How do you all feel about the level of support you receive from outsourced customer service and technical support? By outsourced, I am referring to the practice of many large companies, both technical (IBM and Dell come to mind) and non-technical (American Express) of farming out their customer service to overseas call centers? With no disrespect meant to my fellow DP'ers that are located outside the US, and perhaps I will be red repped for saying this, but I find that it is severely lacking - and not just in terms of a language barrier. I have recently had the experience to chat with tech support at both Earthlink (one of my ISP's whose support centers are in Bangalore, India and Manila, Phillipines). In reporting technical issues to these folks, I sometimes feel as if they are being quite patronizing and apologetic (i.e. "Tom, we wholehartedly apologize most sincerely for any inconvenience caused to you.") in the face of not knowing what else to tell me regarding technical issues that I am reporting to them. It seems that that they have zero technical knowledge other than what is being shown to them in an online knowlegebase. Now, granted, I am not claiming to be a master computer sysadmin myself, but I am employed in the IT industry and know a fair bit about computer and Internet technology. What irks me is when I call to find out why my site is inaccessible due to a server side HTTP 500 error, I am given the same old "Did you clear your browser cookies and restart your computer" answer. Are they for real? Why is it that I always seem to have such difficulty reaching an engineer who can probably answer my question and resolve the issue in two minutes, but instead I am forced to online chat with overseas reps with Americanized names and no technical skills whatsoever? I do realize that we Americans are expensive to support on toll free service lines, and American call center workers command higher wages than those located overseas. Perhaps the answer is to not do business with the Earthlink's of the world (I know, get a real ISP, Tom!). But in a high tech society, I think these companies owe their customers a little more than Bangalore Bob on the phone. Thanks for the opportunity to rant...
Good post But they are not all like that we have an IT Team based in Asia .......... but all our guys speak English as 1st language ............. so that helps so much with communication............. and we work to fixed timelines and cost
hehehe seems to me it depends from the company handling the outsourced technical support .... blame the HR for hiring incompetent people ... language barrier isnt supposed to be an excuse, but sometimes i find it funny or wierd myself