Comment by al_borland
10 hours ago
Changing an accent doesn’t change the content the person on the other end receives it with. Most of my issues with overseas support is that they have no real context for my problem. It’s not just a language barrier, it’s a culture barrier.
When calling support in my own country it is much faster and easier, because they intuitively understand the type of issue I’m having and can better relate. I question if changing the voice would make it more frustrating, as I’d have similar issues without the obvious explanation as to why it’s happening.
The other issue is that this further incentivizes companies to off-shore their support. A lot of the reason companies don't use it comes back to the reputational style issue. Where people don't want to feel like they are getting crappy support and having to deal with not understanding people.
This is a different kind of way of using AI to eliminate local jobs and allow them to more easily outsource it to countries with low labour costs and poor labour conditions.
While I would appreciate being able to understand them better, I would not at all support this. You could maybe make an argument that using this with local staff could have some merit. As at least then they are not exploiting cheap foreign labour. There are still people living within the country of the caller who may still have strong accents like in the example you gave about yourself.
> The other issue is that this further incentivizes companies to off-shore their support
Why is this a problem? Why are we so attached to the notion that a role must be completed from a specific jurisdiction (outside of regulatory). If you believe in remote work, then why should it matter from where that work is delivered?
Plenty of small companies offshore early support, to reduce costs. In many cases this provides jobs in economies that otherwise doesn't have them, and can lead to a tech industry that in turn hires globally. There are several economies that received a boost this way, and now benefit.
I don't see the problem. Yes, there may be uncomfortable shuffling of roles, layoffs,etc. But, as a believer in globalization, this will just happen. Yes, it will impact me as well.
It's wage suppression. Plain and simple.
And workers that don't get what you're on about because they only have the script for a regular customers with regular issues become often incredibly frustrating when you have a more complicated issue that would be immediately resolved by someone at a helpdesk locally that immediately knows what internal niche department and person you should be redirected to.
> If you believe in remote work, then why should it matter from where that work is delivered?
Okay, well that's easy then.
In general I am highly concerned about the negative social and productivity costs of remote work, in industries ranging from tech support to software development to medicine.
>Why is this a problem?
Because it means that I will have to interact with foreigners instead of my own people. It means that a job that my people could have done gets sent off to the lowest bidder in an economy far away. It means that I get a lower quality service as I believe my people can do it better.
>Why are we so attached to the notion that a role must be completed from a specific jurisdiction (outside of regulatory).
Because in group preference along with wanting to win and be the best are human nature.
>If you believe in remote work, then why should it matter from where that work is delivered?
There is a difference between the location a job is done and who is doing the job. If I remote work from China, I am still American. Changing my location on planet earth didn't change who I am, nor does it change my values and work ethic.
>In many cases this provides jobs in economies that otherwise doesn't have them, and can lead to a tech industry that in turn hires globally.
Which I see as a bad thing as it means money and jobs that could have gone to my own country are leaving and being sent to another. I would rather have local companies invest in local AI than to hire foreigners.
>There are several economies that received a boost this way, and now benefit.
I would rather boost my own economy than someone else's.
15 replies →
>Changing an accent doesn’t change the content the person on the other end receives it with. Most of my issues with overseas support is that they have no real context for my problem. It’s not just a language barrier, it’s a culture barrier.
Its not for the person on the other end.
I used to do phone tech support, and:
1. Lots of my female coworkers would end their shifts in tears because men would yell at them for no reason. A male voice would absolutely make the job more bearable for them.
2. Singaporeans hate Australian accents more than anyone over here hates indian accents. I had a nearly 100% strike rate with singaporeans demanding local tech support, calling me names and hanging up.
Something seems very wrong with observing that people are shitty and terrible to each other and proposing interposing a machine between them to make communication bearable.
It’s either that, or letting more people meet their demise for rudeness.
I suspect the main culprit here is company policy/choice resulting in angry callers. Not to say there aren't other factors, but people generally don't call companies because they're having a good time. If Telus is anything like American TV/phone/internet companies, then I'm even more convinced of this.
edit: And if people are able to detect this and suspect they're not even talking to a human at all, it might even make verbal abuse more common.
>Singaporeans hate Australian accents more than anyone over here hates indian accents.
No way, I've never heard of this before.
Does anyone know why this is? Do they have a bad experience with Australian colleagues? Do we harrass them in public the way that the British backpackers do here?
I think its partially the australian reputation for being assholes overseas, and partly a sort of unionistic culture that tries to demand locals do everything to maximise employment. I got a similar vibe from people in the phillipines, just not to the same extent.
That may be true, but I find Australian accents the most beautiful.
The stereotype is of Australians going over to Singapore for a holiday and being drunk and rude. It's a stereotype, but that's where that hate comes from.
How unique are our problems? They have utilities, airlines, etc in India. Everything you'd talk to a support agent with is basically the same globally, and if not, can easily be explained to a person who hasn't been living in a yurt and burning yak dung for fuel; and tbh I think you could explain return processes to those folks as well.
I’ve spent time in India, and while they have many of the same things, they sometimes operate very differently. I assume call centers don’t pay that much, so it’s very possible that while India has certain things, the people I’m talking to have limited access.
If I’m trying to convey an issue about a flight, per your example, it may very well be to someone who’s never flown or has very different expectations for what it looks like to fly. At one of the airports I was at in India, I was trying to find my gate and was pointed to a guy at a card table with a 3-ring binder, where he flipped through to find the flight. This was maybe 10 years ago; I had never experienced anything like that in the US, even going back several decades. This is a cultural and experiential difference. If someone from that airport in India called me for help (prior to that experience), I would have had an really hard time parsing their problem, as I wouldn’t have any context for seeing a man with a binder about finding gate information. Someone saying that wouldn’t have made any sense to me. Other airports there were more akin to what I’m used to in the US, but still had their local quirks.
This same type of issue could play out regardless of the country. India was the example brought up, but I’ve run into confusion due to cultural differences everywhere I’ve been to some degree. How impactful this is to support will vary based on how common the issue is, but I’m usually not calling support for common issues now that most of those can be handled via a website.
Right but it's not like they don't know about flying and can't be instructed and coached? I don't mean to me dismissive, maybe (quite possibly) things are more complicated than that, but ...? Like, okay when an Indian person is working for an Indian airline they're instructed "hey, here's the departures binder." But when they're hired by Lufthansa they get oriented using whatever system and processes are in place at that company. And "hey, don't be rude. To western people, here's what that means beyond what's intuitive to you." How does their previous experience with a binder mean they can't relate to you on a support call?
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it all depends on their training. And with the churn i imagine they are getting, or the cost measures, it's usually not quite the same.
And yes, cultural difference matters. Americans often have more agency to take initiative, on average. Knowing there's an American on the other side puts me at ease, mentally.
Some call centers do train on the cultural and society side of the places they serve.
Obviously not enough of them. Most are used to under-bidding and being stretched to take the lowest possible price.
Hey, J, I sent you an email.
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I did not use AI for the comment. AI usually does that at the start of a paragraph, not the end. I tacked it on the end to better clarify my actual point, as it required reading between the lines too much, which can be problematic on a forum.
> It's not X, it's Y = AI pattern.
Yeah, a human has never used this pattern before! Good thing AI always leaves this digital signature which is never wrong, so you always know if the person on the other end has used AI.
FFS enough with these goddamn witch-hunt anti-shibboleths. It is neither reliable nor clever nor funny.
—Some human that actually uses em-dashes