[bravoecho1]

I called up yesterday as I needed to link my booking (done on the web) with my wife's booking (done through the call centre).

In the past I have had no problems with the DJ call centre and they have always been very helpful. However when I asked that our PNR's be linked she didn't have a clue what I was talking about and that she couldn't divulge my wife's travel details.

I advised that I already knew her travel details and that I wanted our bookings to be linked so when they allocate seats we would be together. After being on hold for a couple of minutes all was taken care of. Whilst she was doing this I was chatting about her accent (American) and how long she had been in Brisbane for. When she said that she was based in the Phillipines I was quite shocked. Apparently calls go through the BNE call centre and when they are busy, get routed to a call centre in the Phillipines. Its a shame to see another Australian company outsourcing some of their services to the infamous offshore call centre industry.

[one9]

Originally Posted by bravoecho1

I called up yesterday as I needed to link my booking (done on the web) with my wife's booking (done through the call centre).

In the past I have had no problems with the DJ call centre and they have always been very helpful. However when I asked that our PNR's be linked she didn't have a clue what I was talking about and that she couldn't divulge my wife's travel details.

I advised that I already knew her travel details and that I wanted our bookings to be linked so when they allocate seats we would be together. After being on hold for a couple of minutes all was taken care of. Whilst she was doing this I was chatting about her accent (American) and how long she had been in Brisbane for. When she said that she was based in the Phillipines I was quite shocked. Apparently calls go through the BNE call centre and when they are busy, get routed to a call centre in the Phillipines. Its a shame to see another Australian company outsourcing some of their services to the infamous offshore call centre industry.

I do not see it as a shame at all.

The problem I see is that many overseas call centres do not provide a service that is good as an Australian call centres. If the overseas call centre provides a quality service, then there is no problem (in fact it is good) to outsource call centres.

As I remember from economics, the best thing for a country to do is to specialise and trade in the products/services that the country has relative efficiency in. Australia has a relative efficiency in producing capital intentisive products/services, where Phillipines has relative efficiency in producing labour intensive goods.

[Yada Yada]

I've been routed through to the Philippines call centre a few times. The staff seemed friendly and knowledgable. My only beef is that the line quality seems to suffer when calls are patched through to an off-shore location. Same occurs when I've called Dell so I guess it is just a technology thing.

[SeatBackForward]

Originally Posted by Yada Yada

I've been routed through to the Philippines call centre a few times. The staff seemed friendly and knowledgable. My only beef is that the line quality seems to suffer when calls are patched through to an off-shore location. Same occurs when I've called Dell so I guess it is just a technology thing.

Probably VOIP phone calls, think how intermittent any internet page is when it loads up - thats what the phone call is doing.

[NM]

Originally Posted by SeatBackForward

Probably VOIP phone calls, think how intermittent any Internet page is when it loads up - thats what the phone call is doing.

A properly designed and implemented VoIP network should be reliable and consistent. It would be poor design practice to use a generic Internet service for VoIP connection for a call centre and I very much doubt they would be using the Internet for such trunks to an off-shore call centre.

Note there are some very stringent restrictions for using VoIP out of India (also relates to any private trunk including ATM or chanellised circuit). I don't know what (if any) restrictions apply to the Philippines and they may well be using VoIP trunks.

VoIP call quality problems are very obvious to the caller and are not characterised by the usual analogue trunk line quality problems of noise and crackles. I have never experiences VoIP-related voice quality problems from any commercial call centres.