I just spent the last forty-seven minutes on the phone with Sherry. Sherry or Cheri or Share-y? I don't know, and in all honesty I don't think she did either. Sherry was a liar.Sherry said, "Hello, thank you for calling Giant ISP/Telephone Corporation, my name is Sherry. I see by the automated system that you're calling about number 000-555-1234, and I'm here to help. Thank you for holding, what is your first and last name?" without taking a breath. It was amazing!
It was almost like, well... like she was reading it from a sheet with no punctuation marks. Or parsing it through a poor phonetic translator. I had once again made it to the India Calling Que. Sherry has probably never been to the US, and you can be sure Sherry's name isn't really Sherry anyway. I really don't have any trouble with companies using inexpensive telephone operators to answer basic questions and to route their high volume call numbers to the correct places. Honest. Just don't lie to me.
If Giant ISP/Telephone Corporation wants me to talk to someone in India, then please, stop trying to pretend their names are 'Bob' and 'Sue' I don't buy it. Who does? I'd rather just be told, "You're just one lonely DSL user, your piddly revenue is not worth the amount of money we would have to pay American union workers to answer the telephone. Besides, can you really tell the difference?"
Yes, yes I can. When Sherry pronounced 'customer premises' as 'Pre-My-Sis' I had to use every bit of self constraint I had to keep from busting up. I don't have much, so I only just made it through. I suppose I shouldn't rag on 'Sherry' too much, as I did eventually get routed to the right place.
Turns out all it took to get my problem solved was having a nice long chat with 'Henry'.
Sigh. Oh well, it's a brave new world!
4 comments:
yeah I got the guy who just kept repeating "Hi my name is Bob Smith and I can help" to everything I was saying to him. I swear, every time I asked a question, that is what he prefaced his answer with, I just had to laugh. I think he said it 6 times. I love the generic names. He eventually did help me, by transferring me back to the U.S.!! I see a pattern here.
Ah the joys of cheap labor overseas...the big companies save money and we have to deal with the headaches. Wayne has to deal with this at work. They have outsourced a lot of the tax work to India, but they have to review the work in the US and deal with them over the phone. He said it can get very interesting.
Missy-
YES!! Miss "Sherry" said "thank you for holding" and "sorry for your inconvenience" 15 times just randomly during the call. It was truly odd!
WCS-
Makes you wonder if there is 'anyone' besides the big corporation trying to find affordable workers, likes the India Call Que.
I can't imagine. I always get the cold shakes when I realize where I've ended up...
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