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The View From the Ground At an Indian Call Center

Posted by timothy on from the division-of-labor-limited-by-extent-of-market dept.

A feature story in Mother Jones gives a fascinating inside look at what it's like to work in a Delhi call center. In this area alone, says the author, "100,000 call-center agents make their living selling vitamins to Britons or helping Americans troubleshoot their printers. I am almost certainly the only one who acquired his conversational skills accidentally — by being born in the United States." The slots at the call centers are limited and highly sought; the training is intense, and the infrastructure is poor.

3 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Intense training? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    In what? Choosing a fake name?

    Sorry, but every 'Kevin' from Bangalore I've encountered has been completely useless. Not that I fault the individual workers - I'm sure it's a situation much like we have here in the US, where these poor souls are limited by asinine corporate playbooks, and thus, provide no valuable service to customers.

    Though the entire 'get the customer off the phone because they can't a) understand you or b) understand you enough to understand that you cannot possibly help them', of course, is a valuable service to a company's bottom line.

    1. Re:Intense training? by WaywardGeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I used to buy only Dell computers, and was influential in getting three companies to switch all Dell, from 1991 until about 2002 (two of which are now publicly traded, and presumably still using Dell). The kind of demo I could do for the higher level decision makers was fun. Got a stupid Microsoft PowerPoint question? Ever try to get it answered from Microsoft? Yeah... right. I could call Dell support about any stupid Windows question, and I'd get a very knowledgeable guy on the other end who would take more time on my stupid question than was warranted, and end with "You know technically, we don't support Microsoft software, but the answer is ..." It as awesome. As for hardware issues, one call and a guy who could fix the problem was at my door within hours. Sometime shortly after the tech bubble burst, when suddenly out-sourcing was all the rage, the people answering my support calls changed. I don't mind that they're Indian. What I mind is that they refused to do support. I had a critical tape out and was under pressure and needed the f**king machine up and running, and some SOB from Dell simply refused to send anyone to help. The damage caused to our little company buy an insanely stupid Dell refusal to honor their support contract... well, I'm still not over it. I had to go to Best Buy and buy their highest end machine that day, and it had neither the memory or CPU power we needed. Ever do LVS/DRC on a compaq presario mini-tower?

      So, I set company policy to never again buy a support contract from Dell, and instead make sure we had a spare model of any Dell computer we used lying around if needed. We saved a ton of money, and never had to deal with those Dell support goons again. I still kept buying Dell computers, though. They remain the best deal in the USA, IMO, for cheap reliable hardware. Unfortunately for Dell, when my company was bought, the new owners had a different reaction to their own Dell support nightmare: switch the entire company to HP, with full support contracts. We now spend a ton more on hardware and support, but HP support rocks. Like the poster above, I don't blame the Indian call center employees. They weren't in the same class as Dell's old support, but clearly the management chain at Dell was mainly at fault.

      --
      Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
  2. Dealing with Indians on the phone is frustrating by Bloodwine77 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I deal with Indians in two different capacities. One is my professional environment where I communicate with outsourced teams and the other is my personal environment where I contact customer support on various services and products.

    I never give them hell, because I realize that they are just trying to make a living, but the communication and cultural barriers are too wide for me. Some of our technical partners utilize Indian software developers and I have been talking to Indians for over a decade and to this day I still have trouble with their accents. Email is a little better, but either cultural differences or something else causes conversations to be circular in nature. I don't think they are intentionally dishonest, but they have an aversion to saying "no" and end up being vague and confusing.

    Also, either the companies who hire the call centers or the call center management themselves need to stop having call center reps address themselves with American names. I am not thoroughly educated in Indian customs, but I doubt there really are that many people in India named Bob, Joe, Rick, Ann, Susan, and Jennifer. They aren't fooling anybody and it is insulting one's intelligence.

    I am sure working in an Indian call center is hell, and I respect them for making a living, but I honestly wish I didn't have to deal with them.