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Native English speaker here, and I find the Indian accent literally the hardest to understand out of any accent I've heard. When I get them on a tech support c

Native English speaker here, and I find the Indian accent literally the hardest to understand out of any accent I've heard. When I get them on a tech support call it just makes me automatically angry because I know how much more work I'll have to do just to communicate.

ghaff 10y ago
I've never found accent to be a huge issue in general with first line technical support. It's more like 95% of the time (OK, I've done something dumb now and then) they're going to take me through scripts that are increasingly non-responsive and orthogonal to my problem before promising to call back--which they never do. If I can get to someone in a US support center, I've just found that they tend to be better enabled to actually address my problem--even if they have a southern accent :-)
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  I'm not too annoyed to quickly jump through their useless hoops to get to the next step if I have to, but I find it super hard to cope with the accent. I'm in Australia and I've noticed more of them being Filipino which I find just slightly less difficult to understand than Indian, but still difficult and irritating. But I agree, it's such a relief if you win the lottery and get a native English speaker, things always seem to move along so much quicker.
  - dang 10y ago
    You've posted several comments about how you don't like other people's accents. That's unsubstantive and arguably uncivil. Please stop.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      Unsubstantive? All I said was that I had trouble understanding heavily accented English. I never said I don't like the accent. It's irrelevant if I like it or not. It's that I can't understand. Being able to understand is IMO a basic requirement for effective telephone support. I have no problem with the people themselves. I actually don't care what their nationality is or where they are physically located. But they need to be able to do their job. The system is broken if I can't understand the person who is trying to support me over the phone. The only reason I'm writing this is in case some future CEO is reading these comments, hopefully they won't be blinded by the cost savings and fall down the same trap as so many companies who roll out such ineffective and irritating phone "support".
    - photogrammetry 10y ago
      Do you really disagree with brokenmachine's premise that poor English makes communication impossible? Or is it, rather, that Sam and YC {and venture capital in general}, by proxy through you, are annoyed at decreasing access to low-wage workers from a developing country notorious for unintelligible accents?
      - dang 10y ago
        Pretty sure I have no low-wage worker agenda, but perhaps you see the dark corners of my soul. From a moderation point of view, it's not a question of disagreeing. We can agree with someone and still ask them to stop. In fact that's common. In this case it was about asking people not to go on offtopically about peeves, because that's not interesting, and also about HN being an international community. Respect across national divides is important here.

ghaff 10y ago

I've never found accent to be a huge issue in general with first line technical support. It's more like 95% of the time (OK, I've done something dumb now and then) they're going to take me through scripts that are increasingly non-responsive and orthogonal to my problem before promising to call back--which they never do. If I can get to someone in a US support center, I've just found that they tend to be better enabled to actually address my problem--even if they have a southern accent :-)

brokenmachine 10y ago
I'm not too annoyed to quickly jump through their useless hoops to get to the next step if I have to, but I find it super hard to cope with the accent. I'm in Australia and I've noticed more of them being Filipino which I find just slightly less difficult to understand than Indian, but still difficult and irritating. But I agree, it's such a relief if you win the lottery and get a native English speaker, things always seem to move along so much quicker.
- dang 10y ago
  You've posted several comments about how you don't like other people's accents. That's unsubstantive and arguably uncivil. Please stop.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    Unsubstantive? All I said was that I had trouble understanding heavily accented English. I never said I don't like the accent. It's irrelevant if I like it or not. It's that I can't understand. Being able to understand is IMO a basic requirement for effective telephone support. I have no problem with the people themselves. I actually don't care what their nationality is or where they are physically located. But they need to be able to do their job. The system is broken if I can't understand the person who is trying to support me over the phone. The only reason I'm writing this is in case some future CEO is reading these comments, hopefully they won't be blinded by the cost savings and fall down the same trap as so many companies who roll out such ineffective and irritating phone "support".
  - photogrammetry 10y ago
    Do you really disagree with brokenmachine's premise that poor English makes communication impossible? Or is it, rather, that Sam and YC {and venture capital in general}, by proxy through you, are annoyed at decreasing access to low-wage workers from a developing country notorious for unintelligible accents?
    - dang 10y ago
      Pretty sure I have no low-wage worker agenda, but perhaps you see the dark corners of my soul. From a moderation point of view, it's not a question of disagreeing. We can agree with someone and still ask them to stop. In fact that's common. In this case it was about asking people not to go on offtopically about peeves, because that's not interesting, and also about HN being an international community. Respect across national divides is important here.