Cox Outsources 411 To Filipinos
Cox has outsourced their 411 service to the Philippines, a frustrated San Diego consumer complains. "Bear" finds the operator's accents difficult to understand and claims they, "don't understand the intricacies of the English language."
Further compounding the problem, Bear says, is that Cox is using an outdated database, frequently resulting in a wrong number and requiring multiple callbacks.
When initially confronted, the Cox operators denied being in the Philippines, but the supervisor Bear asked to speak to confirmed this was the case. The supervisor stated the staff understands English and speak clearly.
Just pray Cox's cost-cutting measures don't inspire the managers of 911...
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Comments:
Wow, Is Cox late on the outsouce bus or what ?
I'll bet 1000 Quatloos that Cox moves the call center back to the US in 1 year because of all the complaints.
OTOH, Knowing how your average moronic exceutive thinks, they'll prove me wrong by moving the call center to Bangalore.
I lived 8 hard years in the Philippines; one aspect of life there that was never difficult was understanding anyone, anywhere, anytime. Most Filipinos are bi-lingual--English & Tagalog--and a substantial percentage of those are tri-lingual, adding the Cebuano dialect to their repertoire. More to the point, I regularly heard better syntax, pronounciation, and grammatical structure in those 8 years than I've heard in the past 30 years here in the U.S. Filipinos take great pride in education and literacy; one need only look at demand for their services on the worldwide job market (as evidence of their superior education).
Linksys outsources to the Philippines as well, I've found all of my experiences with their support to be rather pleasant. Though I've had one or two language problems, it's no worse than some idiot in South Dakota who's just reading off the FAQ and hates their life.
Cox has been making other bad decisions as far as calling them goes... They have introduced an automated help section to their internet support leading to at least 20 minutes of phone jail, impossible to escape, followed by a nice long hold time once you do escape waiting for an agent.
I used to like calling cox, never a phone jail, never a long wait. Now I am considering throwing rocks at their windows.
Outsourcing has been proven not to work as far as any kind of support or customer service is concerned, but 411 I dont think I would mind.
Speaking from experiance in the tech support world, at a company that had no outshored centers and by the time I left, 80% outshored, it is not just the people, or language, but questionable business practices at the outshored companies. The outshored companies will lie, cheat, anything to look good to their parent company, even when they suck.
If long distance is now so cheap that the phone companies can send their 411's overseas, what are we doing paying for long distance anymore?
actually, this is about 1/4 true.
they outsource to a company i worked for.... which has a call center in the philippines. however, they also have 2 centers in texas, 1 in kansas, and i believe one more on the east coast. and are based out of pennsylvania if i remember right.
where you get depends partially on time of the day, and partially on luck of the draw. if you got sent overseas on one call, and call right back, the very next call you could be talking to someone in texas. or vice versa.
(actually, a lot of companies use this one... including both cell phones and cable companies)
Hmm. English is the official language in the Philippines, along with Filipino. Personally, I find a Texas accent more difficult to understand than a Filipino one...