Should everyone in the usa speak clear english?

Question

I work out of a home office. I make a lot of long distance calls so I signed up for Vontage. Whenever I had problems or issues I would call customer service. I would always get men who could not speak fluent english or barely understand what I was saying. Because of this I am leaving vontage. Also I called charter communications today to upgrade my service, and I had to be asked to be transfered to another person because I could not understand the person. With T Mobile in the past I have had to hang out and call back just to get someone from usa who spoke and understood english......... Is this rude of me?

Answer 1

I agree 100% with hanging up if you get someone who cant speak english. BUT those people youre talking to are not in our country most of the time. Many companies have outsourced customer support/tech to India and other countries

And yes, if youre a citizen (or illegal alien) you should speak perfect english. If I were to even TRAVEL to another country I would have the decency and respect to at least have a basic understanding of their language.


edit: Some of you do not get it. If you are working for an AMERICAN company and are talking to AMERICAN customers, you better know some damned english. I dont care if they happen to be Mecca at that moment. Ill hang up on them everytime.

Answer 2

Yes you are rude. Mostly out of your own ignorance though and it's alright. Most companies are outsourcing, and the people you are speaking with are not US Natives, they don't even live in the US, the people you're speaking to just learned English or have been speaking it for not very long.

To answer your question, no, not everyone in the US should be speaking clear English. You live in a country made up of immigrants, or people with traditional accents from their homes. How can you tell someone from Kentucky or New Jersey that they don't sound like they're speaking English? You really can't, they are speaking clear English, at least in their part of the US.

Maybe you need to be a little more understanding of the fact that we no longer live in a world where the US is the "Center" of the world. We now live in a global community.

Also, if everyone had to speak clear English, and this was a law...how would you go about enforcing it? How do you define "clear English." With so many accents around the US itself...I think people would fight you on that. The better thing to do, is to attempt to be more understanding of the person with whom you are speaking.

Answer 3

It was not rude of you in the situations you have brought up, however I do not feel that everyone should be required to speak clear english.

I would put the responsibility for these situations on the company in the same manner that you did with Vontage. It is bad business practice to hire a person for a customer service role who is not able to speak the primary language of their customers clearly. The problem lies is that many companies (I do not know if this is the case with the companies you mentioned) have decided to outsource their technical support overseas. Dell computers did this and as a result many of the people fielding the phone calls have heavy middle eastern accents. I chose the same route you did and stopped purchasing Dell computers.

In general though, it would be wrong to expect everyone to speak clear english. If a person is new to this country (assuming they are here legally) they should be given an opportunity to adjust and learn the language.

Answer 4

It's actually likely that the people you're talking on the phone with may not be in America at all - a lot of those kind of jobs are outsourced to places like India. Though Indians generally speak very good English.

Personally I don't think all Americans should be required to speak clear English.. however, if their job requires them to speak good English than they should. But English isn't exactly important to a guy, say a Mexican, who works in agriculture with fifty other Mexicans, who's boss might even be Mexican, and who may not speak English at all in a regular day. A Chinatown restaurant owner, who's clientele is largely Chinese, really just needs to know how to take an order if they're dealing with non-Chinese speakers.

It's mostly the older people who have language problems - younger people can do ESL and be fluent in a couple years. Growing up in the American school system ensures young people are fluent. Older immigrants may not have the money to take English classes, and probably didn't have the opportunities in their old countries. They may not see a point, because they associate with other old people from the same country and are often a link for their first generation American grandchildren to their culture and language.

Young professional people who are talking on phones to American consumers? They should be educated and therefore should know and speak good English.

Answer 5

People in the customer service field speaking to Americans should definitely speak English clearly. Anyone who wants to live in this country should learn English. If it's not totally clear then we as kind Americans should help them along the way. But the effort should come from the immigrants...English classes, practicing with friends, watching American television, etc. My parents immigrated to the US and they learned English. That's how it should be.

Answer 6

Our education system would have to improve a whole hell of a lot for everyone in this country to speak clear English. And no, I'm not talking about immigrants or non-native English speakers, I'm talking about the college students in the classes I TA, the majority of whom were born and raised in the USA.

Answer 7

Are you sure their call center is actually in the USA? A lot of companies are outsourcing this service as it's cheaper to administer overseas. If this is the case, you might want to ask your provider to put up your bill so they can either stop exploiting third world countries or to invest in training them better or employ people in your own country.

Answer 8

The reason you cannot understand them is because most of the time they are not in the USA. Most telecommunication companies outsource their customer service to India or somewhere where labor is cheap.

Answer 9

i hate this. it is very rude just not on your part it is inconsiderate of customers. this is just about every service i can think of Microsoft, net gear, best buy. if i get some one i can not understand i tell them and switch it is a pain in the *** not like you do not have to wait 30 min to start with.

Answer 10

No but they should learn it. Call centers.....most are offshore. I refuse to do business with these. Never had problemm with T mobile or HP


Oh bitto...Most of us were born here so we are NOT in a country made up of immigrants ok?