Out-sourced customer service
I wrote part of this as a reply to another post but it wound me up so much I thought I'd make my own post about it.

Another of my pet peeves is out-sourced customer service centres where you can't get anything sorted because you can't understand them and they can't understand you. And before anyone jumps on me and accuses me of anything, I've been on their end of the phone. I am fluent in German and for a while worked for a the German/Austrian arm of a global company. In that job, our language skills had to be equal to that of a native speaker because the customers were never to know that they were actually phoning the UK. If your language skills were not of a high enough standard, you were not hired. I know very few people who have managed to have their problems solved by any out-sourced customer service due to a lack of comprehension as the customer service rep's English is simply not good enough. And its not their fault, its the company's. People tend not to follow up problems with refunds and the like because its just too complicated having a conversation where both rep and customer are struggling to understand each other - better just to let the money go. And go it does, back into the companies' coffers. So not only are companies paying people abroad buttons to work in their call-centres, but people are becoming increasingly unlikely to keep phoning customer services.
(resurrection_mary cannibal_ferox, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:04, Reply)