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Myth or Reality?
 Sandhya
turns into Sandy, Sumitra to Sue, Anita to Annie,
Rajeev to Roger...
These are the new kids on the block.
All fitted out with yankee expressions, accents, mannerisms
and dress code. They are yankee right down to their
toenails. They even have an attitude - any kind of
'Indianism' is 'gross'. To their friends, they're
totally cool and, besides, they make the big bucks.
Its an entire new culture that is
mushrooming all over. Fresh graduates, drawn in by
the big bucks, are trained and groomed on every aspect
of Americanism. They are even trained to appreciate
foul language rather than get upset, as swearing is
part and parcel of American speech. For this, they
are made to watch Eminem, Friends and Eddie Murphy.
They have to unlearn all that they have learned so
far and re-learn the American way. They now answer
the phone with a 'Hi this is Sandy, how may I help
you?' or 'Yo, what's up?'. The 'arre
yaar' has got to go. They are now familiar with
typically American expressions like 'in the red',
'run interference for me' and 'a rain check'.
 This
new breed of kids are not the usual party-hoppers.
Instead, they sleep during the day and spend the night
talking on the phone to strangers hundreds of miles
away. They make around Rs8,000/- a month and are made
as comfortable as possible in their work places: they
are picked up and dropped home from office, provided
with excellent cafetarias, millions of phone lines,
given tickets to movies and plays and even their home
phone and electricity bills are paid for. The spin
off is even the shy ones become compulsive talkers.
But on the other hand, they end up with behavioural
problems, because they are living a role which is
not their own.
The call centre industry in India
The call centre industry in India is just a couple
of years old, but it went into overdrive ever since
the Nasscom-McKinsey report predicted that the IT
enabled services would be a mammoth $17 billion pie
in the sky. Already, we have 50.000 boys and girls
working for companies like GE Caps, Spectramind, EXL
and more in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. According
to the International Data Corporation, it is poised
to register the highest growth rate in the Asia Pacific
region during 2000-2005. To its advantage is the large
English-speaking populace, the well developed software
industry, the computer software integrators with a
proven track record and a large, unemployed labour
force.
 On
the flip side, although India has a large, highly
educated, English-speaking populace, most of them
speak with a heavy dialect - how will this play out
over the telephone and an average American be expected
to understand Indian-English. Secondly, the non-existent
Customer Service Culture in India will make training
of reps mandatory and difficult, since such a luxury
as service is not part of everyday life in India.
And last, but not the least, the infrastructure is
bad, no, make that antiquated. This familiar problem
which has affected almost all industries in India
may hit the call centre industry too.
Is it time for an epitaph ?
Source: Outlook
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9:29:01 PM 
