Re: Oh, this is so microsoftish ...

A true story from last week:

A rather sensitive internal email that was addressed to just one person ended up being broadcast to about thirty (totally unknown to me) Oracle employees from the UK and the States. Ouch.

Apparently, it was because our old webmail email address had been flipped over to the new all-singing, all-broadcasting collaboration suite web-based email. So that's all right then.

I rang up *internal* support. Press 1 for support in English. I pressed 1. At which point, something came on the line. I'm sure it was human, because it asked me my employee number. But after that, it could have been a dishwasher with extra toaster slots for all the sense it made. I hung up. I rang back. I pressed 1. "dshggfhd dgfdhgfdhf hdhfg dhgdhf dh employee number?". I hung up. I rang back. I pressed 1. I got a delightful person who, when I enquired, admitted to being presently located in sunny Singapore. His English was good(ish-plus). The support was fine.

It's not just you customers who have to put up with outsourcing and global support. Us muggins employees do, too.

But, and here's my real point, it's bloody hard to sit there in a support environment and envisage every last nuance of the caller's environment and setup subtleties... and that's just as hard as if you're a true-blue Yankee, red-neck Texan, or a rather pleasant Hindu gentleman in Singapore. Sure, if their grasp on English is tenuous, you're in for a rough ride. But a lot of these people have far better English than some skin-heads of my acquaintance in Chatham, Kent, the Garden of England and a 100% native... and 100% objectionable, to boot. And their English is in any case 1000% better than my Gujurati... normally. And if not, speak up, request a different support person or do what I did, and re-dial as often as necessary until you get one. (I would have requested a different person the first time, but I didn't like to make the lady involved feel embarrassed in any way).

But I really don't believe that support from India is intrinsically any more likely to be worse than support from Wooloomooloo - or Redmond, come to that. And I have a sneaking suspicion that those who say the nation makes the difference are actually just racists at heart anyway.

All power to them, I say. Some of my nicest students are from India. And, for different reasons, I have a soft-spot for Bangalore anyway.

Regards
HJR "Daniel Morgan" <damorgan_at_exxesolutions.com> wrote in message news:3ECFDBB3.A7B78DFF_at_exxesolutions.com...
> Jim Kennedy wrote:
>
> > Daniel,
> > Are you calling due to a database issue or an applications issue? I
think
> > all the applications support has moved to India, but I don't think the
> > database support has.
> > Jim
> >
> > --
> > Replace part of the email address: kennedy-down_with_spammers_at_attbi.com
> > with family. Remove the negative part, keep the minus sign. You can
figure
> > it out.
> > "Daniel Morgan" <damorgan_at_exxesolutions.com> wrote in message
> > news:3ECF8357.BE5FBE96_at_exxesolutions.com...
> > > Sybrand Bakker wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Sat, 24 May 2003 20:54:30 +1000, "Noons"
> > > > <wizofoz2k_at_yahoo.com.au.nospam> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >Dunno. Can't remember the last time
> > > > >I called them...
> > > >
> > > > I can. They seem to have moved to India. There will be a day when
they
> > > > simply dump the Dutch support group and have everything answered by
> > > > cover your ass trained monkeys from India. I will regret that day.
> > > > In order to allow for those trained monkeys to deal with your
support
> > > > issues, they now have livechat facilities and facilities to take
over
> > > > your client PC. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....
> > > > Frankly, when you have one instance running MTS with explicit ports,
> > > > and you have second instance with the same explicit ports (because
you
> > > > forgot to change them) and the second instance is *taking over* the
> > > > ports, so the enduser connects to instance A and gets connected to
> > > > instance B, I have to consider that a serious *bug*. The trained
> > > > monkey on the other end of the line didn't, because you can allocate
a
> > > > port only once. He also addressed me with my surname only.
> > > > A truly nasty experience.
> > > >
> > > > Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA
> > > >
> > > > To reply remove -verwijderdit from my e-mail address
> > >
> > > I've never once talked to anyone in India. I think where the calls go
is a
> > > reflection of where one is geographically. My daytime calls are
handled in
> > > Redwood Shores (same time zone) my evening calls in almost always in
> > > Australia.
> > >
> > > Still waiting for Howard to call me back. ;-)
> > > --
> > > Daniel Morgan
> > > http://www.outreach.washington.edu/extinfo/certprog/oad/oad_crs.asp
> > > damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
> > > (replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)
> > >
> > >
>
> Database.
>
> If they have moved support to India for apps ... c'est dommage.
> --
> Daniel Morgan
> http://www.outreach.washington.edu/extinfo/certprog/oad/oad_crs.asp
> damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
> (replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)
>
>
Received on Sat May 24 2003 - 22:31:27 CDT