"The Indian techie felt a need to move step-by-step through his written instructions, despite the fact that I explained to him several times that I had already tried all those things. He insisted on sticking to the manual... .
The Canadian bypassed her written instructions and instead of talking, she listened."

I don't know, Lewis... I wonder whether this is less a cultural issue than an example of experience vs. inexperience, which begets linear vs. less-linear thinking. Perhaps the Canadian was more experienced (knew enough not to stick to the script) than the Indian?

Good point, Ann. I think training may be an issue as well. Meanwhile, customer service stinks. Can any business afford angry and frustrated customers, even if there are reasons?

Creating Passionate Users has a great take on how companies fail in tech support. If you haven't already, check them out.

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/02/too_many_compan.html

I know businesses are in a bind because they have to reduce costs, but they'd go a long way towards solving the problem by increasing the usability of their products. They can help do this by having actual users test their products and their manuals, which would ultimately reduce the number of calls people need to make to tech support.

Lewis, I've had similar experiences dealing with customer service reps overseas. My recent blog post on Assurant - with a call center in Kingston, Ontario - showed how pleased I was with the positive outcome.

So, all I can say is - hurray for my fellow Canucks! :)

Cam,

In a previous life I was the VP of Marketing at a high-tech company. I bet you'd be surprised to learn that the VP of Software Development agreed with you. The VP of Sales and the Executive Committee just wanted the product out the door: They'd fix it later.

And that, my friend, is why customer support is so critical, and the wrong place to cut costs.

Elaine,

I always receive great service from Canadian call centers, and I deal with quite a few of them. I recently hired a Canadian telemarketing firm to help me with a client's direct mail campaign, and so far I am pleased.

This is a first. I just received this e-mail from MS tech support:

"Hi Lewis

"This is [name blocked by me] with Microsoft Technical Support services. I am sending this e-mail to find out if the troubleshooting steps helped resolve the Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 issue we spoke about on the telephone.

"I have tried calling you,but i was not able to get through you. You can also call us back and we will be glad to further assist you if needed. I am also including the Microsoft Support site that contains a list of support options available to our customers: .

"Our operation hours are:
Monday - Friday - 5:00 A.M. - 9:00 P.M
Saturday - Sunday- 6:00 A.M. - 3:00 P.M

"I hope to hear from you soon!"
[name blocked by me]

I appreciate this e-mail and it does alleviate some of my frustration. So, all is not bad and maybe I need to give India a second chance.

"They can help do this by having actual users test their products and their manuals"

Agreed. I think manuals would become more "human" if the average user could relate to what's being said.

I think a large part of the problem is that customer service is always viewed as a cost center, not as a customer loyalty/retention platform. Call centers also focus way too much on internal statistics (handling time, number of calls taken, etc.) & not whether anything was actually resolved.

Damon,

Great feedback! I think your points are exactly right. Thank you.

And the bad customer service is another sign of many companies concentrating on acquiring new customers, rather than satisfying their existing ones.

Mack,

Your comment is incredibly insightful.

What happened to the business model backed by volumes of research that recognizes it is more profitable and far less expensive to grow loyal customers to whom we provide value-added products and services. That process begins and ends with great customer experiences. And it is nuts to cut costs in the areas that create those experiences--customer services, training, marketing, sales, shipping and delivery, and quality control.

I worked in tech support for about 4 years and I would say that often times the push is efficiency rather than effectiveness. It’s efficient to read and not deviate from a script, to monitor hold times and to get the lowest costs possible from your tech support. The problem is that it may not be effective. Effective would be to put money into problem prevention, optimized tech support communication, and monitoring your ability to actually solve the problem.

Last week I woke up to find Outlook Express froze in sending and receiving mail. After trying several things on may own such as restoring to an earlier date, unhooking and re-hooking the connection to the cable modem, turning off Norton Security, I was left with no choice but to call Microsoft.

My call was placed at 7 am. I was still on the phone at midnight. During that time, I spent 7 hours on hold, was disconnected at transfer 12 times, ran down 2 phone batteries, and had assorted and sundry things done to my computer that only made it worse.

I was promised a phone call the followind day at 1 p.m.

Tuesday morning, I connected my laptop to my cable modem and downloaded my email.

Hmm, I thought. It works here. Let's check the desktop.

No such luck.

What is the difference between the two machines. They have the same software, the same virus protection, security, and firewall.

I ultimately realized that the only difference was I had downloaded IE7 to the desktop. I took that off and the computer worked fine.

Tuesday I did try again to speak to Microsoft, but gave up when I hit 19 hours on hold.

To their credit, Microsoft did make the promised call. It came at 4 p.m. the following Monday - only 6 days and 3 hours later than anticipated.

Throughout the process I never once spoke to a tech from this country. I was repeatedly told that the tech understood my frustration. I did not want platitiudes; I wanted a working computer.

When I spoke to the tech yesterday, he said, "Madam, you only think you solved the problem. There is nothing in IE7 that could have caused it."

Is he right? I don't know or care. I have a working machine.

Will I call tech support with a problem in the future? No. Which may be Microsoft's ultimate plan ... frustrate users so they don't call.

dear sir,
i am a researcher in india and about to start my doctoral research on a comparison of canadaian and indian buying preferences over conventional and online shopping. can u help me out by advicing me how i will be able to collect data on canadian consumers as i have mailed around 300 canadian people but the response rate was very low.
your advice can mean a lot to me.
thanks
deepak devgan,
faculty member,
hindu college,

india

Deepak,

I recommend you contact a university or college in Canada and ask to speak with a professor in their MBA program.

Lewis, I agree wholeheartedly with you regarding outsourced call centers. I have a unique perspective on them. I actually worked in one through a temp agency while looking for a "real job". In this case it was a cable TV provider. It was crummy work with a crummy company (and believe me my language could be much stronger).

Don't get me wrong. They have great product. The problem is that upper-management is more concerned with the bottom line than with customer or employee relations. They are literally billions in the red and all that matters is restructuring to save money.

They outsourced billing and repair to the Philipines and a spot or two in the southern US. Mostly it's overseas. Naturally, none of the outsourcers are well trained and the ones from outside the US can't speak English well enough to hail a taxi with their hand.

I was constantly greeted with "thank God you're American." In most cases they had already been on the phone for hours, literally. They were angry, frustrated and most of the time had a simple billing question.

The outsourcers from overseas simply were not interested in solving the problem. They habitually transferred customers to the sales/retention queue just to get rid of them. The rumor around our site was that they were paid per call taken, not call resolved. No matter how much the sales/retention force complained, yelled, screamed even, about this practice, it didn't stop for several months. Managment just said "we're working on it."

When the transfers finally stopped, they pulled a new tactic: put the customer on hold so that they could call sales/retention and ask questions on how to do their job. This just angered employees because it took us out of our queue and our productivity score was effected as well as our sales opportunities. I'm not joking or exaggerating.

I tried talking to management about the anger that was being generated by the outsourcers. Even told them that we were losing customers to satellite cable as a result of the anger. Their response:

"Oh, they'll be back. Dish sucks. They may leave for a while, but eventually we'll get them back."

How's that for a customer service attitude? And they wonder why, despite the extremely well known person that owns the company and his supposed "great business mind" (if I wrote his name you'd all recognize it - top ten most wealthy in the US), this company is in such trouble financially.

Sheri,
Your inside knowledge is scary stuff.

Bill and Carrie,
Great comments!

One swallow does not make a summer. Yeah you had a bad experience with the Indian BPO center. However, the BPO biz is on its upswing here in India. BPO is moving over to KPO (knowledge process outsourcing) and TPO (total process outsourcing). I think NASSCOM in India should start a system to gear up and ensure better services from this sector so fewer callers will have bad experience like you have had.

Canadian companies are moving their call centers to India & Europe. My ISP provider; Sympatico/Bell has already moved part of it in India, and will be opening two more centers in India, and one in Europe -- likly France.

About two months ago I had some problem with my billing, I was charge more than I should've. I called the customer service, and after wating 30 mintues! person on the other end -- an Indian, didn't know how to help me.

I had to talk to surpervisor -- a fellow Canadian who aggreed that I was being overcharged. I told him that I don't feel confortable with "offshore center", and I think there was a tacit understanding between us.

This is a typical experience you will receive from Canadian/Indian Customer Service .

Interesting thing to note; George Brown College has few chinese on their help desk and they can't speak a word of English. I am not making this up!

it's expected that outsourcing would end up in countries where the salaries are less than 1/10th (guesstimation having lived in Canada and India) the minimum wage in developped countries. Even so, call centers are relatively stable and well paying jobs in these countries. Usually the call centers themselves or other institutions 'breed' employees, i.e. teach them accent reduction skills, crash cultural courses to fool people into thinking they're speaking with someone from the west.
there's a interesting documentary about it, i think it was CNN and the discovery channel.
To digress back to whatever point i'm trying to make: The most abundant, opportunistic, adaptable organisms survive and populate the planet. Classic Betamx Vs VHS here, quality and contentment have gone against quantity and proliferation (that consumes everything less capable and or willing) and lost. So the best bet is making friends who are tech savvy. Then you can just call local or have them come over and whoosh. All fixed.

Hey I work for a BPO outsourced in India its not that bad, Let tell u what practically happens when one calls a call center under prejudice that an Indian representative cant speak English, and “Indian customer service sucks” is highly circulated information I Read in all blogs around.

I do agree some times agents are facing difficulties while communicating with foreigners but in sometime they get along and get used the way of Americans or Canadian formal communication.
We offer good and smart customer service here in India, and try to do offer best in competitive
Offshoring business.

Thank you
Vishal Trivedi