India Should Change Name to Customer Service

February 1, 2007 at 5:43 am | In Consumer Issues, Consumer Rants, rants | 19 Comments

Is there anything more frustrating than customer service? If names are descriptive, then shouldn’t it be called something like “here is the telephone number that will make you want to tear your hair out and scream obscenities”. Getting a live person on the phone is only the first hurdle. Most of the time you are caught in recording HELL, where pressing the option you think you want, actually repeats the options you just heard. It used to be that you could press zero and get a live person. They’ve gotten wise to us because often when you press zero the recorded voice tells you that you have pressed an incorrect key, or that our response was not recognized.

Now there are websites like http://gethuman.com/ that have a large database of phone numbers that will get you through to a human, though I suppose these numbers will keep changing because I think the main goal here is to make sure no one ever reaches a real person. Not that it matters because if you actually manage to reach a living, breathing human they either cannot speak or understand English, have the IQ of a doorknob, or are just plain incapable of listening to your explanation of whatever issue you are calling about and don’t really give a rat’s ass, or all of the above. I’ve often wondered if the reason it is so hard to get a real human on the phone is our (my) misguided assumption that we are calling a large corporation, housed in a large corporate office building with hundreds of people manning the phones dealing with customer problems with their product which is obviously inferior in the first place or why else would they need these hundreds of people manning phone lines in the customer service department (whew….that was what my high school English teacher would have called a run-on sentence. but hey it makes a point). Is it possible that a more realistic scenario is a sophisticated answering machine in someone’s spare bedroom? Maybe the reason you have to wait so long on hold (listening to annoying music or a repetitious recording telling you how much we value your call and that all agents are busy so please continue to hold) is that the phone doesn’t get answered until the baby is diapered, the soap operas are over, the six pack still has three bottles to go, or whatever it is someone might be doing at home.

Then there is always the good old $2.99 per minute, or $29.95 per call customer service. This is where you buy a product (usually something expensive) from the company, and then if you have a problem or question about it (that didn’t occur within the first 30 minutes of ownership) you actually have to pay to talk with someone who may or may not be of any real assistance. So much ‘customer service’ seems to now be outsourced to India. I think ‘they’ don’t want us to know this, and try to fool us by instructing the operators to use American sounding names, as if we wouldn’t notice the very strong Indian accent. Once I had to call for help and the operator, in his very heavily, barely understandable English introduced himself as Gary. Just to amuse myself I asked Gary where he was located, he told me he was in Chicago. I said, “Oh really, how is the weather there today?” Being in front of my computer I quickly checked the Chicago weather, and discovered it was cold and rainy, while ‘Gary’ told me it was very pleasant outside. Gary, like several of the other customer service operators I’ve spoken with in India, was extremely hard to understand and while he did know how to use some English words, he was not really able to understand me. I wondered if perhaps every Indian citizen is required to put in some part of the day answering calls from pesky Americans. I think it was after this particular phone call that I decided to write a letter to the Prime Minister of India and respectfully suggest that the name of the country be changed from India to Customer Service

19 Comments »

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Excellent idea.

Comment by abyssalleviathin — February 1, 2007 #

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I chuckled at your last line.

I had to talk to Dell customer service today about my faulty CD drive and I couldn’t understand the man. I hung up on him.

But if you think regular old business customer service is that bad, try calling the US government sometime. I actually wrote a blog about it today. Ugh.

Comment by otismofo — February 1, 2007 #

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Otismofo, then just think of the nightmare when our government work gets outsourced to India. Do you suppose the job of President will ever be outsourced to India?

Comment by honjii — February 4, 2007 #

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There is also ivrhacks which is a database of US, UK, Australian and Canadian shortcuts to company IVR systems.

Comment by Dave — February 15, 2007 #

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You are so narrow-minded.

Our teenagers are smart/sadistic enough to work in customer service, so they don’t have to work in fast food like their American counterparts. There is so much more to India that handling American calls. You’re dumb enough to buy what the media tells you about India, and obviously suffer from a superiority complex. This is what happens when you as a society buy everything on credit, i.e. money that doesn’t belong to you.. and the manufacturers (sorry, brand owners) in America decide to show you your true worth as a customer by not even bothering to talk to you if you have problems with the product, and instead pay teens in India to “talk” to you. You’re the one who’s pathetic, not the kids in India. Thank you very much and have a wonderful day.

Comment by Manav — August 29, 2007 #

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Manav,
How am narrow minded? By the way do you really mean to describe your teenagers as sadistic, the definition of which is: deriving pleasure or sexual gratification from inflicting pain on another. As much pain as has been inflicted on me by your customer service reps I can’t speak to whether they’ve derived any sexual pleasure from it our not, but it does seem they really do enjoy our frustration when we get absolutely nowhere toward resolution of the issue about which we called. To be honest NO customer service or tech support would be equal to or better (no frustration factor) than what we are getting from your “sadistic” teenagers. As for them being smart enough; if they are we’ve seen no evidence of it as yet.

Now if we’re going to resort to name calling

You’re dumb enough to buy what the media tells you about India, and obviously suffer from a superiority complex.

I believe it is dumb for you to assume that I’m getting my ideas about Indian customer service from the media. What I have written comes from my own, all too numerous experiences with Indian customer service reps or tech support reps. In all of these calls I have yet to find one that is: 1.willing or knowledgeable enough to be of any help, 2. had enough of an understanding of and the ability to speak English well enough so there could actually be a real level of communication, 3. willing to cooperate when you ask to be transferred to a supervisor or someone who could help solve the problem (they simply put you back in on interminable hold until you get another “sadistic teenager” and the whole exercise in frustration begins again.

What any of this has anything to do with buying on credit, is beyond me, and is not how I make my purchases. But we have already established that you make baseless assumptions.

By the way, I didn’t say anything about the kids in India being pathetic, those are your words not mine.

Comment by honjii — August 30, 2007 #

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If India changes its name to Customer Service, the US of A should change its name to the United States of stoned XBOX-playing McDonalds meat-flippers and crack whores infested with genital herpes working the corner of Main Street to pay for their Customer Support call to India.

Comment by Arunabh Das Sharma — April 13, 2008 #

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Arunabh,
The customer service calls to India are free, and worth every penny.

Comment by honjii — April 13, 2008 #

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[...] laugh out loud. I received this joke the same day the following comment was posted on one of my older rants in which I suggest the country name be changed from India to Customer [...]

Pingback by More on Customer Service in India « Honjii’s Harangues — April 15, 2008 #

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Damn…the crack whore told me she needed the money for her customer support call to India. Lying whore!!

Comment by Arunabh Das Sharma — April 15, 2008 #

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If you want free counselling / therapy because crack whores have been adding Customer-Support-call-to-India surcharge on your invoices, please call the toll free number 1-800-SAY-NO-TO-HO and “Gary” will walk you through how to say no to whores.

Comment by Arunabh Das Sharma — April 15, 2008 #

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[...] bills with errors that can take more time than they’re worth trying to straighten out with a phone call. However, I don’t know if there is a procedure in place for one to opt out; and I know even [...]

Pingback by There Might be a Terrorist in my Post Office Box « Honjii’s Harangues — August 19, 2008 #

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[...] bills with errors that can take more time than they’re worth trying to straighten out with a phone call. However, I don’t know if there is a procedure in place for one to opt out; and I know even [...]

Pingback by There Might be a Terrorist in my Post Office Box | The World According to Honjii — August 19, 2008 #

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I have to say, it all worked out splendidly for Lehman Brothers and Merril Lynch. I’m sure it’s going to work out for you too.

- Arunabh Das Sharma

Comment by Arunabh Das Sharma — September 18, 2008 #

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If it helps, there’s only so much you can do when you’re fighting a bullshit war and marking your territory by peeing nukes all over Europe.

- Arunabh Das Sharma

Comment by Arunabh Das Sharma — September 18, 2008 #

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The time is right for China to buy Wall Street by putting a trillion dollars down in hard cash. Go China!!

- Arunabh Das Sharma

Comment by Arunabh Das Sharma — September 21, 2008 #

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Arunabh Das Sharma,
It seems you’ve become obsessed with this post, perhaps you should seek psychiatric help.

Comment by honjii — September 21, 2008 #

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I’m gonna.

- Arunabh Das Sharma

Comment by Arunabh Das Sharma — October 12, 2008 #

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i was just browsing on this subject and saw that a few of you have written quite a bite of comments on this issue. If you don’t like the uninted states than get out. There has to be something that you like about the US that keeps you here. If you think it’s infested with whores and crack heads, than why don’t you just go back to wherever it is you came from.

Comment by Davey — April 22, 2009 #

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