Alienware's callcentre

Hello everybody,

I just called Alienware from the Netherlands and I noticed that my phone call was forwarded to an Indian callcentre. I just came back from India (stayed there 6 months) and I have to say that it is quite hard for a dutchmen to understand English with an Indian accent. I am accustomed to it, so I could understand everything, but I know people (and especially dutchmen) need to hear it a lot before they can understand everything.

So perhaps it would be nice if Alienware has a callcentre which is situated in England, Ireland or the US in order to help international customers...

What do you think?

 

It's all about money, so outsourcing isn't surprising, almost all notebook companies have their service, sales and support located in India nowadays.

 

I think it's done in India because it's cheaper

 

Well, I don't know what to say - I thought they're located in Ireland. Today I spoke with a french guy >.>

 

Well, I work for a company as well, and I know that they do not outsource (they are my collegues). Off course it isn't possible to outsource in Holland as there are still people who can barely talk English.

My experience is that you can help people a lot easier if you do not have a 'front- and backoffice'. Just have one office (The company I work for has 210.000 customers). It really works, because somebody from the 'frontoffice' can solve a problem very fast (because somebody from the 'backoffice' is sitting behind him/her).

 

im sure i read somewhere on here that they dont have a call centre in india.
ireland and purto richo as far as i know.
as crystak stated, he spoke to a french guy today. ive spoken to 2 different french guys so far.
now i dont know if that means they have an office in france or they work in the irish CS

 

it's cheaper for the companies to do it that way. the companies are looking at it from an economic standpoint rather than a consumer appriciation standpoint.

i cancelled my xbox live account a few months back and i had about an hour phone call with some indian folks. the guy told me his name was frank, though i can obviously tell he is no frank. my only problem with the outsourcing is, the people doing these service calls do everything from paper (and they should probably learn more about their customers... continue reading). they train them so they don't deviate from the path. my problem was i had an xbox live account that could no longer be paid (i was paying yearly and the card was frauded within the last year of payment and i cancelled the card and no longer have the card nor remember the number) so i told him the number didn't exist anymore and explained. he acknowledged that it happened and talked for 15 or so seconds about it. he then asked me for the last 4 digits of the card when i had just explained to him the card doesn't exist anymore and that i don't have the number. he then said ok, and asked me for the number again.

he worked like a computer program.
while (customer hasn't given me 4 digit number){
ask for 4 digit number;
}

that basically happened for about 20 minutes. he then finally realized that we were getting no where, so he transferred me to the next step in closing the account. i then proceeded to talk to an indian woman named "michelle" who wanted to confirm my cancellation. i told her that i do want to cancel the account because the card no longer exists. she was confused and then eventually through some talking we came to an agreement that i did in fact want my account cancelled.

then i was transferred back to frank and he had to process something and give me a confirmation number that my account was cancelled. while we were waiting on the number he tried to chat a little to break the silence. now i understand that America doesn't have the brightest students when talking about global issues, but frank asked me if the United States had ended the Civil War yet. now i'm not sure how up to date foreign school books are on american history, but i think that date would be in there somewhere. and since i live in a suburb called woodbridge, he insisted that modern day woodbridge (suburb of DC) was built from wood and had fortified castles and whatnot. i was ready to die laughing. now he could have been joking about the civil war thing and the castles, but it was quite shocking to hear him say that.

i don't know, i don't mind outsourcing, but they need to change up a few things. the people need to learn that it's ok to deviate from the formal instructions on paper occassionally... and possibly they should learn a little bit about their customers first.

 

Well, if you ask like 15 to 20 euro's more for the laptop I think they don't have to outsource anymore.

They can still hire students in europe/us and that is not that expensive. In holland you have to pay (as an employer) 10 euro's an hour approximately (8 pounds, 16 dollars).
As I was in India I have talked to someone who worked in a callcentre over there. They earn like 8000 rupees a month (which is considered a lot). 8000 rupees is 200 dollars/125 euros.

 

I don't think the center is in India but somewhere in europe, maybe you got lucky . I always had irish, french or german accent on the phone. On the other hand I have nothing against outsourcing, rich countries compete through research small countries compete through prices. If electronics would be done in US/EU we would never buy a laptop let alone change it every 2 years... we're payed too much or they are payed too few .

 

Milio,

The UK call center is in Ireland, the US call center is in Costa Rica. They are all Alienware Employees and are not outsourced.

 

i was close Steve

 

Ok, in that case I've really heard wrong. I have to say though he had some strange accent... (not Irish)
I've called to the free number which is noted on the UK site for the Netherlands

P.S.: The person I had on the phone helped me and nothing wrong against him, it was just that most Dutch people would not be able to understand him, that's all

Excuse me for the prejudices

 

Hehe, as i mentioned in another thread, its not India....trust me, if indeed it were outsourced here, a lot of Indians would have known about alienware and i wouldn't be sure of getting the odyssey backpack ...

Unless of course Milio, u got an Indian residing in Ireland working at AW...pretty much likely eh??

OT..my brother works at a call centre too

 

OT: Might be so actualy I was on a plane from Mumbai (Bombay) to Zurich and there was an Indian guy sitting next to me who was heading to Dublin to work for an IT company... Very nice guy.

 

alienware can hire me..im from mumbai, can visit ireland and will work for 2 sandwiches a day

 

Costa Rica huh, that explains their accent.