Comment by RicoElectrico
3 years ago
> I contacted support again and received an arrogant email that the issue is related to my software and that they couldnt help me further.
Doesn't surprise me, German companies always know better and will try to prove you wrong, whether you're their customer or supplier. Such is the business culture, I think.
As someone who has customer service experience in both the USA and Germany, I can tell you that there are, indeed, cultural differences. There are certain situations in the USA where Germans and other Europeans don't always have the best experience because of a cultural misunderstanding. I am also the in-house English teacher here at Hetzner. (Most companies have no in-house teacher.) Something that I personally work on with my students in my conversations class and customer service class is intonation, which can cause spoken language to come off as sounding "arrogant" by accident. In addition, written responses may accidentally come of as sounding too direct or "arrogant" for the same reason. We work on these situations in my classes. So if you ever have a ticket that you think might make for good learning material for one of my classes, or that you would like to see escalated because of a serious language/cultural misunderstanding, please write to marketing@hetzner.com and mention my name (and include the relevant ticket number). --Katie
While it might be a cultural issue, I have to admit that this isn't the case with many Germans. I interact daily in open-source projects I'm involved with. While they are direct most of them seem very respectful and welcoming. From time to time some people might seem a bit more arrogant but I think that there might be a cultural bias too at play here.
Kudos for assisting your colleagues with better communication in English, I think this practice could be useful for many organizations with people that speak English as a foreign language.
I think its an issue of inter cultural communication.
My impression is that in Germany you bear the burden of proof that you actually have a problem, that its not your own fault, and that you did your part trying to fix it.
You usually can get good support in Germany ( even at government offices ) , IF you show up with your Leitordner ( legendary German ring binders) with all the receipts, all the possibly relevant account numbers, transaction ids and a detailed analysis of your own problem.
There is nothing that signals to German support staff that you have to be taken seriously like a ring binder, preferably with color coded markers at the margins and lots of punch pockets.
If you think this is satire, try it the next time you have an in person appointment...
Btw, the company making the ring binders is called "Leitz".
The rest is entirely correct, though.
This works really well in the United States, I've found. Showing up with an arsenal of documentation (virtual or otherwise) sets the tone.
Better than support tickets to a country that will ignore you or deny anything is wrong.
> Doesn't surprise me, German companies always know better and will try to prove you wrong
Yep. Its a plight that afflicts almost all engineers around the world, and German companies are even more afflicted by it due to the German engineering culture...