I have had to reach customer service for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes it works out, but more often than not it leaves me convinced that companies that outsource their customer service are doing a great deal of harm.  When dealing with a technical problem, it is extremely important that all parties understand each other in order to expedite the solution to the problem.  I have no major problem understanding some accented English, but I am more of an exception than many others who call them.  I have called for assistance on some occasions where it became obvious within seconds that the person I made contact with was clearly not able to understand my American English (born and raised in New Jersey), and I did not understand their heavily accented English.  That meant that the call would be a complete waste of my time and money!  When that happens I try to get them to get me someone else with whom I will stand a better chance, often to no avail.  That means I am either hung up upon, or have had to politely tell them I will try some other time and then hang up myself.  Each call like that convinces me that I will NOT recommend that companies products to anyone else, because most of my friends are less tolerant of poor customer service than I am.  Unfortunately, calls like that are increasingly common and because bean counters are listened to more than customers, there may not be a satisfactory resolution to the problem!

Even less well liked are the arrogant idiots that insist that they can correct a computer problem for you remotely (Microsoft's worst).  I had the main hard drive go down on a computer I had built.  It was no big deal to me, I would just reinstall Windows XP Pro on the new drive and figured that would solve the problem.  BIG mistake.  Over the years, Microsoft released updates to XP.  From time to time these updates get bundled up into a service pack.  The service pack 2 update that was first released worked ok with my mother board, but service pack 2 that was released 1 year later, did not.  Although both service packs contained the same bundled updates with the newer one containing a few more, the order of the security upgrades was not kept the same.  The order was of critical importance to the Realtek sound chips on my motherboard.  I spent over 14 hours on the phone with Microsoft, and even allowed them to tinker with the installation, all to no avail.  It was a good thing that I kept my important data hard drives off line, as the engineers in Bangalore kept disabling my main browser (Seamonkey), my preferred CD/DVD program (Nero) and never got the sound to return to my system once they installed service pack 2.  They told me they had found someone on the Microsoft forum that had greatly detailed my problem and believed it contained the solution.  When I pointed out to them that the author of the article was speaking to them on the phone, they tried to tell me I couldn't possibly had written it because it was under the name of Habenero, not Rich Henne.  I then told them to look at the email address on their contact information and they hung up on me.  There never was a solution to my problem, if I installed SP2 from an earlier date, Microsoft would upgrade to the newer version on the next upgrade date and wipe out the working sound once more.  I ended up buying a new mother board and processor.  Needless to say if Adobe ever makes a version of Photoshop that is Linux based, I would dump All Microsoft software in a heartbeat.

Customer service and support requires more than a thorough understanding of the product(s) a company has.  It requires skillful communication that is clearly understood by the party requesting help.  If a company outsources its customer service to save dollars, but does not screen the phone workers carefully, resentment of the company and its products will be the result.  As you can see by my Microsoft experience, I have no love for their products and it stems from the first dealing I had with their foreign based customer support team.  Their representative seemed to know most of the terms I used (not all), but the accent was difficult for me to understand and the number of times the computer needed to be rebooted would have been reduced by 75% had he taken time to listen to my problem instead of trying to follow a scripted response.  I don't know if he used the script because he really didn't understand me or if he was required to do so, but either way the service was poor at best and took more than an hour of my time. 

I've had good service from a US based Sprint customer service rep.  I understood her Southern accent and she understood my Yankee one.  As I described my problem to her, she responded with accurate information that took less than 4 minutes.  The phone required one upgrade period that corrected 3 different problems at the same time.

I urge everybody that doesn't understand the customer service rep they are stuck with to take time to voice their concerns in writing to the company'