I cannot understand the greed of American companies and billionaires. This is the Republican party. folks. They would rather claim to bring back coal (which they can't)...but not train these English-Speaking Americans in Appalachia to be call-center reps.

Shame on Trump and all the GOP type greedy corporate CEOs.

Anonymous wrote:You can thank minimum wage laws for that. It's much cheaper to pay someone $1/hour into answer your call from India.

Sure paying someone a living wage is the problem. Im Sure you are going get great help that way

Before engaging with the rep, request the call to be transferred to the states.

I was struck by this the other day. I has to sdeal with a few airline on an issue. United had a call center in India I guess? The European airlines all that what I assume were local call centers (or at least folks with accents native to the country in question).

You can thank minimum wage laws for that. It's much cheaper to pay someone $1/hour into answer your call from India.

Anonymous wrote:Why can't they train people in the coal country and move the call centers there. It almost seems like Americans under Trump hate other poor White Americans.

Disgusting.

Who is they?

These are corporate decisions

Obviously cost cutting

And if you haven't figured this out, they pledge allegiance to no country. They are just in it for the money

Sure would be nice if an "America First" president somewhere would establish programs like training west Virginia to answer call center phones, instead of aiding corporate greed

Press 2 for Spanish. Their English is waaaaaaaay better

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Switch to a credit union.

I’m having this issue right now with a life insurance policy and changing the beneficiaries is now a two week ordeal instead of one email to my agent.

OP here. This WAS a credit union. Wright Patman Congressional, in fact. If you have a Visa question you get routed to a call center in India.

There should be a law against banks and financial institutions using foreign call centers

Bit it's fine if schools are trying to teach academic skiills to classes of kids with heavy accents and limited knowledge of English who immigrate here from different countries?

As for people having access to your data, at every call center I've worked in, employees can't bring in their phones into the work area, and often aren't allowed to have a pen and paper either, to prevent writing down info and taking it with them. That's why occasionally you'll see them ask the same information again on the same call - they are on a different screen/system and don't have yoru previously-provided data since they can't write it down.

This is good to know. Helpful post, thanks, PP.

Call center industry person here. First, credit unions typically don't directly issue credit cards (they just brand them), so that's outsourced based on the card company's decision, not the credit union. If you call the credit union about a banking (not card) issue, that's a lot more likely to be handled in-house.

As for why companies outsource, well it's cost of course. There are card companies that do nearly all their customer support in the US, but you'll probalby pay a premium for that benefit. The AmEx Platinum, at $895/year, uses predominantly in-house support (the exception may be routine fraud holds, in my experience). Switch to that if you like.

Regarding accents, if you're having trouble understanidng, then that call center agent will not last long anyway as their metrics on average time per call will go up due to people asking them to repeat over and over. A lot of call center operations have moved from India to other countries, in particular the Philippines, and you'll have very few accent issues there.

As for people having access to your data, at every call center I've worked in, employees can't bring in their phones into the work area, and often aren't allowed to have a pen and paper either, to prevent writing down info and taking it with them. That's why occasionally you'll see them ask the same information again on the same call - they are on a different screen/system and don't have yoru previously-provided data since they can't write it down.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hang up and callback

NP. This seems mean and racist but honestly, next time I might do this...

It’s not racist at all. Any time I get a useless agent (for any reason, including not able to understand them but there are plenty of other reasons as well, like they are just incompetent) I immediately hang up and try again. It’s not worth your time to try to muddle through when the outcome is very likely to be unsuccessful.

Anonymous wrote:It's Indian English. I was told by them that I have an accent and that they just speak Indian English.

I had no clue this was a thing and just thought they spoke improper British English...

Maybe Indian English is a thing in India but these workers are serving American and international audiences. They need to be screened better by non-Indian English speakers. Some of them are seriously impossible to understand even if all the words they are speaking may be in English.

Anonymous wrote:Hang up and callback

+1
When the accent is too thick this is the way to go. The next person will also have a very strong acccent but may be decipherable.

Anonymous wrote:Why can't they train people in the coal country and move the call centers there. It almost seems like Americans under Trump hate other poor White Americans.

Disgusting.

They used to. Call center staff overseas work for less than American minimum wage. And sometimes you can get well-educated staff because speaking a foreign language usually requires extra formal training.

Anonymous wrote:At least you're getting a person and not just the AI

It starts with AI 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 fool then after 10 minutes of that nonsense you may either get hung up on our a real person on the other side of the planet.