Your name is what?

Sorry for formatting/spelling, I’m posting on mobile. I work for a US call center as a tier 2 support/supervisor. The company I answer for is a large retailer in the US only. My company is an outsourcing company and both my team and the front line agents (FLA) are employees of this outsourcing company. Although the FLAs are overseas my team is US based.

My team (tier 2 support) takes calls in transfer from FLAs because customers want to either speak with an American, or a supervisor, or (lately) the agent just doesn’t know what to do. Just to be clear the FLAs are not supposed to be sending callers over to us if they don’t know the answer. They have their own local support they’re supposed to reach out to. But, that’s a different topic for another time.

When the customer calls in they assume that anyone who has an accent is not in the US and those who speak with “no accent” are American which automatically makes us “outsourced” vs “employee.” Customers have no idea they never talk to an actual employee for the company unless they are in the retail store itself.

Anyway, this post is about names. And the absurdity of the FLAs name choice. To explain, 90% of the FLAs are recommended to pick a name that sounds more “English.” Because their native name isn’t easy to pronounce or spell in English. So someone named “Ligaya” may choose a different name (not sure if anyone is named that, it’s just a random name I looked up).

I don’t usually have a problem with taking calls from the FLA’s. A lot of times they can’t control the stupidity of the customer. What I hate is when the FLAs say: “hi I have a customer who wants to talk to you regarding… ( random issue).” So I say: “OK can I have your name?” FLA: “Yeah I’m Jason.” Me: “okay thanks.” Seems normal enough, so I pull up the account and information and find out that “Jason” is actually spelled “Jaysoine.” Or a name pronounced Mary is spelled Mearriy. Even those who pick a longer name are spelling them weird. Like pronouncing Anastasia but spelling Enistashia.

I know the FLAs are picking a different name, because the trainer for all of FLAs came into town to train my team and told us that the FLAs get to pick their name when they start with the company. He said a lot of them don’t even know English until they start with the company and they’re trained in both their native language and English. It’s very annoying because they could spell their name the “English version” or even close to the “English version” but they’re knowingly choosing to spell it in a very convoluted way. Like what’s the point of changing your name if you are not going to make it an easy name to spell when you hear it.

This is especially annoying for customers who are transferred through who say yeah I just talked to “Jerry.” The FLA told you their name was Jerry. But when you look at the case the FLAs name isn’t spelled “Jerry” it’s spelled Gherriy.

After complaining multiple times of not understanding the agents name/spelling eventually leadership said to get their employee ID number so there’s no miscommunication. So now I don’t even bother writing the FLAs name in my notes until I pull the case up and can put the actual spelling on my notes.

Sorry for the long post, just a bit of a rant after talking to too many people that had weird name spellings/pronunciations. I didn’t even realize how long it was until I finished typing! Haha!