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[raywilb]

 i am sure this thread will relate to many of us. why do british companies use foreign based call centres I have been on the phone for over two hours trying to rectify a mistake made initially by them. i changed broadband supply from BT to Talktalk two weeks ago ,set it up by speaking to a person that i found it difficult to understand & when he asked me for my email address he must of slipped up by adding an extra L to gmail reading it as maill , consequently not getting emails from them. after two hours on the phone still no joy . the guy kept saying we have sent you an email with a link to reset my a/c . if i had hair i would have pulled it all out by now. how many times must i tell them that the emails are not arriving from them.

[Rangie]

Know exactly how you feel , I have had similar problems with Barclays thankfully all resolved now but took a while.

[ronnyd]

I have TalkTalk,since when it was AOL. Utter shite. Hardly use 'tinternet so not bothering to change until i find out how much the new fibre connections, fitted by City Fibre in Bury St Eds., is going to cost.

[TheBoy]

The Whorehouse have a woeful reputation for piss poor customer service, and deservedly so. Not that any of their competitors are brilliant at it by any stretch of the imagination.

But to answer your question directly, cost. Its a very competitive market with very slim margins, especially at the budget end.

[Doctor Gollum]

The better companies are conceding that shitty outsourced customer service actually costs them MORE than the savings from outsourcing in the first place.

That said, the incentives from foreign companies and governments are pretty tempting

The customer gets what the customer pays for...

[YZ250]

I'm completely deaf in my left ear and hard of hearing in my right ear, so I have a problem understanding an English person stood right next to me, let alone someone with a strong foreign accent on the phone.
Based on that, when I had to make a call to BT, I specifically asked for an English speaking, English person within the UK to deal with my issue. I was directed to BT Chat, where I reiterated my deafness and the requirement to speak to an English person. BT chat came back with "Are you able to speak on the phone now", to which I replied yes. I was promptly called ............ by a very Indian sounding person from India. 

But, I have a very recent letter from BT in front of me now, stating that 100% of BT call centres are now back in the UK and Ireland. So, if you go back with BT raywilb, you get to speak to someone in the UK ........ not necessarily an English person though. 

[TheBoy]

The better companies are conceding that shitty outsourced customer service actually costs them MORE than the savings from outsourcing in the first place.

That said, the incentives from foreign companies and governments are pretty tempting

The customer gets what the customer pays for...

Big companies in particular dont learn from past mistakes.  Some new grad in a suit will come in and outsource it all again, claiming its cost effective, then another more responsible, non-millennial  will insource it all again, ready for the party to repeat

[TheBoy]

I'm completely deaf in my left ear and hard of hearing in my right ear, so I have a problem understanding an English person stood right next to me, let alone someone with a strong foreign accent on the phone.
Based on that, when I had to make a call to BT, I specifically asked for an English speaking, English person within the UK to deal with my issue. I was directed to BT Chat, where I reiterated my deafness and the requirement to speak to an English person. BT chat came back with "Are you able to speak on the phone now", to which I replied yes. I was promptly called ............ by a very Indian sounding person from India. 

But, I have a very recent letter from BT in front of me now, stating that 100% of BT call centres are now back in the UK and Ireland. So, if you go back with BT raywilb, you get to speak to someone in the UK ........ not necessarily an English person though. 

I've not long been off the phone with a well known virtualisation company, trying to go in depth into a strange issue.  I think my Hindi was marginally better than his English.

[Doctor Gollum]

'Patronising cant' is pretty much universal 

[TheBoy]

The customer gets what the customer pays for...

I once worked for a company, and to save mentioning their name, lets call them by their old name, Hewlett Packard.  A premium provider of premium stuff, and premium priced goods. With premium support by premium people who knew the products inside out.

Then the grad suits started infiltrating, came up with a "follow the sun" support model, but neglected to open any centres outside of India or Slovenia to do that (and had to rename the system as "Best Shore" (which means the cheapest monkeys you can get away with).  But decided to keep it as a premium priced product line.

Any well meaning attempts to raise the dissatisfaction of the customers we dealt with every day meant P45 time.

And what happened to Hewlett Packard? Branded due to image. Split due to image. Half disposed of to form DXC due to image. And DXC are sinking fast, due to image.

[TheBoy]

'Patronising cant' is pretty much universal 

During my time in HP I was once very seriously up before the beak due to suggesting an Oracle support technician thtat I had already applied the latest patch bundles and firmwares, and uploaded the support bundles, so we could skip that particular stalling tactic. Our (HP) support manager for the Oracle contract was most unamused (probably in case it harmed his backhanders).  Trouble is, all of us agreed how bad Sun/Sparc support had got after being shut down in Surrey and "Bestshored" when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems.

[TheBoy]

and "Bestshored" when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems.

And that ended so well, Solaris/Sparc was pretty much announced dead within 5yrs of Oracle buying it.

[Sir Tigger KC]

The better companies are conceding that shitty outsourced customer service actually costs them MORE than the savings from outsourcing in the first place.

That said, the incentives from foreign companies and governments are pretty tempting

The customer gets what the customer pays for...

Big companies in particular dont learn from past mistakes.  Some new grad in a suit will come in and outsource it all again, claiming its cost effective, then another more responsible, non-millennial  will insource it all again, ready for the party to repeat

Lot's of people I know have been enjoying working from home over the last few months, but I wonder how long it will take before the big companies realise that if an office bod can effectively work from home in Surrey, they can get an office bod in Mumbai or Manila to do the same job?   

[Varche]

That is a horrid thought Sir T.  Where it might fall down is once a wk/month face to face meeting in office. Not many planes.

[Sir Tigger KC]

That is a horrid thought Sir T.  Where it might fall down is once a wk/month face to face meeting in office. Not many planes.

If the big companies were saving loads of cash, I'm sure they'd forget about face to face office meetings very quickly! 

Maybe a regular jolly to Mumbai or Manila for the corporate bigwigs to rally the troops?   

[Viral_Jim]

The reason it's done is exactly the same reason that Ryanair get away with all the sh!t they pull on their customers and staff.

People p!ss and moan but ultimately won't open their wallets any wider to pay for better customer service, so why should companies waste good profit providing it? 

[Doctor Gollum]

That is a horrid thought Sir T.  Where it might fall down is once a wk/month face to face meeting in office. Not many planes.

If the big companies were saving loads of cash, I'm sure they'd forget about face to face office meetings very quickly! 

Maybe a regular jolly to Mumbai or Manila for the corporate bigwigs to rally the troops?   

My cousin works for a well to do oil production company and seems to spend most of her time either in Houston or Greater India. She prefers Houston...

[TheBoy]

Lot's of people I know have been enjoying working from home over the last few months, but I wonder how long it will take before the big companies realise that if an office bod can effectively work from home in Surrey, they can get an office bod in Mumbai or Manila to do the same job?   

They did long before this sniffle thing.

[TheBoy]

That is a horrid thought Sir T.  Where it might fall down is once a wk/month face to face meeting in office. Not many planes.

I suspect the last time I saw my boss face to face wasn't this year. Or all but 1 of my colleagues. What use are face to face meetings 2 decades into this millennium?

[Varche]

Fair point.

[Kevin Wood]

That is a horrid thought Sir T.  Where it might fall down is once a wk/month face to face meeting in office. Not many planes.

I suspect the last time I saw my boss face to face wasn't this year. Or all but 1 of my colleagues. What use are face to face meetings 2 decades into this millennium?

Handy every so often if you work with physical products because you can show the hardware engineers where the smoke escaped from.

[Nick W]

It's so much more effective for the 'managers' to actually smell the smoke when you set fire to half of their proposed new paperwork......


That meeting was fun

[Doctor Gollum]

Was that your last office job?

[Nick W]

I wasn't the one with the cigarette lighter. Or an office job.


At other meetings it was Tony brazenly handing out the Bullshit Bingo cards, and utterer of the immortal phrase "If you empower me to do that, I'm going to punch you"

[Doctor Gollum]

Brilliant

[Nick W]

The company newsletter was a tedious rag called Up Front. The anonymous arrival of Down Behind packed full of gossip, vicious criticism, lies and slander caused a lot of consternation.


We would have been in deep shit if they could have proved it was us. Careful editing and some devious work with the postage deflected most of the attention to two other depots, and  we decided that our careers as published satirists had to be short.

[Viral_Jim]

That is a horrid thought Sir T.  Where it might fall down is once a wk/month face to face meeting in office. Not many planes.

I suspect the last time I saw my boss face to face wasn't this year. Or all but 1 of my colleagues. What use are face to face meetings 2 decades into this millennium?

For established teams I 100% agree. I haven't really seen anyone I work with since March, nor any of the hoard of people who interviewed me for my new job. That said, if you bring in new people into a company (particularly more junior people) its useful for them to meet face to face to get a propper feel for the business/team they're joining.

[TheBoy]

That is a horrid thought Sir T.  Where it might fall down is once a wk/month face to face meeting in office. Not many planes.

I suspect the last time I saw my boss face to face wasn't this year. Or all but 1 of my colleagues. What use are face to face meetings 2 decades into this millennium?

Handy every so often if you work with physical products because you can show the hardware engineers where the smoke escaped from.

Ah, but our hardware vendors would still insist on firmware and driver updates.

Many, many moons ago, when I was far more "passionate" about work than I am now, my frustrations with a particularly crap Dell laptop resulted in the mouse buttons becoming very detached from the rest of the laptop.

So I ring up Dell.
TB: Good afternoon, I'm afraid the laptop fell off a rack, and the mouse buttons have come off and snapped their circuit board in half.
Dell: OK, I understand you have an issue with your mouse buttons. Do the mouse buttons work?
TB: No, because they are in my drawers, and the circuit board is snapped in half
Dell: OK, I understand, can you restart your laptop in Safe Mode
TB: Its already in Safe Mode
Dell: Great, do the mouse buttons work now
TB: No, still not working. They wouldn't, seeing as they are not attached and snapped in two pieces
Dell: Can you install the latest drivers from our web site
TB: (Lying) Already done that
Dell: Are they working now?
TB: Of course not, as the bits of the mouse are locked up in a drawer, smashed to F
Dell: OK can you right click on...
TB Interrupting: You need to send an engineer FFS, the thing is smashed to shit, and no software fix is going to make the circuit board glue itself back together and jump out of the drawers and back inside the laptop
Dell: But it could be the settings...

But we all know thats the norm.

[Doctor Gollum]

A quality Irish company expect no better would

[TheBoy]

That is a horrid thought Sir T.  Where it might fall down is once a wk/month face to face meeting in office. Not many planes.

I suspect the last time I saw my boss face to face wasn't this year. Or all but 1 of my colleagues. What use are face to face meetings 2 decades into this millennium?

For established teams I 100% agree. I haven't really seen anyone I work with since March, nor any of the hoard of people who interviewed me for my new job. That said, if you bring in new people into a company (particularly more junior people) its useful for them to meet face to face to get a propper feel for the business/team they're joining.

I know some people can't cope so well with remote working, but not sure I agree for the majority of people.  Certainly our latest grad who joined us during full lockdown is yet to meet any of us, and is doing nicely.

I guess as I started out with a little yellow van and £1m of liability bond and told to "F-off and do your worst", I'm pretty self sufficient and expect others to be.  And rarely see the point of time wasting, unproductive meetings and wankword bingo.

[TheBoy]

A quality Irish company expect no better would

I'd rather speak to the Irish IT calls centres than the usual low cost countries call centres.

[Broomies Mate]

........And best not mention the time when I had my idiot of a ....  Oh, the joys of impetuous youth

Should you really be sharing that? 

[TheBoy]

........And best not mention the time when I had my idiot of a ....  Oh, the joys of impetuous youth

Should you really be sharing that? 

You are probably right.  What with me being a reformed character

[Sir Tigger KC]

Lot's of people I know have been enjoying working from home over the last few months, but I wonder how long it will take before the big companies realise that if an office bod can effectively work from home in Surrey, they can get an office bod in Mumbai or Manila to do the same job?   

They did long before this sniffle thing.

No doubt.  I think we'll see a lot more of it. 

[Rangie]

I had to deal with a service centre last week , initially I was speaking with someone who was Indian very helpful but could not give me the financial deal that I wanted, so I was transferred to a person higher up the ladder to assist me this turned out to be a Scottish female I really had  trouble understanding her fortunately my wife was with me and I put my phone on loudspeaker got a much better deal than I wanted but only by the wife translating for me..