Exercises in mutual frustration

[msmemory_archive]

I get these calls from foreign call centers, who have been hired to give our company free subscriptions to trade magazines. The callers are often hard to hear and understand, I can usually hear the ambient noise of the other phone crew in their call center, and when I deviate from their text, they get confused. Today, a fellow with a terribly thick Indian accent asked for "Ms. Waks." I said "This is she." He said, "May I speak to Ms. Waks?" "This. Is. She." I repeated. "Ms Waks?" "Speaking." "Ah, hello [start script]."

Comments

[kimberlycreates.livejournal.com]

*lol* This has happened to me before too.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Just yesterday I read a story indicating that India is beginning to import people for the outsourced sales and support jobs they've acquired. It seems that the lack of qualified English-speakers is becoming a major problem. Luckily for them, there's a largish number of British youths interested in going over and working for a while as a way to finance their tourism - work a few months, then tour the country and see the sites.

There aren't nearly enough such youths to cover all the expected jobs, but they make an ironic stopgap :)

[silme.livejournal.com]

Now, that's definitely ironic considering how many UK call centres have been moved to Asia!

[laurion]

Perhaps the individual on the other end thought that your name was 'She', and that you kept referring to yourself by name. 'She' != 'Ms. Waks', ergo the repeat of the question.


No matter what the source of the confusion, it's still a very amusing exchange.