John Linton
.....as it applies to providing "support" of telecommunication services?
It was, perhaps, apposite that I read this article from a well known journalist (I would have added "respected" to the appellation but I'm not sure that any Australian journalist writing today is respected by anyone with any judgment credibility though the man himself seems to think he is a responsible scribbler and is employed by a Fairfax publication which he seems to think is no barrier to journalistic credibility):
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/your-call-is-important-to-us-20091122-isqh.html?comments=154#comments
as I started a three day review of Exetel's Sri Lankan residential support and back office processing facilities. I thought that apart from self describing himself as a total 'goose' and a charmless person, Paul Sheehan completely assassinated himself as a reasonable human being and someone who should be regarded as anything but a totally stupid moron whose sub-editor mistook his racist rant for something newsworthy.
As one of the responders to his article replied to him:
"it amazes me why people use telstra or optus when there are cheaper services out there.
Cheaper landline phones
Cheaper internet
Cheaper business solutions
Cheaper mobiles
and i'm not talking optus either they're just as bad.
Most important for me is the top dollar service i get at a
competitor. rather than hold they call me back, and they do with out
fault. thats right they call me back where can you go wrong with that?
Why use them competitors beat telstra on all their services, except for the monopoly of foxtel.
grass is greener"Of course there are many dozens of replies along the same lines.However the overt racism expressed by a journalist in an allegedly "major" Australian newspaper is an interesting insight in to all sorts of things that were totally wrong about this article starting with a major newspaper giving space to a personal rant which, when you boil it down to its essentials was about a petulant precious darling stamping his foot because he didn't pay his bill - the only difference between Paul Sheehan and the average wanker who rants on online fora as he did is that somehow his newspaper owner allowed his personal racism to be printed in a large circulation newspaper. Very odd.
I have no problem in any person 'condemning' their supplier of any service for incompetence in their particular case; though making negative comments about Telstra is not exactly "news" for so many users of their services as the attached comments to the article appear to demonstrate. Having a negative Telstra support story is about as unusual as having a negative comment on the weather - and as equally un-newsworthy.
But why did this journalist insist on making his anti-Telstra points in a way that slammed non-Australian personnel, all of whom are employees of Telstra and interleaved his Telstra slamming article with pieces of "But then an Aussie fixed my problem within a few seconds?
I have spent the last working day in Exetel's Sri Lankan office and in between the review processes I have sat at a desk in the office catching up on my 'Australian' emails and phone calls which has allowed me to 'listen in to' the various conversations of the people around me. Unlike Paul Sheehan's alleged experiences all I heard were Sri Lankan nationals speaking better English than the overwhelming majority of the people to whom they were speaking. This was not surprising to me because Exetel's hiring policy in Sri Lanka stresses that we only employ fluent English speakers and the overwhelming majority of Exetel's Sri Lankan personnel were educated in Australian or UK universities and have worked in the UK in support positions - it is not an exaggeration to say that many of them speak more precisely and more clearly than I do. (not having met Paul Sheehan I can't comment on how clearly and understandably he speaks).
I can also say, based on answering support calls for Exetel in its early days, that many of the people I spoke to were far more difficult to understand than the least English language capable of Exetel Sri Lanka's current employees. Undoubtedly many of Exetel's employees in Colombo have a long way to go in terms of having 100% knowledge of our huge range of services and all aspects of how they operate but I would think that the least knowledgeable of them would be more competent in any aspect of any service's operation than Paul Sheehan is in writing a sensible newspaper article.