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Is it because they can’t say g’day right or is something else to blame?

August 17, 2009

Voice customer service related work can be the most difficult work to outsource. After all, the general public can be very demanding and vicious over the phone – especially when they have trouble understanding the customer service representative or they feel themselves have trouble being understood. This is one of the major reasons why voice related work is migrating out of India and being sent back home or to other countries.

However, is the accent and language abilities of the customer service representative always the issue or could something else be to blame? Take the recent cases involving voice work being outsourced from Australia and New Zealand to the Philippines, a popular destination for outsourcing voice related work due to the Filipino’s having a “neutral” sounding accent.

The first case involves reports that Filipino agents working for New Zealand Telecom’s directory assistance line are complaining of customers being aggressive and berating them as soon as they hear their accents and these employees are worried that this situation may get worst (the telecom plans to have around 1,600 contact centre positions in New Zealand and 700 positions based in Manila). According to some media reports in New Zealand, New Zealand Telecom has responded by telling employees to tell customers that they are based in New Zealand and just like the country itself, their contact centers have diverse cultures and nationalities working in them. Moreover, all Manila based agents have completed two weeks of accent and cultural training designed to familiarize them with the correct pronunciation of New Zealand place names and some aspects of New Zealand culture and the company officially states that they have no plans to pull out as they are happy with the service provided by Filipinos (and not to mention, a Filipino agent costs half of what a Kiwi agent costs to hire).

philippines Call Center outsource

In contrast, Australian telecom Telstra decided to pull out of the Philippines after only six months due to customer complaints over their memo service – a secretarial service offered to small businesses. According to a Queensland Consumer Watch spokesman, the Telstra Memo calls were being answered by poorly trained Filipino staff with poor English skills who took down messages with wrong names, wrong numbers and poor spelling and grammar. Hence, the calls will now be answered back in Australia.

However, was the failure of Telstra’s outsourcing initiative the fault of poor English or perhaps poor Aussie English skills on the part of Filipinos or is something else at work here? Reading some of the 50 plus comments posted on AustralianIT about the pullout and a range of potential reasons come up – from racist and abusive Aussie customers to incompetence on the part of Telstra to the difficulty of some to understand foreign accents.

Nevertheless, it must be noted that both New Zealand Telecom and Telstra are notorious for the POOR service they provide in general – often due to unionized workforces and other entrenched issues. In fact, Chris Keall recently wrote in his National Business Review column that outsourcing seems to be the one thing that New Zealand Telecom is doing right and he points out that he recently made a call to their Manila help desk to deal with a tricky firewall issue and got a prompt and clear resolution of his problem. He concludes that at the end of the day, all New Zealanders want better service and lower prices from their telecom and outsourcing is one way they can re-win the hearts and minds of New Zealander customers. Perhaps of course, if New Zealanders can just learn to get over the foreign accents of their telecom’s agents.

Related posts:

  1. Callcenter outsourcing problems
  2. Is India losing in voice based outsourcing?
  3. Is geographic diversification a threat to the Philippines’ share of the global outsourcing market?
  4. BPO: Providing India’s rural poor with opportunity
  5. Will domestic home-based workers be the future of call centers?


Written by JohnU · Filed Under BPO Blogs 

Comments

3 Responses to “Is it because they can’t say g’day right or is something else to blame?”

  1. Media on August 20th, 2009 6:23 am

    It is sad that call center workers are getting all the blame. Companies do things that are best suited for their share-holders value. Not sure why Media is biased towards the call center employees.They’re doing their job like everyone else.

  2. Borg on August 25th, 2009 5:12 am

    I’ve spoken to several callcenter agents for my laptop problems. I think those calls are answered by workers in India. I did not have any problem understanding them. In fact they answered all of my questions and solved my problem.

  3. pavan on August 26th, 2009 1:40 pm

    Hi,

    This is pavan from India. I’d like to know that do you have any inbound projects to the call centers?

    Thank You.

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