which one a Technical Support or Help Desk

Sat Mar 3 17:13:47 UTC 2012

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Faisal Imtiaz 
> Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2012 7:58 AM
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
> 
> 
> > Especially if a human answers promptly without a horrible accent...
> >
> > Jeff
> Like a heavy Southern Drawl ?
> 
> :)
> 
> Hope you realize that this list a Global list, and not everyone is
> talking about "US Only".

Well, it is a North American list.  A "heavy Southern drawl" is perfectly fine in the Southeastern US, and might even be welcome by customers there.  It's no worse than a thick New England accent.  But there are plenty of places, particularly in the mountain West of the US, where such help is relatively inexpensive and the accent is neutral.  A call center in Montana/Utah/Wyoming/Idaho or even the Dakotas/Nebraska/Kansas for a national player isn't a bad idea. Help is relatively inexpensive, the people can be understood nationally, and in Central or Mountain timezone give you decent national coverage without a bunch of overtime.  The help center doesn't have to be physically located with your actual network operations infrastructure.  In fact, there are good reasons why you don't want that.  If your operations have experienced a catastrophic failure (power outage, lightning strike, cable cut), your customers could still reach a real live person.  But having customer reps that speak in the same "accent" as the customers they are serving can be a nice touch, too.  If most of your customers are in the Southeastern or Northeastern US, maybe you WANT reps that sound like your customers.