English as a second language Customer Service Representatives Need more Training

I'm just going to say these two things. Thing 1// Not all of them are actually IN the U.S. These representatives may work in any country on any of the seven continents. When you call that 800 number you could be calling Georgia or Washington or Australia or India. As long as the company is represented there, they may have a call center there. So that's partially the reason. Thing 2// When I call one of those numbers and the person can't seem to understand me... or I them. I hang up. Call back. Hope that this time I got someone else. If I didn't. Well I hang up again.

Being aware that the outsourcing of Customer Service has been going on for the last 10 years, I never call. If there isn't a contact e-mail given on the website I use the company information given at http://hoovers.com/free/ to look up who to write to. There is also the advantage of having a paper trail that shows what you have been through in order to resolve the situation. The paper trail is scanable and faxable to the next contact as you make your way up the food chain to get the situation handled appropriately.

most of these call centers are actually located outside the US. companies like Charter, ATT, Time Warner and many others are dwindling down their in US call centers and replacing them with outsourced call centers located in India, Mexico and the Phillipines. Frustrating as it is, I don't fault the companies for trying to save a little money. Larger companies that NEED the volume of call centers that these do supply limitless amounts of jobs within the US so I have no problem with the outsourcing. I agree to an extent with you on the training. Most of these people however speak english better than we can speak other foreign languages. My cable company for example has no translators for the large amount of Vietnamese, Mexican and Romanian customers that they have. I used to work for that company and offered several times to take classes sponsored of course by the company to learn a second language. they did not concur with my idea. now, non of the csr's that work there are able to communicate with the massive number of immigrant workers that are flooding to the gulf region. it's frustrating not only for the workers but for the customers as well.

I totally agree. my husband got a call the other day from a woman who was trying to get a payment on our lowes card. He was trying to ask her information because we had recently got a scam call trying to get money on our lowes card also. He couldn't understand anything she was saying. Finally he just said loudly that he would make a payment on Friday and hung up.

Oh my, yes. It is so tiring. If you have a tech problem with a product and need walked through..what do you get? Someone with an accent so thick that you cannot understand a word they are saying, and apparently they cannot understand what you are saying, either. Some companies just sell out to the cheapest bidder and leave the consumer to pretty much fend for themselves. I find this very frustrating, also. I am not so sure what English speaking consumers can do about it though? Can we ask the person on the phone to hand the phone over to someone that "speaks English"? I have known others to do this and some will transfer the call to someone more fluent.

I completely agree. You should see HP's(Hewlett-Packard) customer service. Its horrific for all reasons. I'll say there are like one or two really good service members out there, but the rest make me want to crush the phone. Everyone else described it well though. It is frustrating on the customers end, and underhanded on the part of the manufacturers.

I cannot agree with you more. I would like to talk to someone who has really been in my situation and who live in my country talk to me, and not people from India or the Philipines (no offense to anyone from those countries), but seriously, how do any of you people know what we are going through here and how our computers operate? None of you people have a clue, also your command of the English Language could use a lot of work. American English is quite different from England's English.

It's very irritating to say the least! We used to have MCI for our long distance service and whenever we needed customer service we'd be on hold for at least an hour then we'd finally get someone who could speak almost no English. My husband asked where they were located and he was told the Phillipines. I'm against this outsourcing. My sister-in-law worked for Merrill Lynch and she had to train people from India who were going to take her job. Also, has anyone else heard about Sprint dropping customers who had called customer service "too often"? Is that a crock, or what? Annie

hi drknlvly. I agree with you. I don't live in English speaking country and I don't even try to get a job where it is necessary to use English fluently. But I understand the whole situation. In my opinion, there are 2 possible reasons of this situation: not everyone wants to work at call centre. It is not an ideal job... Maybe it's simply hard to get a good employee. Or they come and go - they work for a while, than resign. There could be intensive rotation of workers. Of cours companies should train their workers as much as it's possible. Second possible reason is, what was mentioned earlier, that companies prefer to engage cheap than qualified worker. Whatever is the reason it could be annoying. Have a nice day. jazgottt

Well most of it is due to outsourcing, and frankly there is nothing we can really do about it. I haven't really had to many problems understanding customer service people from other countries, its the idiots here that are driving me nuts. I spent 45 mins on the phone last Saturday trying to cancel my Debit card cause it was lost in the machine. The guy spoke english he was just a retard apperently. I had to repeat everything to him like 10 times and he still kept asking the same stupid questions. I wanted to reach through the phone and smack him. So now with a lot of my stuff if I have issuse I go to the direct store and handle it that way. If my cell phone has problems I go into a store, same with my cable. I hate dealing with phone jockies anyway.

Usually, when I come across the language problem, I ask to speak to a supervisor. They will most likely speak better English, which is necessary for me to be able to understand. It simplifies finding out what they're selling, and I can tell them to put me on the 'no-call' list without anyone being confused!LOL!

I guess those company doing this should give their employees a training. Coz sometimes customer representatives over do it. They put too much effort trying to mimic how western countries speak. They imitate that to much and the result is you dont get to understand what theyre are trying to say.

i totally agree, we got the same problem in the uk. My friend rang an internet call centre for help and some foreign guy who couldnt speak proper english tried to guide her through and when she gave up because she couldnt understand him he said to her 'dont you people know how to use the internet or what?'. Yet I had an job interview in the same place, I speak fluent english and I'm top notch with the internet and they turned me down!

I am a triligual speaker and its a bit hard to speak in three different languages correctly so give them some love they really feel much better.

i understand your problem and kind of irritation when anything like this happens. But you have to understand that service industry have bad ,mediocre and best providers.Based on this their charges for providing services vary.Now the company which has opted for outsourcing is doing so to cut costs.But sometimes they want to save more money and opt for service providers who have no credentials but charging less money.The company is to be blamed for this. If by any chance you visit India,you will be surprised the cultural changes in youth and kind of perfect English they speak.The established BPO groups have streamlined there recruitment functions and provide best training.But definitely in thriving industry there are bound to be some sub standard providers.This will happen anywhere and not in India only. The company which is planning to outsource services should do some research to hire best services instead of thinking of saving few more bucks.