I used to work for a support line for a banking service… We had a brilliant girl who worked for us who was born in india then moved to scotland, so she had impeccable english but a bit of an accent. About once a week some total fanny would go mad when talking to her, “I can’t believe I’m talking to some ****ing indian call centre”. She would say “No really, I’m in Sighthill in Edinburgh”. They would say “yeah? What’s the view like out the window.” And she would say “We don’t have any windows, which kind of sucks, we work in a basement”. and so on. “What was the football score?” “I really don’t care, Scottish football is awful”
And after a wee bit more, she would pass the call onto myself as the official most bad tempered most scottish person, and I’d have a bit of fun with them til they either apologised, hung up, or we banned them from our service. Couple of them insisted I was faking though, they were the best. The joke was, Zav was one of our best staff, but people would just refuse to speak to her.
Anyway. The problem isn’t foreign call centres, there are excellent foreign call centres… The problem’s bad quality lines, bad training, and unsuitable staff. Of which, there is a lot. But there are bloody awful UK call centres too. If I had to work in an actual call centre, I’d be a total **** to everyone.