So much for English tech support from India

[Leo J Mauler]

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 13:13:34 -0600 "Brian Kelsay" <BLKELSAY at kcc.usda.gov>
writes:
> "Fox reports that Dell is moving its call center operations for the 
> Latitude and Optiplex computers back to the US from Bangalore, India 
> after an onslaught of complaints from dissatisfied customers who 
> couldn't cope with the differing accents and scripted responses. Is 
> this the beginning of a trend where companies recognize that the 
> quality offered by relocation to cheaper centers around the world 
> doesn't result in customer appreciation and better quality?"

One only hopes that Dell sticks a call center back into Kansas City.

Whats with the customer support call centers moving away from the
"area-neutral" Midwestern accents and into "heavy region-specific"
accents found in the North, South, and Coastlines?

I was told back in 1998 that the reason KC had a lot of call centers was
because [a] we were cheap workers compared to the Coasts and to the North
and South regions, and [b] Midwesterners had such light  accents that
anyone in the world could understand us.

And then last year and this year all the call centers moved away into
heavy accent regions where the cost of living is much higher and so they
have to pay so much more per hour to attract people.  More expensive and
the customers can't understand the representatives...what gives?

> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,103955,00.html 
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/25/1626250&mode=thread&tid=99 
> 
> For me this isn't a statement about skills in India, this is about 
> corporations trying to save a buck at the expense of the customer.  
> Customer Service/Experience can be very important to customer 
> recommendations to friends (word of mouth advertising) and the next 
> purchase (repeat business).  It's not always about price.

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