Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Two Stories of Customer Service
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
- "Hi, this is Sumana with Salon Premium. What can I do for you?"
I looked up his information. As I waited for it to appear, he asked, "Are you in India now?"
I slowly replied (in my born-and-bred US accent) that no, I am in San Francisco, to which he said, "Same difference."
Note that, were I actually in an Indian call center, I would fake a white name. Also, maybe this is why Salon hired me - by using an Indian for customer service, the management fools investors into thinking Salon has cheaply outsourced the work to overseas!
- I assured a subscriber that I had emailed him a week prior. After digging through his email, he found the message, and explained that he had deleted it because my name looks like a spam name.
