Hello, My Name is Ste... Ste.. Stephanie


No it's not. It's Anandita or Jagrati or Nishtha or some equally lovely Indian name. Why on earth do call centers make Indians use western names when answering the phone? I mean, I can hear the accent. I know I'm calling India! You're not fooling anyone and you're making this lovely girl stumble over a strange name for nothing!

I think that part of why I'm mad is that when I called and heard the accent, the first thing that crossed my mind was "Oh no, I'm in India." I hated myself almost as soon as I thought it. I'm not that sort of a person. I don't hate people from other cultures just because they're from other cultures! I don't think people are dumb just because they have an accent!

So what happened? Why did I have this reaction? I guess it's that I just wanted someone who could immediately understand everything I was saying, and whom I could understand in return. When you're trying to troubleshoot problems on a website, you don't want to have to keep saying "Huh? What?" every ten seconds. You want the problem fixed so you can get on with your life.

I don't think that outsourcing is inherently evil. I'm glad that we can provide jobs in countries that need them, and I don't think Americans are losing as many jobs as might be thought because of it. But there are some things that shouldn't be outsourced. And tech help is one of them.

Comments

Doug said…
I only thought outsourcing was bad when the company (Citibank) was so cheap that they didn't even bother to pay for a stable phone line to India. The last time I called, there must have been satellite trouble because it sounded like the person was talking to me from the end of a very very long tube. (His name was Sanjay, btw)

Of course, I was trying to cancel my credit card, so maybe that's their racket: they figure people won't cancel and give up if they're given a bad phone connection.

Moral of the story? Do all your business with evil corporate giants in writing. Also Check your credit report annually.
November 20, 2007 at 9:30 AM
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