Here's a rhetorical question: "Many of us get frustrated when dealing with contact centers – but do you ever find yourself swearing at the agent, or simply hanging up?"

We'd like to see the honest hand of anyone except our dear saint of a mother - mutterings after hanging up pleasantly don't count - can truthfully  answer "no." Now we find that's maybe because our mother isn't Scottish. Or Welsh.

New research by Corizon reveals that among Brits, "Scots are the most likely to use ‘inappropriate language’ when talking to a contact center agent at 15 percent, while the Welsh are the most prone to hanging up in frustration” according to 49 percent of respondents. 

Corizon (News - Alert) described its business as "bringing together elements of other software applications in ‘enterprise mashups’" for contact centers.

Conducted during August 2009, the study of 90 contact center managers and 2,100 consumers found that Scots are the most likely to use inappropriate language followed by Londoners at 12 percent, and that 18 to 30 year-olds are the most likely age group to use inappropriate language. First Coffee said  that a "London-dwelling 23-year old Scot" is a term of particularly scathing opprobrium among call center agents.

 

Welsh people are most likely to hang up on an agent (51 percent), followed by Easterners at 49 percent, while Midlanders and Southerners are most likely to hang up before speaking to an agent at 61 percent each.

Men are more likely than women to use inappropriate language at 12 percent compared with 7 percent -- shock shock there -- but in a genuine surprise, women are more likely than men to hang up before speaking to an agent, although not by much -- 60 percent compared with 57 percent.

 

Early this year, HomeServe, a home emergency insurer in the U.K., announced it adopted Enterprise Mashup Platform from Corizon.

The survey, a joint project of Corizon and YouGov, found that there is, to use the technical term, "plenty" of frustration with contact center technology, at both ends of the telephone line -- nearly 75 percent of contact center managers said their agents use an average of five different software applications in a typical working day, with one claiming to use as many as eighteen.