[150767] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (George Bonser)
Sat Mar 3 12:14:40 2012
From: George Bonser <gbonser@seven.com>
To: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2012 17:13:47 +0000
In-Reply-To: <4F523F74.9070305@snappydsl.net>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Faisal Imtiaz=20
> Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2012 7:58 AM
> To: nanog@nanog.org
> Subject: Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
>=20
>=20
> > Especially if a human answers promptly without a horrible accent...
> >
> > Jeff
> Like a heavy Southern Drawl ?
>=20
> :)
>=20
> Hope you realize that this list a Global list, and not everyone is
> talking about "US Only".
Well, it is a North American list. A "heavy Southern drawl" is perfectly f=
ine in the Southeastern US, and might even be welcome by customers there. =
It's no worse than a thick New England accent. But there are plenty of pla=
ces, particularly in the mountain West of the US, where such help is relati=
vely inexpensive and the accent is neutral. A call center in Montana/Utah/=
Wyoming/Idaho or even the Dakotas/Nebraska/Kansas for a national player isn=
't a bad idea. Help is relatively inexpensive, the people can be understood=
nationally, and in Central or Mountain timezone give you decent national c=
overage without a bunch of overtime. The help center doesn't have to be ph=
ysically located with your actual network operations infrastructure. In fa=
ct, there are good reasons why you don't want that. If your operations hav=
e experienced a catastrophic failure (power outage, lightning strike, cable=
cut), your customers could still reach a real live person. But having cus=
tomer reps that speak in the same "accent" as the customers they are servin=
g can be a nice touch, too. If most of your customers are in the Southeast=
ern or Northeastern US, maybe you WANT reps that sound like your customers.
