Thread: Customer service centres should have clear speaking representatives!

Most of the Indians I know speak better English than many of the Australian-born people I know.
Literacy standards are in the toilet in this country because our education curriculum does not mandate the teaching of grammar. Functional illiteracy in this country is around 40% of adults, according to some estimates.
I teach grammar to refugees who now know more grammar than the Aussie-born kids who are in their classes. Earlier this year I gave a language test to 450 students, mostly born in this country, and a significant number of the Aussie-born kids scored lower than some of the refugees.
Singaporeans speak the best English, in my opinion. The Indonesian woman at my work speaks the best English of us all (even better than me).
Most Aussies fill their speech with slang, slur their words together, mix up their tenses and don't speak in grammatical sentences, but just mumble fragments, plus we have this horrible nasal twang that makes us very difficult to understand.
I have no idea how well you speak, but it's possible your Indian call centre people might have been struggling to understand what you were saying.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

but it's possible your Indian call centre people might have been struggling to understand what you were saying.

Seems strange that call centres we speak to in Australia, NZ and even South Africa understand what we are saying and are equally understanderable, iinet is a classic example,(they divert calls to call centres outside of normal W.A business hours) but always seem to have problems with Indians. Could it be the Indians rush their speak as the are reciting answers of a prompter. Even power company door knockers and telecommunications representatives are hard to understand when they are even talking face to face. It's no just me, a lot of people hate calling Indian call centres, whether it be to banks or other institutions. All this to save a buck from companies that are making huge profits at the sacrifice of Australian jobs.

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

Perhaps the English first language Australians that may be able to work in the repair centre are too lazy to actually work and have got themselves onto DSP.

Would you want "them" repairing your computer?

They'd probably forget to put the screen back in.

English first language Australians, so it is all the Poms fault. No wonder the Scots want to run away, Fair dinkum, it's enough to want to admit you like Kiwis. What's the World coming to, Bob

Telstra call centre jobs 'will not exist in five years', says CEO David Thodey

Originally Posted by bob10

English first language Australians, so it is all the Poms fault. No wonder the Scots want to run away, Fair dinkum, it's enough to want to admit you like Kiwis. What's the World coming to, Bob

I don't think Orstraayl'n is an official language!

Originally Posted by Chucaro

Telstra call centre jobs 'will not exist in five years', says CEO David Thodey

Telstra's chief executive has put a five-year time limit on thousands of Australian-based call centre jobs, saying online services are the way of the future.

Makes a lot of sense, you have a technical problem with Bigpond, you have no internet connection so you need help, you can't ring a call centre for tech help. You need to find help online, but how can you do it without a working internet connection. You go next door to your neighbor, ask to borrow their internet and find the troubleshooting info .

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Most of the Indians I know speak better English than many of the Australian-born people I know.
Literacy standards are in the toilet in this country because our education curriculum does not mandate the teaching of grammar. Functional illiteracy in this country is around 40% of adults, according to some estimates.
I teach grammar to refugees who now know more grammar than the Aussie-born kids who are in their classes. Earlier this year I gave a language test to 450 students, mostly born in this country, and a significant number of the Aussie-born kids scored lower than some of the refugees.
Singaporeans speak the best English, in my opinion. The Indonesian woman at my work speaks the best English of us all (even better than me).
Most Aussies fill their speech with slang, slur their words together, mix up their tenses and don't speak in grammatical sentences, but just mumble fragments, plus we have this horrible nasal twang that makes us very difficult to understand.
I have no idea how well you speak, but it's possible your Indian call centre people might have been struggling to understand what you were saying.

You're right on the money there about literacy and correct enunciation in this country.

I work as a bus driver and recently I had a young bloke get on the bus and asked to pay a fare..........

Young bloke..."Half ta Tra"
Me................."Pardon"?
Young bloke..."Half ta Tra"

This had me thinking, I was driving a bus heading to Toronto (on Lake Macquarie) and a lot of the locals call it "Tronno" or the dead beats call it "Tronna". The penny dropped and I realised this thickhead wanted a half fare to Toronto.

I'm an old fart and when I went to school we were tought to speak clearly, sound out the words and enunciate properly.

Last company I worked for had their call centres in Cairo. Seems there is a large pool of well educated English speaking people who look upon a call centre job as desirable.