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Admiral insurance worker 'told customer she wasn't allowed to speak to him in Welsh' (nation.cymru)

submitted 1 year ago by Navarian@lemm.ee to c/wales@lemm.ee

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The Admiral insurance group has been criticised by a customer who was told by one of its call centre employees that she wasn’t allowed to talk to him in Welsh.

Steffan ap Breian, a Welsh language teacher from Pontypool, said: “I called Admiral to buy car insurance. I spoke to a young woman on the phone who revealed that she was fluent in Welsh while she was preparing a quote for me.

“As I responded in Welsh she claimed that the company has a definite policy which prevents its staff from speaking Welsh to customers. I checked again that she was fluent in Welsh by speaking to her in Welsh and she responded quickly and correctly to my enquiries in English. On each occasion I asked three questions but she again claimed that her employer’s rules prevented her from speaking Welsh to a customer.

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[–] Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know what the issue is. What I'm saying is that it sounds more like a case of miscommunication instead of deliberate erasure in this case, but nation.cymru has jumped straight to the worst outcome. Possibly because it gets them more clicks.

[–] Audrey0nne@leminal.space 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Who else would you expect to report a Welsh problem other than the Welsh? It’s not like Al Jazeera has the erasure of the Welsh language on their radar right now.

You may have knowledge of the issue but no real understanding. It’s clear you’ve never had the displeasure of watching your cultural identity and heritage erode away over simple misunderstandings. You have to catch the small actions before they balloon into more sinister consequences. Today it’s you can’t conduct your business in your home country in your native language tomorrow it’s let the language fall into obscurity until the war machine has need of code talkers.

[–] Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What? So I'm not Welsh enough now because I think that this was more likely to be a bit of miscommunication rather than a conspiracy? What a load of bullshit.

I've worked in a call centre, and cases like this, where an agent has got the facts wrong*, happen quite regularly. I've been on the receiving end of plenty of rants from angry customers who have been told something that's completely incorrect by someone who didn't want to admit that they didn't know the right answer.

I didn't say anything about who should report on this either, I said that nation.cymru seem to have jumped straight to the worst case scenario, and it's my opinion that they've done that because it gets them more clicks.

But, of course, the only thing that could possibly be true is that we're being oppressed and victimised, and there's no such thing as human error...

*Not that that's definitely what's happened here.

[–] Audrey0nne@leminal.space 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a professional in the industry how complicated would it have been for you to acquiesce to a client’s simple request; to be serviced in his native country in his native tongue? It’s rhetorical, either you would have the ability to do so because the company you worked for cared about providing the best service they could or it would be difficult because it would be easier to bend clients to their own standards.

There aren’t many conclusions that can be drawn from this situation and your insistence that this is more innocent than it appears calls into question not your nationality, culture nor ethnicity but the depths of your gullibility.

[–] Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As a professional in the industry how complicated would it have been for you to acquiesce to a client’s simple request; to be serviced in his native country in his native tongue?

It wouldn't be complicated, that's my point. What reason would the company have to stop the customer service agent from speaking in Welsh? As I've said every time, it's far more likely that it was a misunderstanding.

There aren’t many conclusions that can be drawn from this situation and your insistence that this is more innocent than it appears calls into question not your nationality, culture nor ethnicity but the depths of your gullibility.

I'm not insisting that it's innocent, I've repeatedly said that it seems more likely.

The conclusions are, either the company is preventing its staff from speaking in Welsh, or one or both of the people on the call misunderstood something.

As the customer said that the agent sounded like she was reading from a script, it's possible that she had to read something word for word for legal reasons, like a contract, for example. We had to do that as a regular part of the job in the call centre. If she was part of the English speaking team, whether she could speak Welsh or not was irrelevant - her script would have been in English, and she would have had to read it word for word.

So, again, as I said multiple times, I think this is more likely to have happened than a company randomly banning their staff from speaking Welsh.

EDIT: I've just realised that it's almost 3AM, so I'm going to bed. Have a good night :)

[–] Audrey0nne@leminal.space 1 points 1 year ago

I’d agree with you if it was an isolated incident.