Re: Indian call centres
 

That won't happen anytime soon. The large companies pay too much to the government. That's not to mention the money the government saves by outsourcing it's own operations (where possible).

---------- Post added at 14:36 ---------- Previous post was at 14:17 ----------

While I actually think off shore call centres are a bad thing, it's worth remembering that you get good and bad employees in all call centres, no matter which country they are in.

Why are off shore call centres bad? Well, a few reasons.

Security. Why would they care about selling on account details from someone who is in a different continent. Even assuming they don't, we have quite good protection from the Data Protection Act, but we lose a lot of the protection when the transaction is carried out on another continent.

Language. Even if the worker on the other end of the phone is fluent in English, they may still have trouble understanding some accents. My Turkish friend is fluent in English, has lived over here for years and apparently had a good command of English even before she moved here, but she *still* has problems with some of the Northern and Scottish accents. Combine that with a situation where they may be dealing with technology and it's associated jargon and people who don't know much about that technology, are possibly quite stressed as well, and the fact that some accents get stronger when people are stressed, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Attitude.

I realise UK call centres can suffer from this as well. I personally have found that some call centre operatives are rude. Even offensive in the case of the one who phoned me up last Saturday (6 times) to tell me my computer had a virus, then wouldn't get off the line until I told him point blank that I do know computers and that my computer did not have a virus and hung up the phone. It took a few minutes, but I have to admit, I had fun when he tried to blind me with his qualifications by stating he had an MCSE. I think my degree outranks that, and I have helped on some MCSE courses, so I have a good idea of their content.

Re: Indian call centres
 

I`ve had that in the past myself. The strangest though was not the occasional implying of Viruses & Malware but the Tech Support lass once telling me she could see my wireless router and it was that that was actually the problem.......when the only router i used at that time was my Desktop with a spare network card.:erm:

The language thing though has often been as funny as it has been annoying. Both me and the other poor bloke have come off that phone in the past with tears in our eyes.

Re: Indian call centres
 

That's it for me. They simply don't understand our desire for security and DPA adherence and therefore more likely to give in to temptation if offered money to harvest our data.

The other matter regarding language is although they might understand English but they don't get how we use it. They don't understand when we try to emphasis certain points. I remember one documentary showing the training they were getting and in the classroom although they spoke good English they were being taught expressions like "How do you do" and "jolly good". Now I may live in South Wales but never have I heard anyone say either of those in real life, at least not on the scale where it would need to be taught to off-shore callcentre agents.

Re: Indian call centres
 

You should have asked him which of the no experience or indeed skill required bootcamps he attended to get his paper cert. India is pretty awash with those guys, no clue how anything actually works they just paid their rupees and were trained in how to pass the exams.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourc...bootcamp+india