I was recently requested by a client to deliver a voice recording of a “Telephonic survey”.
In this recording you can hear the client being somewhat abusive and rude to a patient and polite agent.
The client was getting really difficult and objectionable, because the agent could not speak his language. She could understand him perfectly, even with his “heavy” accent. The survey questions where been asked in English, but since the county of the client has 11 official languages it does seem to complicate things.
The client’s comment was, she should be speaking to him in the language he is most comfortable in, in this case Afrikaans, but that lead me to question his capability. Had he been doing the survey, it would be unlikely he would have spoken to her in her home language, Sotho.
So are his expectations wrong, should she have got an alternative agent to call back, should she be skilled in all 11 languages, should she be removed from the campaign? Does our culture still allow us to demand more of someone else than we are able to offer ourselves? Does the caller have the right to be rude. He spoke to her in both English and Afrikaans, I have attended meetings where I spoke only English and they spoke only Afrikaans and no one complained, in fact the meeting was probably better for it.
So once again I question, is the client small minded, was it his culture vs hers, should she have been allowed near the campaign in the first place. Does the agent need to speak to the client in his language of choice, is there a rule somewhere. Should we not be polite enough with each other to thank your stars if you are able to speak more than one language in a country where a good education does not come easy.
I was very proud of her, she handled his whining well, and I think she deserves the position.