BT apologises over Indian call centre...

[gmb45]

...who couldn't understand customer's Brummie accent

need an enterpreter for brumese

Phone giant BT has apologised to Viv Tomkins after they claimed Indian call centre staff could not understand her Birmingham accent.

Viv, 59, had expected a sympathetic response when she tried to sort out a BT vision bill and complained she could not understand what the employees said.

She told the Sun: 'I couldn't believe the cheek of it. I know I've got a Brummie twang but I speak the Queen's English.'

Call centre: Viv Tomkins hung up in despair because she could not understand what the BT staff in India were saying.

Viv, of Ladywood, Birmingham, was put through to India four times and claimed she had to hang up 'in despair' every time.

She said she was on the phone for 10 minutes at a time and constantly had to ask staff to repeat themselves.

Viv, a retired paramedic, added: I got so frustrated. I felt like throwing the phone out of the window.'

The final straw came when Charlene Conway, from BT?s
correspondence centre in Durham, sent a letter blaming HER accent for the problem.

She wrote: 'I am sorry that you have been unhappy with the advisers. I can certainly understand the difficulty in resolving your inquiries whenever the advisers you have been speaking to are having problems understanding you.'

BT said: We'd like to apologise. The letter was not intended to cause offence. We have contacted the customer to clarify.'
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BT apologises over Indian call centre fail to understand Birmingham woman's accent | Mail Online

[super jumbe]

Every thing you say you have to repeat to Indian call centre staff because they are not really trained for the job and we hear in UK have different accent speaking English which they have to live in UK to understand, for example if you are living in Yorkshire you will speak Yorkshire accent and if you are living in Wales you will be speaking Wales accent, if you are living in Glasgow and goes on and on it?s a different accent, and how they suppose to understand anyway, if you would like to know my opinion all the call centre in UK have moved to India to save few pennies and we should force our Govt to bring the customer service back to UK.

[reddevil157]

I'd also sympathise with the Indian employee's, after all, their only trying to make a living. It's down to BT , the mean ba**ards, to sort the language barrier in their call centre. I was with BT years ago and had the same issue, I just kept hanging up. No offence to the staff, but it is frustrating. It's also the same with Dell.

[Meat-Head]

~~~~ me, given a choice of speaking to india, scotland or brum - brum can live with that

Not going to mention user names, but when speak to a member on phone, as long as you ignore other surrandings you can understand/work out what he is saying.

HTH

Meat

[aftermath]

the only way forward is to chat to the call centers live online, like i do with Vodaphone, you can easily get round the text as opposed to dialect over a phone call .

All i do is log onto Vodaphone web site and look around, after a few minutes a box will appear asking if i want help with an online member of staff, and opens a 1 on 1 chat box, also you can save your chat if you want to for future relevance.


it cant be hard to change over to that system, instead of speaking to some Indian chap in India, who as said you cant blame the Indian people, they are only doing their job.

[cablefreejunkie]

...who couldn't understand customer's Brummie accent

need an enterpreter for brumese

Phone giant BT has apologised to Viv Tomkins after they claimed Indian call centre staff could not understand her Birmingham accent.

Viv, 59, had expected a sympathetic response when she tried to sort out a BT vision bill and complained she could not understand what the employees said.

She told the Sun: 'I couldn't believe the cheek of it. I know I've got a Brummie twang but I speak the Queen's English.'

Call centre: Viv Tomkins hung up in despair because she could not understand what the BT staff in India were saying.

Viv, of Ladywood, Birmingham, was put through to India four times and claimed she had to hang up 'in despair' every time.

She said she was on the phone for 10 minutes at a time and constantly had to ask staff to repeat themselves.

Viv, a retired paramedic, added: I got so frustrated. I felt like throwing the phone out of the window.'

The final straw came when Charlene Conway, from BT?s
correspondence centre in Durham, sent a letter blaming HER accent for the problem.

She wrote: 'I am sorry that you have been unhappy with the advisers. I can certainly understand the difficulty in resolving your inquiries whenever the advisers you have been speaking to are having problems understanding you.'

BT said: We'd like to apologise. The letter was not intended to cause offence. We have contacted the customer to clarify.'
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BT apologises over Indian call centre fail to understand Birmingham woman's accent | Mail Online

what a load of shite,i mean why is the emphasis being placed on the fact that you are speaking to someone in india ?
there are plenty of accents right here in the uk that some people have difficulty understanding,i was speaking to hm revenue and customs recently and had a nightmare trying to understand the person on the end of the phone
another piece of useless shite from our great disinformation service,better known to you and i as the NEWS
someone actually gets paid to write that shite,unbelievable but true

[Lainie]

do B.T. have any contact numbers in the uk??

[cablefreejunkie]

do B.T. have any contact numbers in the uk??

where is the relevance in your question ?

[Shady]

where is the relevance in your question ?

the relevance is in the threads topic doofus

[Meat-Head]

where is the relevance in your question ?

It is nice to talk to people that makes sense. Rather than speaking like this

http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/f152/assistance-after-end-divorcefiat-ducato-2-3-jtd-88kw-119696/

Oh awesome Lainieis one them people that was programmed with Scottish language - That's awesome under the circumstanses (no offense)

[Lainie]

where is the relevance in your question ?

the relevance at the time of posting since youi so nicely asked was stupid bt engineers cut my mums land line of the other day when they installed a new mast in the neighbours garden. i had phoned india and got nowhere - they said it was 5 working days to fix. this was unacceptable and i wanted to speak to someone in the uk.

i did eventually get a number for the uk and did get someone that understood what i was talking about.

[cablefreejunkie]

the relevance is in the threads topic doofus

dont be a twat and dont start cussing

[cablefreejunkie]

the relevance at the time of posting since youi so nicely asked was stupid bt engineers cut my mums land line of the other day when they installed a new mast in the neighbours garden. i had phoned india and got nowhere - they said it was 5 working days to fix. this was unacceptable and i wanted to speak to someone in the uk.

i did eventually get a number for the uk and did get someone that understood what i was talking about.

i misunderstood what you were asking,,although youre question was straightforward i misunderstood,,sorry

[Shady]

well don't be so rude to perfectly reasonable questions then

[cablefreejunkie]

well don't be so rude to perfectly reasonable questions then

i dont think that asking "where is the relevance in your question" hardly substitutes being rude, do you ?