Calling customer service in sunny Jamaica

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    I might have mentioned this before, but we’ve been plagued with power outages at the St. Albans homestead since we moved here in 2002. Rarely do we have any problems with telephone or Internet service, however.
    That came to a screeching halt about 10 days ago when I had no dial tone in the late morning and no DSL service four hours later.

    The phone would ring, but I couldn’t communicate with the person on the other end.
    With one-bar cellphone service, I did manage to get through to the phone company’s customer service center. When I did, it was a series of about 15 prompts that almost made me toss the smartphone across the room. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and I stayed on the line long enough to get a “trouble ticket number.”
    Since I didn’t talk to a live person during the encounter, I had no idea if the call was successful. To add to the frustration, customer service kept calling the dead number instead of the cell number I had given them at least twice.
    Eventually, a tech called my cell number to assure me that the problem wasn’t an isolated incident, but a neighborhood outage and he was at the substation a mile-and-a-half down the road.
    I got both phone and Internet service back eventually, but the repairman had to jump through several hoops to get me back online.
    After thanking him, I expressed my frustration about the customer service. He replied, “You’re not the only one. They outsourced it to Jamaica last year.”
    On the surface, it sounded funny since my plea for help from the frozen state of Maine was landing on someone’s desktop in a sunny and warm island country.
    Outsourcing, of course, is nothing new. I’ve battled with Bob from India about my HP desktop a few times and locked horns with Lucy from the Philippines about an Amazon.com credit. For a while, Maine Today Media outsourced their circulation customer service to Honduras. Due to a combination of even more customer complaints along with a public relations disaster, they eventually brought the jobs back to Maine. There’s no doubt that companies are in business to make a profit. But to me, outsourcing the most important function — customer service — makes little sense.
    Here’s a familiar scenario. A product you purchased has developed a problem, so you call the company’s toll-free number and are eventually connected to a customer service rep. They are polite, but have a thick accent that you have a hard time understanding. You stay on the phone, repeating information over and over again until you think you’ve got the message across clearly.
    What are the odds that you’re going to buy something from this company again? I’ll wager slim to none. Unfortunately, when you’re at the mercy of the only telephone company serving your hometown, there are no such options.
    I’m sure the customer service reps in overseas locations are just as intelligent as American workers.  But here’s a simple fact: communicating with the public requires being able to communicate well.
    If I cannot understand you, then your mission has failed. The same situation would prevail if I was hired by a company from Brazil and only spoke marginal Portuguese.
    I’ve read somewhere that companies are starting to bring offshore customer service offices back to the USA. I applaud them for seeing the light.
    Jamaica may be a great place to enjoy sunshine, sport fishing and some of the best rum in the world. But I’m not convinced it’s the best place to resolve phone problems in Maine.
Mike Lange is a staff writer with the Piscataquis Observer. His opinions are his own and don’t necessarily reflect those of this newspaper.