Chinese People Powered
Typically, as a Technical Support who speaks Cantonese and Mandarin, I am often given the 2nd language callback to customers who are more comfortable speaking Cantonese or Mandarin. One Friday not long ago, I noticed that about 99% of the 2nd language callbacks were concerning a loss of reception for Fairchild. Fairchild is famous and the only Chinese TV station in Canada. Then the calls started coming with more regularity. Finally, we received notice that there was a Fibre connection down from FairChild to Shaw headend. On that shift, only 2 technical support representatives in the Nanaimo Region National Call Centre were able to speak Chinese. And did we keep busy!  My Outlook inbox was filling like crazy with 2nd language callback email, and my nearby coworkers were all saying “Sorry about that, Mr. Wang;” “We apologize, Mrs Chen”. In those few hours our call centre seemed to only serve Chinese people. Before that day, I had wondered about the main idea of the Shaw’s new commercial message, People Powered. On that particular day, I came to understand the meaning of the message, Chinese People Powered!

The Bottom and the Top
In the beginning, as a new immigrant working in a Canadian company serving Canadian people, everyday felt like riding a roller coaster - sometimes feeling at the bottom, sometimes feeling at the top. The saddest part for me was having a customer refuse to continue to talk with me due to my accent when I spoke “Thank you for choosing Shaw, my name is Michael……” Some customers insist that those people who can speak very pure native accent Canadian English serve them - even though I know it is such a simple issue that I can resolve in 3 minutes if only the customer can cooperate with me. How sad I am, when a customer won’t give you the chance to let you go through! The first month at Shaw, I had often been refused for my service by customers because of my English. You should know how down my feeling was.
But sometimes I can be brought to the top by being praised by a customer after I resolve difficult problems of TV or Internet, which the customer wants back very badly. One day, a customer phoned me about the Shaw email scrolled up in outlook express. He had called us 2 times that day, and was told the same answer that the reason was a firewall issue. He wanted to try to call us again before he uninstalled the firewall software because he had to get an important email. If he removed the firewall and anti-virus, there could be a lot of trouble coming. From the clues that the customer said, I believed it was not a firewall issue. I was allowed to use a special tool, a remote desktop assistant, to access the customer’s computer to diagnose, and I found customer’s laptop was using wireless. But the signal was not from his home wireless connected to Shaw network; it came from his neighbour who was using another internet provider. The whole thing became obvious. That was why he could not get the Shaw mail because he was using another internet provider service, not his Shaw service. When I helped the customer switch the wireless network, the email came through. The customer was so excited that he thanked me a lot and even wanted to talk to my supervisor to praise me. I said thank you and that it was a part of my job. I was on the top of the world at that moment.