According to the University of Birmingham, call centres are providing poor service to customers with strong accents. This won’t come as a surprise if you’ve tried to book a cinema ticket over the phone in anything other than the Queen’s English. A regional accent can mean the difference between seeing Ratatouille and La Dolce Vita – and the difference between a successful date and a failed one.
University researchers argue that the technology is at fault, programmed as it invariably is to recognise Americanised or Southern British accents. How would your accent fare?
Among the accents not recognised by the technology are:
• Belfast
• Birmingham
• Liverpool
• Lancashire
• Newcastle
• Scottish
• Yorkshire
That means that a considerable chunk of the UK’s population is on the receiving of poor quality customer service. (The rest of us are probably getting through to overseas advisors whose accents we don’t understand …).
Which begs the question – when will business wake up and provide services that suit customers’, rather than their own, needs?
