Lately everyone complains about the call centers in India. Sadly the truth is that when you call a large company, the first line of support operators will be equally dumb no matter where the call center is located. Because of the volume of calls that you get at large corporations, it does not make sense to put skilled technicians in a call center. What you do is you hire the dumbest, least qualified, phone drones by a truckload and have them filter the calls. Important issues get escalated, and usually reach someone with some expertise. But before it does, you will probably go through 3-4 phone calls, and about as many escalations. It sucks ass but that’s how they do it.
The sad truth is that people manning the support lines stateside can be so dumb that it hurts. For example, it appears that no one at the Verizon call center can’t tell a difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars. I shit you not. Listen to this audio clip of recorded support call (note, it’s really long):
The story here is this: the caller calls Verizon and asks them how much will they charge him for data transfer in Canada. They quote him .002 cents per KB. He actually makes them write it down in the notes. Later he gets a bill which charges him .002 dollars per KB. He calls back to contest this charge, and neither the support drone, nor his manage, and not even the floor manager can understand what he is talking about.
It actually hurts my brain to listen to this conversation. If I didn’t hear it, I would not believe that this exchange actually took place. I realize people are dumb, but I didn’t suspect that you could be this dumb and still function in the society.
Fortunately it seems that the guy who created this recording finally got high enough in the Verizon command chain that he actually encountered someone with a brain, who gave him a full refund.
Unfortunately their rank and file continue to quote people the wrong price.
[tags]verizon, call, call center, support, cents, dollars, wtf[/tags]
