A collective "I told you so" from all the layed-off American tech workers. Dell to Stop Using Indian Call Center for Corporate Customers. Apparently, there was a high volume of complaints about thick accents and scripted responses. You don't say? You mean explaining complex technical issues to end users over a phone are further complicated by mixing in large dialect and enunciation differences?
posted by Espoo2 on Nov 24, 2003 - 40 comments

"Cryptophis nigrescens killed my computer." ... "my computer was making a strange hissing noise last night and this morning when I turned it on there was a crackling noise and some smoke then nothing, if I bring it in can you fix it?"

One of my colleagues took this tech support call and has the photographs to prove it.
posted by snarfodox on Nov 28, 2002 - 19 comments

Humorous experiance of a lady with Microsoft Technical Support Staff in relation to Klez worm.
posted by arnab on May 1, 2002 - 8 comments

No more Muzak™ and classic rock? "The [IBM] interns collaborated on something called Hold Freedom, a way to ease the tedium of being on hold while waiting to talk to a human. The program enables callers placed on hold to listen to news, music of their choice, enter a chat group with other customers or even make another phone call without losing their place in the queue. The choices would be based on personal profiles that the customers had previously completed on the call center to phone company's Web site." (Also cool that the idea comes from summer interns.)
posted by tippiedog on Aug 27, 2001 - 9 comments

"Ask Maxwell" -- Microsoft's New Support Database Am I the only one who finds something a tad sinister about this thing? He looks a bit odd, and considering it's supposed to be automated support, this profile of him is damned creepy. By the way -- the profile states that he/it is an English major. Uh, Bill? -- wouldn't it have been a smoother move to say that the "guy" was a Comp Sci major? Geez...
posted by metrocake on Aug 24, 2000 - 11 comments