April 11, 2010Reader: Help! My inbox is flooded because Cust Svs reps don’t speak English well
Meryl, I recently ordered a laptop from a computer company. Some glitch in their system has them generating hundreds of the same email, over and over again, thereby flooding my in-box. I’ve called multiple times to try to get them to help, but I’ve had no luck. Their calls must be routed to a call center in a foreign country because I consistently find myself speaking to someone for whom English is definitely not their primary language. I can’t make them understand my issue, and they just keep assuming I am trying to confirm that my order is being processed.
Meanwhile, the emails in my in-box pile up, making it hard to find legitimate new emails.
I admire people who are bilingual. I wish I was. But when I can’t make myself understood by someone who is supposed to be performing customer service, I find myself wishing I could come up with a polite, respectful way to ask for someone with broader English skills.
Any suggestions?
Dear Flooded, While grace is always a good thing, as a customer you have the right to expect customer service reps you can understand. If you can’t understand, simply say,
- I’m having trouble understanding you and making my point so you understand me. Please transfer me to your manager or someone else who I might have an easier time communicating with.
If you can’t understand them, repeat until you get successful communication.
Again, be gracious, but they have the responsibility to provide people who can actually communicate with customers. You don’t help anyone when you pretend it’s working when it isn’t.
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People in India have varied accents, just as much as we do here in the US and are often the main cause for communication issues.
Just like folks from Texas speak different than Californians or people from Maine, India residents can have heavy or different accents depending on which part of the country they are from, thus making communication difficult.
After working with offshore support for a number of years, one thing I found helpful to resolve the communication barrier was to use IM (instant messenger). My coworkers from India can read/write English very well, however, when dealing with support email is too slow. It is much easier to ‘talk’ using IM and you can provide screenshots of your problem in near real-time.
Sometimes strong communication can be achieved by changing the media from spoken to written (or vice-versa depending on the situation).
Many support desk people have access to IM. If you don’t have IM installed there are several vendors that offer free IM clients. Yahoo and MSN are widely used.
Comment by Nathan — April 13, 2010 @ 4:39 pm