Tech Support in India

Really, I have nothing against the guy in India who's trying to help me.

It's...

The phone tree which is now voice recognition, but not really, so you have to repeat yourself, or make sure you say one of the words in their vocabulary, because if you don't, you'll be talking to a machine for awhile before it gives up and transfers you.

Oh sure, maybe 99% of calls are in the categories stated, and SERVICE OUTAGE is so rare that SYSTEM STATUS is not something people ever call about. But if you can't look it up on the internet because your service is out, wouldn't you... Call?? You can't say they don't have a sense of humor, asking you if you have a dial tone when you just told them you're calling from the phone number on the account.

I had a bit of an epiphany with this phone call. "How can I help you today?" is not really a query of "how they can help you," it is merely a computer prompt, where they're listening intently for ONE WORD that matches one of the words on their computer screen. I'm not sure why that function hasn't been replaced by a machine.

But I realized, as the guy goes through his layers of screens searching for how he can help you that I didn't really have to rephrase my inquiry 50 different ways, in case there was some nuance he didn't quite understand. All I had to do was repeat my initial inquiry 4 times, each time becoming more machine-like in my voice, until "Ray" finally found the screen that answered the question. No service outages anywhere in California. Which I find truly amazing, but thanks Ray, I'll check my crappy extension cable and call you back.

"Ray? Is that the name you were born with?"

"Of course."

I didn't say it, but if parents are naming their children "Ray" in India, I feel like there's something a bit sad about that. After all, Ray has probably attended some diction classes, and is doing an incredible job of hiding his Indian accent. I myself, upon leaving Indiana (oddly named after his country) was teased mercilessly about my accent, and worked on getting rid of it. But just as anyone who knows accents immediately knows I'm from the Midwest, pretty much anyone in the United States would detect that Ray is probably in the number one country for outsourcing.

And since we're all aware of that, and since we're both former colonies of England, why not a real name? Americans could do with a little more familiarity with their sister colonies.