@wmarat wrote:
@MsKmm00 wrote:
I am not trying to be negative by any means. If people are using them to get a native English speaker ... cool. My point is, there seems to be the misconception that they can do more for you. I have called two to three times per month since December and have received the same response: we can't do any more for you (including a manual review) than the front line reps. Both lines have the same abilities.
You are negative by any means.
This is not the first time when such discriminating "opinions" appear on this board, which makes me bery sad.
Hopefully my English is understandable.
I held off commenting on this, because as Sylvia said, we were really getting OT. But this is an important issue, and there are a lot of misconceptions and hurt feelings connected with it. We have many members here on the forums who grew up in other countries, and now they are members here with everyone else, sharing their experiences and insights. And I can think of several of them right off the top of my head who are just as annoyed by overseas CSR's, and they have posted about their frustrating experiences.
When a credit card company is too cheap to hire customer service labor in its home country, whatever that country might be, that is a big signal to me that they don't care a whole lot about their customers' experiences and satisfaction. This doesn't mean that they are thinking, A-ha, overseas labor is unskilled and stupid, it means that they are thinking, A-ah, overseas labor is cheap, so we won't have to "waste" as much money on keeping our customers happy.
In line with this emphasis on paying as little as possible while maintaining the appearance of having a customer service department, VERY FEW overseas call center employees are allowed to use any judgment or flexibility in helping customers. They are quite literally "script-readers." They are given a list of common questions and standard responses, and they are not allowed to deviate. One member who works in the call center industry posted that if they go off-script three times, they have a meeting with their manager and threatened with the loss of their job. If true, that means that any overseas CSR who actually tries to help won't last for long.
And sure, it might cause a bit of confusion when different accents and speech patterns are involved, but if the CSR is allowed to use some initiative, it shouldn't cause impossible problems. I work in hospitals, and we have many providers from other countries whose English is their second (or third, or sixth) language. I interact with doctors, nurses, and others from Poland, Russia, Iran, many Arabic-speaking countries, India, Israel, the Phillipines, Brazil, Korea, and China, just off the top of my head. We sometimes have trouble with what the other is saying, but we figure it out in the end. And we maintain a sense of humor throughout.
Sometimes people hear an accent, don't get good service, and automatically assume that it's because the CSR is from another country. That's not it: it's generally because they are not allowed to give good service, because the credit card company is not focused on truly serving its cardholders. And btw, I've gotten hilariously bad service from US-based CSR's speaking standard English.
For more thoughts on this, please read the thread posted at the top of this board called "PLEASE READ: Posting About Foreign Call Center Frustrations" :
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=creditcard&thread.id=20895
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
