4 ms·
"I love that you get on a call with real native speaker" Wow! Seriously? How do you feel the same way about the people you work with, if they aren't native spe
by websap 5y ago
"I love that you get on a call with real native speaker"
Wow! Seriously? How do you feel the same way about the people you work with, if they aren't native speakers?
- tick_tock_tick 5y agoTalking over the phone, which doesn't have great voice quality to begin with, about a potentially stressful and time critical situation is not something accents help with there is nothing wrong with that statement.
- wpietri 5y agoA counfounder here is that a strong accent is correlated with outsourcing customer support to low-cost providers to companies with far-away, underpaid staff who lack cultural context and social power within the company they nominally work for. Personally, I think the much bigger problem is the shitty outsourcing. But semi-sensical corporatese excuse-making is definitely not improved by language and accent barriers.
- msrenee 5y agoThanks for expressing what I was trying to figure out how to put into words. I feel no animosity towards the folks stuffed in a call center for crap wages. I'm irritated with the company that outsourced their support to India and pays them crap wages to try to navigate technology that they don't have adequate training for and at least have no real power to fix.
- toastal 5y agoI mean I had a fun conversation with an older lady who was living in my birth state. This made a MUCH better experience than having a purely technical call.
- websap 5y agoHow do you function in a remote first world, where most of your team joins calls over Slack or Teams? It’s weird that someone painstakingly learnt English, but you don’t can’t put in the effort to listen and understand.
- sidlls 5y agoIt’s a bit of a stretch to say someone who speaks with a thick accent in grammatically questionable English has “learnt” English. One can respect the effort while at the same time being incredibly frustrated with having to carry an additional cognitive load when attempting to communicate with someone ill-equipped to do so. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
- 3np 5y agoWouldn’t a fluent or native-level speaker be sufficient?
- quacked 5y agoThis is such a ridiculous thing to get annoyed about. I work with a bunch of Croatians; do you really think they prefer that I speak English (US), or would they like it more if I were fluent in Croatian?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- l33t2328 5y agoYes, it is also difficult to work with people in person who aren’t native speakers, although over the phone is especially challenging.
- toastal 5y agoIf I'm calling support, I'm probably not in the mood for anything being frustrating or confusing. I spend every day in countries where English isn't the primary language, but in face-to-face or chat or even video call, there are ways to indicate nonverbal cues. I have to take phone calls from delivery men when bare know any English and I feel sorry for them having to be asked to wade through my attempt to speak their language or my English because they don't get paid enough for that. On the otherhand my (massive) bank sure as heck better have the money to afford good native support. And for my beefs with Schwab, this they do a very good job at.