Ring... "Can I speak with an American agent?"
One of the most typical lines a call center agent would hear from a customer needing some help. What a perfect line to start your call, worst, to start your day. Simple lines but can provoke an agent to become less accommodating and would want to just end the call right away being unable to thoroughly help customers with their services much as he/she wants to.
Why do most Americans want to speak with an American agent? Communication issues? Them being racists? Who? The caller who just wants to make sure they'll be fully assisted? Or the call center agent who just wants to provide full support and resolution to customers' issues? Not because he/she is paid to do it but has the passion in doing it, yet gets easily demotivated of how he/she's treated by the callers.
Most people who work in a call center industry hate other nationalities much as those people hate having businesses be pulled out of their own countries and transferred to where they call 'third world' countries.
"The nerve of this customer to ask for an American agent when he himself doesn't sound like one!"An angry Asian call center agent yelling at the phone bangin' the mouse on the desk with the customer holding on the other line hoping to be transferred as soon as possible. Some agents would put the customers on hold long enough for customers to run out of patience and release the call, while some would just relax a bit, get back on the call and try to again assist the customer, fortunate enough, able to gain their trust and end the call with another one irate-to-happy customer.
I must admit, there definitely are a lot of international call center agents outside US incapable of expressing their thoughts and are having hard times communicating with American customers, because of language barrier, having a hard accent, and getting criticized for being an Asian, a Filipino, or an Indian.
"Ah, um, I'm sowry you're breaking the line...the line is chappy" I almost fell down from my chair laughing my ass out so hard after hearing this from a level 1 rep while I was taking an escalation call (of course I had her on mute then). I am Asian and my English is not as good as that of an American but not as worst as this poor little girl cramming for words to say. Grammar issues was acceptable but the tone of voice and the accent really suck!
During cancer break outside of the building you would hear a lot of people still speaking in English making them look and sound stupid. Talking about how their calls had been, venting out, cursing their customers. That's a lot of stress to dissolve!