India and Customer Service

Fiddleback

Fiddleback

Knifemaker
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Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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Oct 19, 2005
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I have never had a pleasant experience with customer service in India. I am starting to weed out companies that I deal with that have made this horrible error in judgement. Here are a few.

Charter Cable Company - this company has the worst customer service I have experienced in my 36 years. I just fired them, and I feel so good about it.

Nissan - It just took me several minutes and a few attempts to get a damn payoff amount for my truck because of the Indian providing customer service.

Dell Computers - I will never own another Dell. I have had a terrible time getting any support from Dell with our current computer, and every time I get an Indian, and they are reading a damn script, and so Dell, go to hell.

What other companies are you frustrated with because of this smooth move?
 
Ah...Charter...I still remember the glorious feeling of giving them the boot.

Isn't it interesting how these Indian CSRs always have names like John, Bill or Mike?:jerkit:
 
The Nissan guy's name was Alex. But I didn't even write it down like I usually do because I had no idea what he'd said. Ludicrous!
 
I can't remember where I saw it, but someone had a documentary on how they train these foreign CSRs to try to alter their speech in order to sound more American, even down to trying to sound like they're from a particular region depending on where in the US they'd be servicing. I thought one of Dell's claims to fame was a homegrown service department. I guess I was mistaken or they've changed strategy. It is odd too, because so many companies are bringing those jobs back to the US due to poor service.
 
When I was in the computer industry, I worked for a company called Cook Systems International, Inc. They are an IT staffing and solutions firm that handles everything from contract recruiting to building on-site government IT hubs to doing in house programming etc. Naturally, most of the people billing for us were Indian. I had no problems with any of those guys as people. I thought most of them were pretty cool guys and we would go out to bars and hang out after bidness hours.

Now when it came to the work they did, it was very good work and they knew what they were doing, but they couldn't communicate it to the customer worth a damn. After being around them for a few years, I could understand everything they were saying, but their own project managers and superiors under their contract had no idea what was going on. We had a constant stream of crap coming from lack of communication. When I got into the recruiting side of it, I would always try to find American programmers and IT professionals and I always used Indian guys as a last resort, not because i don't like Indian people, but because the customer would just be happy as hell the whole time and everything would get done with the greatest of ease.

I don't have any problems with Indian people handling IT stuff and doing their thing, but customer service lines and help desk lines need to be handled by Americans who speak very good English and are easily understood. It's not like I can look at their face to help me understand what they're saying. I've heard people say stuff like, "oh well you shouldn't get pissed and say American English speakers only for this stuff. That's borderline rascist." I say Bullshit. It's common sense. I'm the customer who needs help. I can't get that help if I can't understand the guy trying to help me. If I lived in India and couldn't speak Indian, I wouldn't have any excuse, but I live in the United States of America, where English is the still the primary language. I'm not being narrow minded or ignorant. I'm trying to get help from someone who understands what I'm saying and I understand what they're saying. Hire Indians to handle the Dell customer service lines in INDIA. Hire Amercians with great English speaking skills to customer service in America. It's common f@#$ing sense.
 
Fiddleback said:
Dell Computers - I will never own another Dell. I have had a terrible time getting any support from Dell with our current computer, and every time I get an Indian, and they are reading a damn script, and so Dell, go to hell.
Click to expand...

I've had a few aggravating experiences dealing with Dell. It once took me over an hour just to work out a battery replacement due to the tech and I not being able to understand each-other's accents.
 
I am with you with Dell. When I had a Dell I had to call a few times and it was brutal. They will most likely be out of business shortly anyway. I went back to a Mac and couldn't be happier.
 
I have a Dell Latitude D620 as a work laptop. It has been good - but my work services it.

With that said - I have had two hard drives for it and the screen has vanity plastic has been cracked twice.

TF
 
The movie Slumdog Millionaire has a few amusing scenes set in an Indian call centre for a cellphone provider in Britain. When the director was researching it, he found that the workers bone-up on British soap operas and the weather to try to sound like they are actually in Britain.
 
Hey Andy, I'm with you on the companies that outsource...

An FYI, I had the exact same problem with my end of term buy out with my Mazda. Their customer service is in the states. It still took me 3 weeks to get an answer...
 
"Thank You for calling XM Radio customer service,We are sorry for your difficulty. While I am pulling up your account could you please tell me what station you listen to the most."


I'm sure they know the XM lineup by heart.:grumpy:
 
I actually threw my Magellan GPS in the trash after I was unable to solve a repair problem with their indian customer service agent over the phone.

After much communication problems I had sent it in for repair only to have them leave a message on my phone that the credit card number wasn't right.

I called to try to straighten it out but it was like the lady was reading off a card or something and any conversation not involving the specific phrases she understood she didn't understand:rolleyes:

So I thought I had FINALLY got thru to her and sent it back in only to have it come back like 2 weeks later unfixed with the same problem.

I emailed the company, told them the problem and asked to talk to ANYONE who could #1 understand and #2 tell me what to do to get my unit fixed.

I got an email saying call the same $%%#@@ number as the one before and I tossed it in frustration!:(
 
CA

For a long time I used their computer products for antivirus and firewall.

Then their newest version was crapping out again and again, so I contacted the Customer service (online chat, not even on the phone)

After many hours of useless non-help and canned rebuttals from Tech support India, I trashed the program altogether and got something else.
 
Sounds like the foreign exchange student who had to use three common English words in a sentence to be eligible for a summer job. He was asked to use yellow, pink, and green in a sentence. After several minutes of thinking this is what he came up with:

The phone goes "green, green", I pink it up and say "yellow?" -ba-da-bump!

:grumpy:
 
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