Please hold

I choose to communicate with a real person and not a call centre agent who has been insufficiently trained in the fine art of problem solving.

About this time last year, for example, three agents at FNB's Home Loans division told me three different things. The matter finally came to a head in February when it over-debited my cheque account, leaving me with fifty bucks to my name, while I was in Cape Town.

As I was at a conference at the time, I didn't exactly have all day to sit on the phone and fix the problem, and it wasn't until I threatened to get the cops involved over the small fraud perpetrated on my account that the matter was resolved.

I now have the head of department's office number, e-mail address, cell number and home number. And we have an understanding that I do not have to use the call centre, ever again.

What (my sister) couldn't understand is how an India-based chap could understand what was happening on the ground with the technicians in the UK.

Nicola Mawson, senior journalist, ITWeb

I'm not alone in this. In the UK, British Telecoms (BT) makes use of an India-based call centre. Imagine trying to get a bad phone line installation fixed when you have no option but to call the call centre, and attempt to understand what they are saying, as a deaf person.

Nope, this is not some sort of worst-case scenario. It's what my Kent-based sister went through a few weeks ago.

In an e-mail filled with swear words, she said her family had no choice but to upgrade to broadband, as BT was phasing-out ISDN. The new line, finally installed after the technician also managed to drill straight through a few power lines, did not work.

So, sis spent three hours talking to the call centre, hearing aid turned all the way up, and finally got the line to work, until the next morning. The next night, it was hubby's turn to try and get some sense out of the call centre. "What made it worse was that we spoke to people who could not speak English very well, and it was really hard to understand them."

What sis couldn't understand is how an India-based chap could understand what was happening on the ground with the technicians in the UK.

Getting no luck, they have since cancelled the line and are looking at other options. This leaves sis, to all intents and purposes, cut off from the outside world.

The question is: will companies that outsource their contact centres even notice a slow dwindling in their customer base? Another one is why there seems to be a mismatch between the successes reported by a firm, and what I hear on the ground.

Maybe only I know people who have trouble with call centres. Or maybe we should sit up and pay attention to the low-level rumble of dissatisfaction. Just check out hellopeter.com for a sense of the unhappiness.

And, before we write-off all those comments as narcissistic, from people with vendettas, maybe we should contemplate what this means for government's great growth plan.

The Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of SA is set to boost the economy into 6% growth per year by 2010. This we know. We also know that it will do this through a series of key initiatives and through aiding new sectors, like business process outsourcing.

Let's assume huge multinationals move their call centres here. Let's say they poach current agents as staff. And let's say the set-up is no different, that none of these agents are empowered with the skills and information they need.

Where does that leave government's plan to halve unemployment and poverty within the next decade?