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I used to work for a GE sub and they outsourced all their IT Help Desk functions to India. The people there were assigned "business names"- generic American-sounding names that would be easy for customers in the US and Europe to remember and pronounce. I thought it was very demeaning to them. I also worked with a team of analysts there and while some had names that sounded funny to my Western ears, some were positively melodious.
I used to work for a GE sub and they outsourced all their IT Help Desk functions to India. The people there were assigned "business names"- generic American-sounding names that would be easy for customers in the US and Europe to remember and pronounce. I thought it was very demeaning to them. I also worked with a team of analysts there and while some had names that sounded funny to my Western ears, some were positively melodious.
Similar issue at my company. A lot of people in our US support team have slight foreign accents and names but we insisted that we are still a US based company with our support team sitting right in the same area as the engineers. Keep in mind, some of them speak/write better English than we do...
A small handful of callers still didn't believe us. I even did a webex session with one customer with the support guy next to me to prove we were in both in the US.
As such, some of the support members started to adopt "American" names.... even amongst ourselves we started to call each other by their chosen "American" names just out of fun.
I used to work for a GE sub and they outsourced all their IT Help Desk functions to India. The people there were assigned "business names"- generic American-sounding names that would be easy for customers in the US and Europe to remember and pronounce. I thought it was very demeaning to them. .
It's demeaning to Americans to call into a number, not realizing they are phoning India and be forced to listen to difficult accents and speech patterns and try to interpret what the person is saying. If they want American business, American's money, then they need to be the ones to adapt. Otherwise, I have the option of just hanging up and taking my business elsewhere. Which I have done on many occasions.
It's demeaning to Americans to call into a number, not realizing they are phoning India and be forced to listen to difficult accents and speech patterns and try to interpret what the person is saying. If they want American business, Americans' money, then they need to be the ones to adapt. Otherwise, I have the option of just hanging up and taking my business elsewhere. Which I have done on many occasions.
My late husband, who had hearing problems, really had trouble with Indian accents, especially with females because his most severe hearing loss was in the high frequencies. If he couldn't understand them and they couldn't put someone else on the line he'd also hang up.
BUT- I've worked with MANY people in India, and some are better at English grammar and spelling than many Americans I know. Some speak English with a British lilt. If a company is outsourcing its customer "service" to a firm that hires people whose accents are incomprehensible to the average American, it just means they didn't care and went with the lowest-cost provider.
I know of white, black and Latina Jessica's. So how does Jessica immediately make OP think she's white?
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