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I used to run call centers for a large regional bank in New England.

We DID sort out our queues for Spanish because it made the Spanish customers more comfortable and it made the calls faster (which was THE big issue in a call centers.)

Your experience indicates that in some regions of the country it is getting more and more difficult to recruit call centers reps without discernible accents. This is why call centers were in places like Jacksonville, Phoenix, and western New England. EVERYONE can understand people with those accents.

When our bank was sold, the call centers were moved to North Carolina. We had an almost immediate issue with southern and black accents. To our “uptight” New Englanders that was maddening.

My point is that recruiting for all centers is a tough side of the business. You get to pick from the people who apply. And that is not usually the “optimal” candidates. Pay is not always great. Location and hours are not always great.

It was becoming “discrimination” to train people to articulate. (We used to have our potential employees read a script so we could get a feeling for their “sound.” We wanted to avoid “axe —ask—murders” and “fiddy-cent” speakers because they found it difficult to communicate.). Ours was kind of a niche business because it dealt with business and trust folks. The HR folks that came on after Y2K put an end to that!

So, my guess is that your experience is not that places want to intentionally make the experience bad. It’s the location of their center. It’s also dealing with the people who apply for the jobs. Finally, there is a DEI/Discrimination factor—but that would be a distant third concern.

We used to regularly record calls and go over them with agents at least once a month. When an agent actually hears how they sound…it’s interesting to watch their faces when they realize they’ve said something poorly or reacted in a way they shouldn’t have. Corrections were almost all “self imposed.” My guess is that in tight financial times, quality control is one of the first things to go.

You are right, B.W.R! and the reason is “MONEY”.

India was the first call center base after most companies closed their support centers. India started to a rotational call center stradgy by taking the CSR’s who got better and and were good at their jobs, they were then rotated to higher paying contracts.....$$$$

This caused them to be priced out. Moving on....$$$$

The Philippines had a large number of adapt English speakers from the US bases that closed. The same stradgy was used and the best CSR’s went to better paying contracts......$$$$

This caused them to be priced out. Moving on....$$$$

The support contracts are and were never, NEVER written to set and identify a dedicated group of CSR’s. So by taking out the confident and poised CSR’s and replacing them with newbies all the time was the norm....$$$$

This caused them to be priced out. Moving on....$$$$

End result the short term call centers make more money and then get a bad rep for useless service.

This caused them to be priced out. Moving on....$$$$

They used to make up for this by having dedicated and identified level 2 and 3 support centers staffed with well trained and experienced CSR’s and Tech’s. That was and is until the money monster pops up again and they do the call center fire drill and start the process all over.

Oh by the way, AI may be able under most of the voice incoming calls but there is nothing it can diagnose with falling back on lists and 200 questions.

Remember follow the money and of course the stupidity of the accounting department and that one leveraging “A.H” MBA.

😀😀😀😀