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India calling

Get initiated into the land and lingo of the country's night watchmen. Here's a look at the industry, sunny side up

PHOTO: SHAJU JOHN

LOOK WHO'S TALKING It's always a pleasant 20-something voice answering you when you reach a call centre

Hunter Divakaran

Customer Service Associate

XYZ International Ltd.

This is the email signature of a BPO employee.. Interested in getting a similar one for yourself? Then, hop on to the BPO bandwagon!

Interestingly, most call centres give their employees only "first-name pseudonyms". International customers find Indian names to be real tongue-twisters. That's why you have Hariharan being called Hunter or Srimati being called Shelly over a call. The idea of a first-name pseudonym is not to fool customers abroad, but to make it easier for them to communicate over a phone call.

Gone are the days when call-centres required candidates to sound like Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts. The stress now is on a neutral accent that can be understood globally.

Voice and accent

Very often, BPO firms serve American as well as British clients. So, having a neutral accent allows an employee the flexibility of switching from an American client to a British one and vice-versa.

Before call-centre executives at BPOs learn the respective processes for which they have been recruited, they undergo rigorous Voice and Accent (V&A) training. Impromptu speeches, mock-calls etc. are part of the training process. Team building games and activities make V&A training a lot of fun.

However, below-par performance can result in a candidate being sent to training. And if he/she still doesn't deliver the goods, companies don't shy away from showing them the door.

Max, a call-centre professional, recalls what happened when one of his colleagues wanted to place a lady customer on hold. "The guy ended up saying `May I hold you, ma'am?' Obviously what he intended to say was `May I place you on hold, ma'am?'" Simple things like these are looked into before a trainee moves into process training. In Chetan Bhagat's latest novel, One Night @ the Call Centre, one of the characters teases his trainer friend saying: "Go train-train, lose your brain!" Well, Bhagat managed to understand the psyche of a few trainers at least!

Arnav Chatterjee, Technical Support Executive with a leading BPO, says: "If you talk about call centres, the first thing that strikes one's mind is the night shift. And I personally hate it. As a matter of fact, I guess nobody likes it apart from a few geeks."

A lot of people might object to the "geek" tag. But, yes, night shifts or rotating shifts can cause a lot of problems, which only some are able to adjust to. Changes in sleep pattern, eating at odd hours and constant staring at a computer screen harm the body beyond imagination. This syndrome has even been given a name of late: Shift Work Sleep Disorder. Avoiding caffeine is a good option for shift workers.

Relationships at call-centres are largely governed by an executive's "process-mates" or "cab-mates". They spend most of their waking hours — nine hours at the work place and two hours travelling — with these people. It is natural for them to get close over a period of time. For the vast number of outstation employees, colleagues from the workplace double as extended family.

Also, individuals from completely different educational and working backgrounds mingle freely at the food-court, smoking area or at the coffee-vending machines. Diversity at the workplace can be an eye-opener for graduates who can benefit immensely from the experience before heading for an MBA.

BPOs also ensure that it's not work all the way but that employees have a good time at off-sites and parties. Bonuses based on performance, giveaways and promotions keep the employees on their toes. Elaine George, Assistant Manager (Training) at a leading BPO, says: "I love working at a call centre. A lot of people think its easy money. I ask: `Why? Don't you like easy, honest money? What's wrong with you?' Not that it's easy money, mind you. Everyone works hard for what they earn. It's like any other industry with deadlines to be met, although a lot more fun is involved."

Not just calls

Elaine is a standing example of how one can grow in a call-centre job. She has been in the industry for six years and has risen to where she is now.

Contrary to general opinion, all BPOs are not call-centres. To assume that your neighbour who works at a BPO handles calls can be a big mistake. There's a large amount of "non-voice jobs" available today at BPOs. For example, financial firms outsource their paperwork to Indian BPOs, leading to a large demand for commerce graduates in the market today. And the attrition rates in non-voice jobs are less compared to that at call-centres.

Considering that the Indian educational system doesn't quite stress on soft skills, a call-centre is one of the best places to acquire these skills and grow confident. Instead of finding fault and pointing fingers at call-centre employees, why can't we use their strong customer-oriented expertise and implement it on help-desks of Indian public services, ask many employees.

Honestly, haven't you wished there was someone to answer your queries over the phone instead of making that take that bus that never comes on time and make a long trip to an office? And just in case the office phone isn't off the hook, what are the odds of having a pleasant voice answering your queries?

V.ABHISHEK

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