Comment by rich_sasha
4 years ago
As a student in the UK, I had to deal with a call centre, specially designed for foreign students, sited in Glasgow. Glaswegian accent is easily one of the strongest UK accents, and can be impenetrable to even native non-British speakers (scratch that, many southerners won't understand a particularly strong Glaswegian accent).
I mean, yes there is maybe a racist angle to this story, but also, I wish I could use this box back then. The call centre people were very nice, very helpful, and used to repeating stuff n times over, but that's still suboptimal.
To be fair, I don't think that's what's going on here. I think every American is familiar with the "Indian call center accent". That is, it's a unique accent specifically because it is "people with an Indian accent trying to speak with an 'Americanish/Canadianish' accent". It's kind of like the famous "mid Atlantic dialect". Nobody actually speaks it naturally; they are trained to do so.
Point being, this Indian call center accent, while unmistakable, IMO is also extremely easy to understand. I find call center workers speak more slowly and with more "rounded" vowels to try to mimic an American accent. So lack of intelligibility isn't the reason to try to hide this.
But I think trying to hide even this accent isn't so much about racism, it's about trying to fool customers into thinking their support request hasn't been outsourced to the lowest bidder. I'll admit, when I know a call is being handled from India, I immediately think that if my problem isn't a common one that can be handled by a script, that I'll be disappointed.