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November 06, 2003

Can you hear me where?

So when you call customer service, where are you calling and does it matter? As Marshall McLuhan had said, "When you're on the phone, you don't have a location." This article, Upwardly mobile phone jockey... or 'cyber-coolie'? in Canada's National Post tells of how India now has over 160,000 call center workers many of whom get training in various American accents and will watch American movies together so they can appropriately communicate with their callers.

As the author notes, he always asks where the call center person is located (as do I) but many are told not to say or to suggest they're in a place like Des Moines. Obviously it doesn't matter for most things, but I would suspect that the reason that they're not supposed to say is that it might give some more reasons to complain if they're not happy with the results of the call.

So can the concept of "help" or "customer service" be considered an export or an import? Do we export our problems and import our solutions?

Recently David Pogue of the New York Times wrote a column about dumb customer service stories and asked his readers to submit their own stories. This is what I submitted. It is completely true and the person I was speaking with clearly did not have English as a first language.

Here's my story:

Earlier this year I called a tech desk for some troubleshooting on a product that I had registered the year before, but couldn't remember my user ID. So the tech then said that he could provide the user ID for me but I had to answer my security question that I had provided at the time of registration. He then told me the question: "No question provided." and then he asked me what was the answer to that question.

I responded that this was not a question. He said, yes, that was the question and again asked me to answer it. I then explained that obviously I had not provided a question when I had registered, because "No question provided." was obviously not a question. He countered by saying that this was my question and that unless I provided the answer, he could not give me my user ID. In a rare flash of personal brilliance, I responded, "No answer provided." He then gave me my user ID.

Posted by dmzach

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