Do MBNA Use An Indian Call Centre?

"Jonathan McCormack" wrote

If the Indians can manage to learn to speak English properly, why don't you try? ;-))

I wish this were true. I recently wanted to open a Citabank account but could not understand the accent of the Indian who answered the phone (based in India). I think it is pretty short sighted to put people with a poor command of the English language at the other end of a phone line. A company I worked for outsourced its internal helpdesk to an Indian company. Same problem, impossible to understand the accents at the other end of the phone line. I think this pool of Indians who can mimic any English accent is a myth put about by call center operators.

Please note I'm not criticising the people at the other end of the line just the decision to put people with a poor command of UK English in call centers. Still the firms that do this will reap their own rewards and at least it gives some Indians a job in the mean time.

I think it makes perfectly good business sense. Having finally managed to get round their automated system where by you press numbers to be correctly diverted to the correct area then having to wait in a queue before you are then faced with someone you can't understand.

I know I won't be phoning.

Its a bit ironic that only a few years ago we were criticising the fact we were creating these call centre jobs to now complain that we are loosing them.

Not sure about MBNA but Norwich Union Direct seem to for Car Insurance. My daughters had to ring 3 times to get names spelt correctly on the Certificate, latest issue came today - it's still wrong. Must cost someone a fortune in paperwork and postage!

Jerry

Reminds me of the time I needed to phone the help line for my computer. After giving my address as Ayrshire in Scotland the operator replied, "Oh you arein Scotland, I see the Bolton Wanderers won again on Saturday!" Needless to say the "help" I was offered was just as useless to me.

Probably still cheaper than paying someone to do the job properly!

:D

Yeah, I felt sorry for the poor bloke, he expected to spend all day phoning polite speaking people who lived in Tunbridge Wells and he got me, a slightly quieter Ian Paisley :)

Now you mention it, I can understand the Indians better than Sky's Scottish Call Centre ;)

Jonathan

rotfl! These attempts at relationship building always amuse me; the local Sainsbury checkout people started attempting to read the name on proffered credit cards and addressing me by that. It's an unusual surname, and there are several possible pronunciations. It was amusing watching them read, then re-read, the name, then either give up, or pluck up courage to address me with it. They invariably got it wrong.

(Oh, and the first call centre operative that attempts to strike up a conversation on Eastenders with me is going to be crucified )

Daytona

To be fair, the Citibank people are some of the more understandable Indian call centre crews I'd had to deal with -- but I still have a problem, even so.

I can have difficulty making out speech at the best of times. Lip-reading helps a lot, but not on the phone. When I'm trying to arrange substantial CHAPS transfers, spelling out critical things like reference fields is hard enough; having the read-back given to me heavily accented, so that I have to keep asking for repeats, leaves me feeling very insecure indeed. I really, *really* don't want that money going to the wrong place, or bouncing back.

Which leaves me to ponder ... surely Citibank has a duty, under the Disability Discrimination Act, to provide telephone bankers with clear, neutrally- or only lightly-accented voices, so that they don't disenfranchise customers with hearing difficulties.

Any thoughts, anyone?

Jon

They just straight ask me where I am from :)

Vadim

It's funny you should say that. We run a small business, but coming from Edinburgh I find our Northern Irish customers quite easy to understand, but I hate having to have phone conversations with companies in London as I can't understand a word they're saying. My partner, though, being from the north of England, seems to manage the London accent OK but hates phoning Northern Ireland!

It helps when you can share the load.

ally

I don't mind foreign call centres. The real problem with call centres is that the staff have a script in front of their face and if something isn't on it, they don't know, don't want to know, can't find out, and can't help.