What is Digg?249 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+92Agreed.
It's easy to just label Australians as rude, but speaking as a melburnian, i can get up to 4 calls a day from indian call centers, and they don't take no for an answer, i remember about 12 months ago when i got my first call, the guy just wouldn't let me off the line! i was too polite to just hang up.
well 12 months and a billion calls later, you might call me a little rude, yeah. - grendelwraith, on 10/12/2007, -6/+59"That's not a knife that's a spoon."
"I see you've played old Knifey Spoony before" - sarcoma, on 10/12/2007, -13/+65good... most ppl would have no idea how much they ring and how little they understand 'no, thank you'.
- soogy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+30Ugh, yeah, there's no way they'll take a no. If your job paid commission, I'm sure you'd want a "yes" as much as possible.
I love how it writes about how Aussie accents are hard to understand. Just give them a copy of Crocodile Dundee to watch over and over... "You call that a knoife? THIS is a knoife!" - knightblade2oo4, on 10/12/2007, -19/+43Just wanted to state that this is the funniest ***** headline I have ever seen.
- EmileVictor, on 10/12/2007, -5/+29http://coldcallcomedy.com/
Good stuff for all you that are sick of telemarketers. Also, they think *our* accents are crazy? Imagine trying to talk to someone who has as thick an accent as they have, plus it sounds like they're using a cup-and-string to call us. Also, they're famous for calling back if you say no. Yes, calling back. - ZMerlin, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28Oh, and this parody/movie http://www.callcentermovie.com/movie/movie2.html might be 12 minutes long, but it is hilarious and very true.
It might go down with the digg effect too though.... - steve693, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25Nice work Aussies. You're proving what we've known all along:
Verbal abuse works. - johndi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23I used to take the opposite approach. When I had nothing else to do I'd talk to them about anything other than what they were selling. Burn their time up. It takes them forever to realize that they aren't going to get a sale. It's funny, you should give it a try when you've got nothing better to do. It also seemed to cut down on the number of calls you get when they figure out that you are an "unproductive lead." When you understand the sales game it's easy to win.
- sanjay, on 10/12/2007, -20/+41Its easy to blame the call center guys but you dont have the full picture. I have done a bit of research on them.
did it ever occur to you guys that its the policy of the company that makes them do such stuff?
you tell me, if you are being paid more if your average call duration is more then would yuo let the other person hang up the phone early?
and also in any sales division its common practice to give the salesperson a commision based on the number of sales made.
Sure they call center ppl do need to draw the line somewhere but most of these ppl are hard pressed for money, so i wouldnt really blame them for it.
[bury at will........] - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+26i wouldn't call them honest, it's generalising but most of them either don't know what they're selling... or they blatantly lie about it to make a sale... it's all the same once your in contract.
i remember a guy trying to sell me a internet plan that was worse than my current one in every possible way, he started making up stuff as to why i should switch.... and do so right away...
another one wanted me to sign up for a mobile phone deal, i said no... then he asked for my billing address, i was like "hang on what?" he was very rude and persistant, trying to get my details...
while not every call is like that, i'm sure i'm not alone... - thomash, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20the solution: telemarketing counterscript
http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html - shtonkalot, on 10/12/2007, -6/+25I'm Australian and I've had a few calls from Indian telemarketers trying to sell something.
I really dislike the calls telling me I am receiving an X% discount on my "phone/electricity/internet/insurance" bills from individuals that do not know what I am currently paying or to which company.
Answering questions with scripted responses and they don't mind repeating themselves too.
I read in the article that Australian accents can be hard to understand, from my perspective many times Indian accents are hard to understand. I find that frustrating.
Anyway even after all those frustrating things I can't bring myself to be rude. I have a more productive ploy...
My aim is to keep the telemarketer on the line for as long as possible. I try to ask many questions and ask for details on everything. If I can't understand the speech I ask them to repeat them self slowly.
I don't commit to anything and usually let them be the ones to terminate the call.
I'm sure this is frustrating to them and doesn't help with there income. But I'm not being rude to them as an individual.
My hope is that I make the telemarketing company less effective and that lessens the likelihood they will be used in the future.
And I have a bit of fun doing it :)
Maybe I've just got too much spare time... - cybernetic798, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20"The US and Australia are the worst abusers," said Vino Shetty, from his Young Professionals Collective office in Mumbai.
Well no *****, that's the countries you are likely calling the most since ppl there have money to buy products that are peddled over phone. I am an Indian and am ashamed that people from the country where I was born make a living by annoying the ***** out of people. On the other hand, most of the calls I get are still from ppl here in the US. And to be frank I have had more instances where the telemarketer is rude to me than I have been to them. Once, someone called about a promotional offer and I immediately said 'I'm not interested' and the woman had the nerve to say to me 'What are you not interested in. I haven't told you anything so how can you be not interested in it.' I was going to just hang up but the tone she used pissed me off so I told her 'I am not interested in anything you can possibly have to say to me until you get a real job' and threw in an annoying 'loser' before hanging up on her. I hope she spent all evening mentally numbed by her degrading telemarketing experience that day.
My friend came up with a good idea: when a telemarketer calls, lead them on for like 15 minutes and be very interested in their product etc. and if they ask 'do u want to purchase XXX' along the way, ask more questions in an interested fashion as if you didn't hear them. Finally, when those 15 minutes are up and they ask you again, just say 'no' and hang up. Suckahs.....
I am all for people earning their money. But when their jobs start to interfere in my daily life and start to affect my mental composure by angering me, I don't respond well. Hence, telemarketing has to go. - TheSoupNazi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17In the U.S., it's currently illegal for a telemarketer to call you on a mobile phone. And, since I don't own a landline, I get the pleasure of informing every one of the telemarketers that calls me that they called a mobile phone. That ends the conversation immediately. Everytime.
*crosses fingers in hopes that the legislation will never be changed* - butlershouse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17True Story : [ I know I kept the recording ].
When I bought my Laptop from Dell I was told by the Telesales chap that in order to improve my download speeds and to surf the Internet properly I would need to upgrade the memory in the laptop from 256MB to 512MB. The price was appx 100 UK pounds for a 256MB upgrade. The Indian telesales chap who was on the call was quite defensive in explaining that things like front side bus and CPU response could be improved, sigh.... I love Dell but that type of selling is endemic of how the computer industry is abusing customers by using their customers ignorance.
I dont hate India ,I dont hate the concept of foreign call centres. I resent the fact though that Companies are continuing to scrimp and save on costs and in doing so are not ensuring that their staff and their suppliers ( Phone Operators in this case ) are poorly equipped to handle the job and deliver the level of service the customer is expecting. - zbeast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15I just yell dont call here and hang up the phone.
You should never buy anything from people calling you on the phone.
Dont even waste the time trying to tell them your not intrested.
Just hang up. They were rude for calling you. - JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15A few ideas for our friends down under:
1) Technology may help. Buy an answering machine and get Caller ID (or whatever it's called in Australia). Let them talk to the machine.
2) Government may help. Lobby your representatives for legislation to address the problem.
3) When dealing with these people, forget everything your mother taught you about being rude. Nothing you can say or do will ever be as rude as what the telemarketer is doing ... calling you at home and attempting to make use of your time and resources for their benefit.
Just say "no, thanks" and HANG UP without any further discussion. When they call back, just let it ring or even better, pick up the phone and then just lay the receiver down and let them talk to air. Try it. It's actually quite refreshing. - ZMerlin, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18Looks like the site has had the Digg effect. Here's the entire article...
Aussies stressing Indian callers. And I thought it was only us rude Yanks
Call-Centre workers in India are having nervous breakdowns after being abused by fed-up Australians – but they aren't getting much sympathy. Half a million people are employed in India's fast-growing call-centre industry, famous for maddening calls at dinner time in Australia.
For some of the workers, abuse and overnight working hours are contributing to stress, sleeping disorders, fatigue and migraines. A survey of Mumbai call centres found most call-centre workers suffer from burn-out stress syndrome. The abuse included racial taunts, the Global South Research Group survey found.
'Racial abuse by foreign customers is a job hazard that most employees have to deal with,' a report on the survey says. 'The US and Australia are the worst abusers,' said Vino Shetty, from his Young Professionals Collective office in Mumbai.
'Australian accents – especially in working-class areas – are very difficult to understand. [Ha! Try an Indian accent!.....Oldster] The Australians then get frustrated because they are not being understood and when they realise the call is from India their anger gets worse. They can feel that jobs are being taken away from Australians and if they recently have been out of a job themselves, the abuse escalates,' he said.
But Queensland Consumers' Association spokeswoman Cherie Dalley said Australians were reacting to phone calls because they were at 'ridiculous' times.
'Australians are tired of having their privacy interrupted by people trying to sell them things they didn't want in the first place,' she said.
James Organ, director of Australian research organisation Callcentres.net, said 'lots of poor innocent Indian workers' were abused regularly by Australians. 'Some companies are regretting outsourcing this business to India because of the damage it does to their products' reputation,' he said. - The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13We just had to block all overseas calls because it got so bad.
They weren't calling during dinner or such, we were getting calls at around 11pm at night, and most of the calls would never talk to us (it would ring, we would answer, and it would be silence, and it would eventually hang up, or it would be some person talking to a co-worker or such)
So now we only get Australian tele-marketers calling, at least they take no for a answer (we have our number on a do-not call list, once they find that out they are always sorry for having called us, e.g. "Oh I'm so sorry, i didn't know") - jimphelps, on 10/12/2007, -8/+20All telemarketers suck big time!
- philmunt, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15I'm an Aussie and I have a friend who works in an Australian call center, she works with an Indian-Australian with a bad accent and boy does he cop it.
Its easy enough to get pissed off at telemarketers let alone someone you have trouble understanding, who has trouble understanding you trying to force something down your throat.
We Australians are a highly unionized culture and having someone try to force sell you something against your will from a country that has presumably taken jobs away from Australians encapsulates everything that we hate about big business in one go. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12"did it ever occur to you guys that its the policy of the company that makes them do such stuff?"
does your job make you do something immoral or incredibly annoying or stressful or cause you to be high-risk for nervous breakdowns? simple: get another job. - AxeMAYHEM, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I don't know what happens in other parts of the world, but we Australians must get a whole lot more telemarketers than other countries. It's not that we are abusive, it's simply that after receiving umpteen phone calls from "ABC Telecommunications" and replying with "no thank you, please don't call again" every. Single. Time. You get a little moody when you hear them on the end of the phone again.
This issue is irrelevant of race/breed/colour/accent, it's simply that the shear number of repetitive calls is so high it can, at times, make one quite cranky.
So I try and have a little fun with it, one of my favourite things is to get the call and say "Hello... Yes that's me.. That does sound interesting..." and then I sit the phone on the desk (but not hang up the call) and then I time how long it takes before they give up and just hang up.
My current record is up to 1 minute and 31 seconds. Anyone got better?
And the good thing is I AM an Australian and I am NOT abusing the telemarketer. Wins all 'round! - pkhannah, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Time is the most expensive thing you have to take away from them -- and I'm not going to waste mine, so... whenever they call just start talking to them and sounding interested, then suddenly announce:
'Damn, that's the door -- hang on a sec'
Then put the phone down on the counter and go back to whatever I was doing...
In half an hour I go back to the phone and hang it up. Makes me feel better at least. - boelder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10While we might not get much else right in the world, at least we have the Do Not Call registry...
https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx
-b - kaje, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14Let me guess. Rather than using common sense on the trouble language barriers cause and especially in a TECHNICAL SUPPORT environment, these companies had to spend thousands if not millions of research dollars to figure this amazingly obvious news out.
I work in Tech Support for Creative Labs here in the states and atleast once a day, some customer is thanking the lord that I speak English. - muyuu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Your post sounds defeatist to me.
The fact that they ignore do-not-call list is enough to be very pissed. That work doesn't have to exist the way it is now. I don't surrender to that. Not here, not there.
By acting like that they make it less profitable both to outsource and to keep doing that business at all - by phone calls it's especially disruptive. Buy ***** ads in the web or something else.
More power to the pissed aussies I say. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10CRY ME A RIVER
it's my phone, i don't pay for it so people can harass me and try to sell me *****.
these people just don't get the fact that they aren't welcome doing what they do. if i want to purchase their pointless crap i'd go looking for it wouldn't i. - diskopo, on 10/12/2007, -11/+20Problem is, they're earning an honest day's pay for an honest week's work. That's why they're being outsourced to.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16Way to go Aussies!!! I wish my country (USA) had more folks like you.
The thing that most P*sses me off is outsourcing our medical records to India. THAT more than any other thing is cause enough for me to desire impeachment or imprisonment every politician who made it possible. - addicted44, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15Good job diggers...
Keep blaming the messengers. Awesome. I guess you also think that the media is responsible for American soldiers dying in Iraq, right? Not the terrorist who rams the bomb-laden car into his base.
Why don't you realize that these people are trying to earn a honest living, and that if anybody, its the people who hired them to sell their products, that are to blame. No one deserves to have to deal with abuse, even verbal, for something that is their job, a job which is legal, and is also done by Americans/Australians respectively. It is basically racism, except instead of distinguishing on the basis of color, the superiority theory is is created on the basis of nationality (It says only 25% is outsourced. If the only reason is that the customers dislike being called by telemarketers, why don't I see an article that says American/Australians callers having nervous breakdowns?)
If just the accent was a reason to curse somebody, an American could not enter a fast food joint without saying at least a few curse words, since most are disproportionately loaded with Hispanics, with even thicker accents, and some that barely know English.
About stealing jobs, its called Free Trade. And yes, it was pushed and promoted by the Americans. You know what is stealing jobs? Actually livelihoods? Giving massive subsidies to your farmers, so that they undercut honest and hardworking farmers in third world countries, despite working inefficiently, and making products that aren't even half as good. Thousands have lost their lives because of a direct result of this illegal policy of American and European countries. - ramiro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Some people are just waiting for an excuse to pour a torrent of verbal abuse over someone. A telemarketeer or a customer support personnel being from India is just an excuse. I regret the one time I've been rude to someone trying to sell me newspaper subscription on the phone.
This may not be the experience of the majority but here is what happened to me. I ordered a USB drive from Dell and it was taking too long. They had it back ordered, so I called to cancel it. It was very late at night and the customer representative was from India. I was very well treated as a customer and ended up with a very generous coupon.
On the other hand, I've seen pretty bad customer service given by people who have English as their native language. - joshjoneswas, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Agreed! My favorite was a family friend of ours that would tell them "I don't have a phone" when they would call to sell him long distance. He would then go on to talk to them about not having a phone and the reactions were classic!
The worst thing about all of this corporate outsourcing nonsense is that the call centers will not respect your wishes to not call back anymore. Everyone knows the software they use could be enabled to have an opt-out setting that will remove someone from their regular call list! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Circuit ***** also does this...as well as Dell...no wonder their customer satisfaction is almost an oxymoron
- sameerb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11If everyone is so pissed off, why dont you stop buying products from companies who outsource CS to India and manufacture in China!
Its they who needs to be blamed.
Ask your companies to stop outsourcing than abusing people who work for their bread and butter. Let me tell you, those who work in those Call centers earn twice or thrice the average income of an average Indian, and have a life style that is better than most can imagine. - geekdreams, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I've had good service from foreign call centers before, and while I agree that it's unfair to discriminate based soley on accent/country of origin, I think you're wrong about the training these workers receive.
In most cases, they are trained on how to use the systems (looking up customer info, handling calls, etc.), but all their dialogue has been scripted by managers and lawyers right here in the US. The call center agents do not know enough about the product/service to handle anything outside their "scope of support."
So if you call Dell, for example, and you have a question that does not fit into one of a dozen pre-determined categories, you will be referred to another department (sales, tech support, billing), even if your issue has nothing to do with those departments. I know this because I used to work there, and would routinely get customers who had *already purchased a computer* calling in to the Home Sales department after going around in circles with Customer Care agents in India... - jellicle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I tell telemarketers that I'd love to talk but I'm busy, so could they give me their home number and I'll call them around dinner time tomorrow? When they tell me they can't give out their private number I ask if that's because they might get unsolicited calls from strangers :) That usually clues them in to where I'm coming from.
- Nivla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I have come up with an extermely effective solution for telemarketers. I bought a small portable air horn. On the first call from a telemarketer I politely ask them not to call again and hang up. ON the second call I blast them with the air horn. After six months of this my telemarketing calls have dropped to zero.
- tehbawb, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9For the record, I didn't RTFA (but if my comment is way off then the article description is inaccurate so flag it), and I don't know what exactly it's like over there in India, but if you take a job as a telemarketer, or any job that deals with customers that might not want to be forced into buying something for that matter, you should expect the person to be rude when you don't listen to the word 'no'.
- atbnet, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I don't really see the need to harass them. I don't like it when I have to deal with Indian CS, but that's just another change we have to deal with. However, I would much rather give my business to a company that uses American CS rather than a company who has "sold out" in my mind even if the the former is more expensive. It's just a price I'm willing to pay to support my fellow Americans and get quality customer service when I need it.
- masteryoda, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9If you stop buying from companies outsourcing to China and India there wont be any company left.
- AxeMAYHEM, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I've always wanted to get their Headquarters direct phone number to the CEO. So when I get a call I can say "look you will have to talk to my other half, you can contact him/her on ." and hang up, smile, and do a little jig.
- shtonkalot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Us Aussies are getting one too, Finally!
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Do_not_call_register_to_go_ahead/0,2000061791,39249551,00.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200604/s1607923.htm - Kuipo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Give credit where credit's due. That's a Seinfeld bit.
- anti-net, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I made someone at Dell cry...i felt bad...but then again, she had it comming.
- tbye, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8We should all outsource the answering of our phones. Then atleast the people answering could understand what the caller is saying.
"You do not talk while I am talking!" - JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8"... I can't bring myself to be rude."
You need to get over this. The telemarketer is the one being rude. By hanging up, you're just responding in kind. - pjh3000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I was almost shocked the other day when I opened the box of my brand new Creative X-Fi and discovered a piece of paper with the phone number for technical support and encouraging me to call if I had and question or ran into any problems. It was designed to actually catch my attention! Of course being a Creative soundcard, there were no problems. But it was very refreshing. Great to know I would also get someone on the other end that speaks actual English and knows what the heck they're talking about. More companies should be like this. Thanks.
- Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Who even talks to these people? As soon as I realize it's a telemarketer on the line, I simply hang up without saying a word. Saves time for everyone.
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