I had always heard stories about outsourcing and people having to talk to women in Vietnam to fix their soap dispensers, but today was my first direct experience with outsourcing.
I ordered a debit card for my new checking account and it had not arrived after a month so I called my bank. After first receiving the Harris customer service line which offered me 4,238 clicking options, I decided to try my luck with a real live person.
I called my bank in town and the lady directed me to a banker at another bank. After hearing my story for 4 seconds he directed me to the customer service line. Yep, back to the 4,238 options. Well, I sucked it up and found the button I needed to push to receive service, and there I was greeted by a wonderful - but partially deaf - Asian woman. After a 10 minute conversation which involved her ordering a new debit card, a change of address, and me repeating 30 N. Brainard 4 times; my first experience with outsourcing was complete.
She seemed to have a grapple on the English language, but not so much on her health, as she continued to hack up phlegm through the entire conversation. Her phone saviness made me wonder if I could do customer service in Manila from my couch in Naperville. Did the customer service lady know where Illinois is? Does she know what a "ville" connotates? Has she ever heard the name Austin before?
In other worldly news, my eating habits have changed. My new top 2 favorite foods are:
1) Mexican Food [carne asada tacos are the sole reason for Mexico's high showing]
2) Japanese/Sushi [if you like sushi, you know that it just makes you feel good inside. And not the way a cheeseburger feels after you haven't eaten for seven hours. Sushi makes you feel Really good.]
In other other worldly news, I realized our news cast at the radio station does not offer a slot for world news. A regular WONC news cast format transfers from 2 local stories, to 2 national stories, to sports, to traffic, to weather, to some unnecessary tid-bit about Madonna, JLO, or Kathi Lee Gifford. This morning I fictionalized a large monster eating his way through Ghana, killing 67,403 people; and I realized, I would struggle with accurately placing this story in my Americanized news cast.
10 years ago
