Based on calls to an outsourced call centre in Moldova, where the agents have received training in Swedish, this article deals with some cases when agents are attributed categorical belonging associated with the issue of outsourcing. The aim of the study is to examine how these challenges are handled within interaction. The analysis is implemented by a combination of conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, primarily through the notion of omnirelevance, used to demonstrate the participants’ orientation to social contexts. A main result is the subtle forms of resistance that agents exhibit when they respond to various category-based compliments, oriented to the location and language skills of the agent. One form of resistance is giving minimal responses and another is to return to the transactional procedure. The calls are part of a corpus of 800 calls. A comparative analysis also includes a call to a centre in Sweden.

En följd av globaliseringen är att allt fler människor kommunicerar på ett annat språk än de normalt använder i sin vardag. Med exempel från telefonsamtal mottagna vid ett utlokaliserat callcenter i Moldavien vill vi belysa en särskild utmaning för operatörerna, som har ett främmande språk – svenska – som sitt arbetsspråk. Med samtalsanalys av fråga-svarssekvenser analyseras i denna studie hur operatörerna ger återkoppling på den information de begär från uppringarna i så kallade tredjedrag. Uppringarna är personer i Sverige som beviljats färdtjänst på grund av funktionsnedsättning. Att återkoppling är minimal eller utelämnas helt är ett vanligt mönster i färdtjänstsamtal, men att en kvittering uteblir leder i vissa fall till att den tillfrågade blir osäker och tror att svaret behöver upprepas eller förtydligas. En förklaring till att tredjedrag utelämnas är strävan efter effektivitet. I denna artikel diskuteras otillräcklig interaktionell kompetens hos operatörerna, och skillnader i lokala samtalskulturer, som några andra tänkbara förklaringar.

A consequence of globalization is that more and more people communicate in a language other than the one they normally use in their everyday lives. By focusing on examples of phone calls received at an outsourced call centre in Moldova, we want to highlight a particular challenge for the telephone operators, who have a foreign language – Swedish – as their working language. The question-answer sequences analysed in this study show how the operators provide feedback on the information requested by callers in a so-called third turn. The callers are people in Sweden who have been granted transportation service on account of disability. Feedback being minimal or completely omitted is a common pattern in transportation service calls, but in some cases the lack of feedback leads to that the respondent feels insecure, thinking the answer needs to be repeated or clarified. One explanation for the omitted third turn is the drive for efficiency.  Some other possible explanations discussed in this article are insufficient communication skills among operators and differences in local conversation cultures.