that a signal drop in both internet and tv, called them and told them come and remove your equipment, then I was offered 3 months free service and someone will come the next day. The next day, lol, they come change the modem, things got much better and smooth, time frame for the above is around 2 weeks. A week later I get the monthly invoice from them, called them again and asked why am I being invoiced, they said sorry and to ignore it, man, it is frustrating ...

[sgreger1]

The one thing I hate more than anything on the entire planet or the known universe is using a phone tree that doesn't EVER allow you to talk to anyone. When I see a phone tree that is 30 layers deep and never leads to a real person, I assume the company doesn't want my business since they spend so much effort making sure any issues I have are NEVER resolved.

The second most irritating thing is offshore customer service. It's like a phone tree, except you feel bad when you yell at them. They don't speak english well, they do not understand your complaints, and they do not have an undertstanding of American culture and how to "deal" with angry people etc. In my customer service experience 99% of problems can be defused by letting the customer air all of their grievances while you just shut up and listen. Most people have been shoved off by 10 other guys before they got to you, and all they want more than anything is to be heard. Listening to people and understanding their concern, as well as empathizing with the customer is what resolves most percieved grievances that they may bring to your attention. With people in India, they are not very good at really hearing and understanding what your complaint is, and talking to them is really no better than talking to a machine since they don't understand what your problem is.


I entirely understand WHY things are offshored, it's about money. I personally would rather pay the absolute lowest price and receive almost no support in return, but since I usually have to pay the high price, I should at least have the option of talking to someone that is at least from a similar culture to mine who may understand on a personal level why I am upset about x,y,z. I don't know much about indians but it seems like they train them to stick to the script which makes them sound like robots, which really puts them in the same catagory as my #1 hated thing which is phone robots.