India
This caught my attention: as you probably heard the last time you called a helpdesk, more and more call centres/helpdesks are outsourced to India. This article describes the racial abuse Indian helpdesk people have to endure from Western European or American callers.
Main reason seems to be the general feeling that these Indian people take away European/American jobs.
I must admit I'm surprised by this attitude, being a helpdesk person myself. I don't think that many jobs are taken away. In fact, I strongly believe most Western European/American people don't want to work in a helpdesk / call centre. What the f*, they don't even want to call a helpdesk!
Now I admit there are a lot of rubbish helpdesks, but still... Is that an excuse to be impolite, or even outright abusive, when calling one?
I've had my share of angry/abusive callers, mostly when dealing with end-users (e.g. when helpdesking for Belgium's largest cable internet provider). In a business-to-business helpdesk, what I'm doing now, things seem a bit more polite.
Any comment is welcome - your helpdesk stories as well. But please do not flame me for the bad experiences with my collegues you had in the past.
To be continued - mostly by an explanation of the difference between a call centre and a helpdesk.
Main reason seems to be the general feeling that these Indian people take away European/American jobs.
I must admit I'm surprised by this attitude, being a helpdesk person myself. I don't think that many jobs are taken away. In fact, I strongly believe most Western European/American people don't want to work in a helpdesk / call centre. What the f*, they don't even want to call a helpdesk!
Now I admit there are a lot of rubbish helpdesks, but still... Is that an excuse to be impolite, or even outright abusive, when calling one?
I've had my share of angry/abusive callers, mostly when dealing with end-users (e.g. when helpdesking for Belgium's largest cable internet provider). In a business-to-business helpdesk, what I'm doing now, things seem a bit more polite.
Any comment is welcome - your helpdesk stories as well. But please do not flame me for the bad experiences with my collegues you had in the past.
To be continued - mostly by an explanation of the difference between a call centre and a helpdesk.
posted by perelaar at 3:41 p.m.
1 Comments:
Ah yes, I know the feeling. At least I work for in-company clients on non-technical issues, which helps. People treat you better when they know that you:
a)are the person most likely to help
b)will be there the next time they call (as the "helpdesk" consists of 2 to 5 people)
I have been shouted at a lot, mostly by people who were blaming me for company policy, or people who were angry that they couldn't talk to a 'real' HR person.
I have also had many positive reactions and many thank yous.
Come to think about it, I actually, and sadly, have more bad helpdesk experiences than bad customer experiences. Here are two recent examples:
1. IT helpdesk, sitting in Ireland, called from Belgium.
I called in on the English number, but the person at the other end of the line was obviously a French speaker. So far no problem though. I was having problems with a home internet connection for work. The guy couldn't really express himself in English, so I switched to French as a courtesy. He didn't even respond to that, was quite blunt, and continued to tell me that I shouldn't be using this modem (the modem was not mine, and working fine for the owner). He also rudely kept telling me to hurry up. I was polite all the way, but by the time I hung up I was red in the face with anger.
Of course I do have not worked here for 2.5 years for nothing, so once I stopped breathing fire I called back and spoke to his teamleader. He was taken off the phones.
2. Health insurance helpdesk, sitting in the Netherlands, called from Budapest.
I called them, they kept me waiting for 15 minutes and then put me through to another number. Then back to the original number. Then I was promised a call back by a specialist. The specialist called back as I was on the phone to someone else. I interrupted my call to talk to her. Towards the end of the call I asked her if I could put her on hold to quickly round off the other call. I did so and in less than two minutes was back to her. Her reaction was "if I call you and you pick up I expect you have time to talk". I pointed out the I was already on the phone when she called and besides, I had spent 15 minutes waiting for her own company to take my call. She then, to my astonishment, said "so this is some kind of revenge?" I tried to -politely - respond to her but she said she was so busy she had no time to listen and hung up.
Of course I was absolutely livid, so I talked to our internal contact who forwarded the complaint to OHRA, the health insurance in question.
Sadly there is a lot of bad helpdesking out there - I wish both sides, customer and helpdesk, could stick to my simple rules:
- always, always be polite, rudeness gets you nowhere
- remember that whoever you are talking to is not necessarily responisble for what is wrong
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