North American Network Operators Group

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RE: Singtel contact (AS 7473)

  • From: David Luyer
  • Date: Fri Apr 11 05:56:24 2003

BB wrote:
  (I wrote:)
> > I'll email you directly the name of someone there with relatively
> > good spoken english (if you get others who can't understand you).
> 
> I would hope you do get someone who speaks English, given that it's
> the official language there. :)
> 
> Of course, the accent of some Singaporeans (naming no-one!) can be
> quite...erm...challenging.

Over the phone, it can be almost impossible.  Hence the contact who
I sent on directly in case he wants to use the phone :)

The WorldCom and SingTel callcentres for their Australian operations
are Singapore-based.  It can be quite... interesting... communicating
the severity of a problem in Australia to someone sitting in a remote
country and not realising, for example, that if the link between
WorldCom and Optus (SingTel) in Australia is dropping 20% of packets
for 12 hours, that's a pretty damn significant problem.  And it can
be hard enough communicating our company name to some of them ;-(

(and customer codes - many/most Singaporeans don't know the phonetic
alphabet and pronounce letter names differently.)

When actually in Singapore or when the Singaporeans are out here, sure,
no problem speaking english to them.  They're great guys.  On the
phone it's more of a problem.

David.