call center

So you have a problem with your credit card.

Perhaps you'd like to check on a charge that looks slightly illicit.

You call your credit card company. Your call is answered by someone in a call center in India. This might be someone who knows a little about illicit transactions. It might also be someone who is in jail for murder.

As usual, I am deadly serious.

For the Guardian happily informs me that the guardians of Indian prisons are experimenting with a new program that puts some of their computer-savvy inmates into the workforce. Their task will be … Read more

The January release of a Verizon iPhone remains unconfirmed, but we may have still more grist for the ever-churning rumor mill. Call centers connected to the wireless carrier and Apple are hiring hundred of new positions over the next three months, according to job postings spotted by CNET.

The hiring companies, Salt Lake City-based Teleperformance and Kennesaw, Ga.-based Ryla, are hiring at facilities around the country, with Ryla advertising for 1,700 positions in Indiana, California, Virginia, and Colorado.

Though few of the job postings specify which company the new employees will be taking calls for, Teleperformance's Careerbuilder … Read more

Updated at 9 p.m. PDT with more details from a Symantec representative.

Symantec is investigating allegations that a call center in India leaked credit card numbers of its customers to someone who then sold them to BBC News reporters posing as criminals.

The security company has informed U.K. privacy authorities and attorneys general and officials in eight U.S. states and Puerto Rico of the allegations that three U.K. customers had credit card information leaked and that about 200 U.S. customers may have been affected because of interactions with the call center, Symantec spokesman Cris Paden … Read more

Last November, I wrote a post titled "Top 10 technology flops." One of the 10 was speech recognition. Judging by the feedback I got from all over the Web, you'd think I'd said Apple was a flop or Bush was a great president.

What I meant, at the time, was that I was disappointed that we're not rid of all the keyboards, buttons, and remote controls by now. So I did some research and discovered that speech technology is indeed proliferating in some industries: defense, medical, call centers, and rudimentary capability for cell phones, edutainment, and high-end automobiles.

That said, I don't really care that American Airlines can recognize my voice responses on the phone. The only speech application that actually benefits me on a day-to-day basis is on my cell phone, and that's pretty basic stuff.

For the most part, we're still banging away on computer keyboards and drowning in a sea of proprietary consumer electronics devices and remote controls.

And now I know why. When it comes to speech technology, one company is holding just about all the cards: Nuance Communications.

Courtesy of dozens of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) over the past 13 years, Nuance now owns much of the speech technology on planet Earth. The company boasts a $3.5 billion market cap on annual sales that will likely top $800 million this fiscal year but, remarkably, has never been profitable. I can see why. Nuance has been so busy acquiring companies it hasn't had a chance to worry about a little thing like profitability.… Read more

As I've said before, in coverage of Satisfaction and SupportSpace, if you want to get good support for the products you own, your best bet is usually to skip calling the official support line and find other real users of your product. Somewhere out there, you can be sure, there's a geek who knows the ins and outs of the ice maker on your Frigidaire. Or at the very least, how to troubleshoot your HP Windows Home Server box.

And now, finally, someone's trying to bring those geeks back to the companies that could really use them. … Read more

Although computerized telephone systems have gotten much better at recognizing what we say, they still have to ask way too many questions.

You know the drill: endless menus, enter every piece of personal information. Contrast that with the Internet, where entering an account number or frequent-flier number brings up a ton of personalized information. Well, phone systems are on the brink of adding the same capabilities.

American Airlines is going live with a service that lets customers opt in to a "remember me" feature. When they call the airline, the system recognizes who they are, brings up their … Read more