The View From the Ground At an Indian Call Center 214
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.
Re:Intense training? (Score:5, Insightful)
The big problem with outsourced tech support tends to be that regardless of where it is situated they tend to get paid based on the number of calls they handle (at least for consumer services, for business products/services they tend to use better metrics). So they have no incentive in letting their employees fix problems (even if they can), just get customers off the line as quickly as possible.
Dont know why we dont like foreign call centers? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I stopped asking questions, Shail had one for me. "I have experienced some Americans—please don't mind—they don't like Indians. They act rude as soon as they come to know I am Indian. Why is this?" I stammered something about protectionism, but really I didn't know what to say.
Simply put, nobody likes communicating with people who are.. well... difficult to communicate with. It's bad enough trying to overcome a language barrier in general conversation. It's even worse when you're trying to communicate a technical problem or make a complicated request. I don't want to have to spell out my email 3x in phonetic alphabet. Sometimes I can't even tell if the person I'm talking to actually understands my problem because everything they say is scripted.
Plus -- as Louis CK has said -- I know the Indian on the line doesn't give a shit about me and my white people problems.
Re:Intense training? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
At least you understand that it's not their location or nationality that makes them useless, it's that they aren't really tech support people - they are consumer relations people. All they know how to do is follow their troubleshooting script, they've likely never used or have even seen the product you're having trouble with. But it's not like a company can afford to let you talk to a product engineer when your $150 Blu Ray player stops working.
The thing that gets me is that companies will spend lots of money putting together troubleshooting scripts and a knowledgebase that the call center workers can use, but they don't make that same information available to the public through their website, which would likely keep me from having to call tech support in the first place.
P.S. Since no one posted the obligatory xkcd link yet, here's one:
http://xkcd.com/806/ [xkcd.com]
The real "problem" (Score:5, Insightful)
My main frustration with the outsourcing "issue" isn't that I'm talking to someone from India. It's that I'm talking to someone from India that's pretending to be from America. It's really insulting to our intelligence and I'm not sure what they gain from it at this point. Now it's well known that there's a ton of outsourcing, so why do companies bother trying to hide it anymore?
Re:Dealing with Indians on the phone is frustratin (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not because they are trying to fool you into thinking you are talking with an American. The issue is lots of those names are really really hard to pronounce for native English speakers who have no experience with Hindi.
I have worked very close with lots of India developers, the ones who actually come here tend to American-ize their names rather than pick a new one like John. Punjababriu becomes Prabu for instance. The later I can say correctly the former it took him helping me many times to learn to say correctly. You know I felt really bad about it too. Nobody likes it when you get their name wrong. Most of us don't want to go around hurting the feelings of or insulting others; or suspecting that we might be. In this case he knew it was not a respect thing and that I was trying really hard to learn to correctly say his name, but still.
Really these call center folks are doing you a kindness by sparing you the embarrassment of having to try and repeat a name that is going to be hard for your say.
Re:The real "problem" (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not uncommon for americans to hang up if they find out the 1-800 number they are calling goes to Mexico. I imagine it is worse for India.
To most call-center managers, that's a problem solved!
Re:Intense training? (Score:2, Insightful)
I heard from an old-timer at Dell that some reps used to do tech support for two calls at once. Maybe someone will bring that back during high volume.
Indians can program to specifications, even if the specification is wrong and requires a Rube Goldberg device for compliance to corporate policy.
Re:Dont know why we dont like foreign call centers (Score:5, Insightful)
When I stopped asking questions, Shail had one for me. "I have experienced some Americans—please don't mind—they don't like Indians. They act rude as soon as they come to know I am Indian. Why is this?" I stammered something about protectionism, but really I didn't know what to say.
Simply put, nobody likes communicating with people who are.. well... difficult to communicate with.
This doesn't explain it.
American consumers are watching companies abandon customer service and outsourcing these functions to overseas companies that employ call-takers that have no knowledge of the products they support, no ability to do any real troubleshooting, and no authority to give any help at all outside the script on their desk.
India isn't the cause of the problem; it's the symptom. When we call and talk to someone in India, we're not upset at India, we're upset at the company we're trying to do business with, which has let us down. Talking to someone in India is simply the indication that the company we're working with doesn't care about us as customers.
Re:Intense training? (Score:2, Insightful)
I worked at a call center for a while and was told by my supervisor that my call times were too high and I needed to hose-and-close more people. (Translation: Lie to them and get them to do something they can't possibly stay on the phone for.) "Hose-and-close" was his words, BTW.
This was printer support for HP. The contractor (EDS) was paid per call, so hose-and-close was a profit generator, and at 23 minutes per call instead of the maximum 20, I wasn't generating enough profit.
On the other hand, the retard I sat next to once had a guy go out and buy a new printer cable. Her diagnostics? She had him go to DOS and type something that couldn't possibly print anything. The printer could've been off, had error lights, or been on fire and she would not have known. When it didn't print she told him it was the cable. Only reason I found out about it was because he called back and got me - not because the cable failed but because she'd LEFT HIM AT THE DOS PROMPT. He didn't know what to do to get back into Windows (and this is Windows 9x where you're outside Windows entirely, often even a reboot won't get you back), she'd just dropped the call after telling him to buy the cable.
After the call I felt so sick about helping her con some nice old guy that I logged off and came unglued, calling her down in front of the entire department. She moved to another seat, which solved another problem I had with her - she stank of... something, like a mix of cheap perfume and a gas station. EDS had alternately refused to or insisted they somehow had enforced their no-scent policy.
"Helping her con some nice old guy" you ask? Yes. All I did was get him back to Windows because I couldn't tell him the truth. It was against policy to EVER contradict another agent. Understand, if an agent said to a customer "You're name's Goldstein? Damn it, Hitler didn't do a good enough job cleaning you fuckers up." and had proof, my only response could be "I'm sorry, but you must have misheard him." Could have a recording of it and play it back for me and all I could do was insist they weren't hearing it right. The customer's always wrong, and deaf to boot.
Left after I got cancer and I was told that if I kept "skipping training classes" (going to see my oncologist) I'd be fired. So I quit. After the layers of scum I'd built up working there I was an emotional wreck, and I just couldn't handle being told I should quit or die on the phone. I did manage to hit their dental insurance for over $1000 of work just days before I quit, though. A small recompense, I think.
Would not wish that shit on my worst enemy, and I work with several other people who feel the same way. (I fix PCs for a living and a lot of us got our start in call centers.)
(Posting AC for obvious reasons!)