[ribfeast]

I have no problem with call center worker with accents, I have a problem with call centers that are basically a human reading me an FAQ with no power to solve my problem. They have basically become heatsinks for frustration, not a way to get help.

[throwaway9870]

The accents bother me when I cannot understand what they are saying despite asking them to repeat themselves multiple times. Nobodies fault, just difficult communication. Anything that can help this is welcome.

[soheil]

It's not just the accent, I wish people would make this differentiation more often. When someone has a completely different way of communicating due to cultural or upbringing reasons and happen to have an accent the thing to focus on here is not the accent. Arnold Schwarzenegger has one of the thickest accents you can find yet he's also one of the most easily comprehensible human beings ever lived.

[woodson]

Funny you should mention Arnold Schwarzenegger. Despite him being a native speaker of (Austrian) German, his voice is dubbed in German by a voice actor because of his non-neutral accent.

[soheil]

Don’t you typically do that with Austrian accents anyway since they can sound very different?

[thebeardisred]

To that point, there are a plethora of YouTube videos I would love to use this on.

[unsupp0rted]

Heatsinks dissipate heat.

Call centers are more like heat pumps for frustration.

[bubblethink]

>I have a problem with call centers that are basically a human reading me an FAQ

There is so much terrible design in both automated and human customer support. For instance, you ask a question in chat and there is no response for a few minutes. After a few minutes, you'll see the 'typing ..' indicator, but it'll be some generic bullshit platitude about how they value you or something. This is frustrating to no end. Even in voice systems, there is so much drivel. "It'll be just a moment while a look this up ", and then some keys clacking in the background. Who falls for this ?

[hulitu]

But now they will read the FAQ with a perfect white "american" accent. Now many years ago someone said that in US 2 people from 2 different neighborhouds (of the same city) can not underestand each other so i wonder how this accent will sound like.