June 02, 2006
June 01, 2006
May 29, 2006
May 14, 2006
May 05, 2006
May 01, 2006
Callous Call Centers
I belong to the service industry – 19 years for now. I can understand what makes a customer happy.
I live in Bangalore – the capital of all call centers of the world for the past eight years.
If I had a question earlier – I directly used to call the person in charge. I normally get a reply before the telephone receiver changed hands three times. Not a big pain.
Things have changed now. If I go to any service institution – I see notices which say that no enquiries are allowed. For questions – I need to go to the call center. I hear that it is normally 24 hours and for 365 days. My experience is rather bitter.
The first impression is that all call centers are a maze. It has been designed to discourage people from making enquiries. It starts simple enough – press 1 for language and so on. Then it gets complicated. After nine or ten such answers question you will find yourself lost – totally lost. Or you are bound to forget what you wanted to ask and worse scenario is that you will feel the question does not warrant answering this plethora of questions and makes you give up.
If you are really persistent sometimes, after 20 minutes, you may actually reach a human being – a real person who can actually talk (but not answer!). She listens to you patiently and says – “Can you please hold on – I need to transfer you to a different department who can address this issue”. So while you hear out their advertisements and repetitive jingles, intercepted with a message, which says that you should not hang up and that your call is important to them, you get on to another person after 20 minutes, she hears you out and says, “I have presently no information on your query (they never say – “I don’t know”). I shall raise a ticket and you will hear about it within 120 hours”. You cannot go back to them, until then though your query may be critical to get an answer before 120 hours.
The call center executives are trained to answer people with sand in their mouths. They are trained not to understand that there are actual people who need something and need it badly.
There were days when I entered the bank, the officer used to greet me and say, “Sir, your credit has arrived and you can enjoy it”. Now when I log into my account – it says,
”There has been a technical error and we shall let you know when you can access your account within 72 hours”.
The unknown loss to the industry is that there is loss of people knowledge. Service Industry people are no longer expected to know their clients; know them and greet them when they come into their lives for a very short time.
That’s an irreversible change and we need to accept the change and move ahead.
I live in Bangalore – the capital of all call centers of the world for the past eight years.
If I had a question earlier – I directly used to call the person in charge. I normally get a reply before the telephone receiver changed hands three times. Not a big pain.
Things have changed now. If I go to any service institution – I see notices which say that no enquiries are allowed. For questions – I need to go to the call center. I hear that it is normally 24 hours and for 365 days. My experience is rather bitter.
The first impression is that all call centers are a maze. It has been designed to discourage people from making enquiries. It starts simple enough – press 1 for language and so on. Then it gets complicated. After nine or ten such answers question you will find yourself lost – totally lost. Or you are bound to forget what you wanted to ask and worse scenario is that you will feel the question does not warrant answering this plethora of questions and makes you give up.
If you are really persistent sometimes, after 20 minutes, you may actually reach a human being – a real person who can actually talk (but not answer!). She listens to you patiently and says – “Can you please hold on – I need to transfer you to a different department who can address this issue”. So while you hear out their advertisements and repetitive jingles, intercepted with a message, which says that you should not hang up and that your call is important to them, you get on to another person after 20 minutes, she hears you out and says, “I have presently no information on your query (they never say – “I don’t know”). I shall raise a ticket and you will hear about it within 120 hours”. You cannot go back to them, until then though your query may be critical to get an answer before 120 hours.
The call center executives are trained to answer people with sand in their mouths. They are trained not to understand that there are actual people who need something and need it badly.
There were days when I entered the bank, the officer used to greet me and say, “Sir, your credit has arrived and you can enjoy it”. Now when I log into my account – it says,
”There has been a technical error and we shall let you know when you can access your account within 72 hours”.
The unknown loss to the industry is that there is loss of people knowledge. Service Industry people are no longer expected to know their clients; know them and greet them when they come into their lives for a very short time.
That’s an irreversible change and we need to accept the change and move ahead.
April 29, 2006
Outsourcing Blues
I am from Bangalore – Hub of the outsourcing industry of the world. Outsourcing has irreversibly changed the city. It has changed the way people work and the way they live.
I’ve been in this city for a while now and I was not aware how much it has changed until I experienced it a few days ago.
I need to give a little bit of a background about before proceeding. Bangalore was a quiet sleepy town full of greenery and government employees. People were content with lives – took life as it comes and it comes slowly, very slowly. People lived a placid life and treated others with respect and honor. People worked mostly for government institutions and held one job for their entire careers.
Returning to the subject, connected with the outsourcing is the infrastructure of the city. This has been lampooned across the country and elsewhere and has been the most sought after subject of ridicule.
In order to improve the infrastructure, the city planned to pave the sidewalks (plat forms as it is called in India). Lo and behold – one fine morning, I find people busy working in our humble street – a quiet lane in the outer parts of the city (now much inside the city).
First day we have a group of people wearing helmets (as per outsourcing standards set by some western country) land in our street. They take precise measurements of the street, meticulously document it (for the umpteenth time) and they are on the way to the next street for repeating the “process”. People now influenced with the city’s hi-tech image talk of “task” and “procedure” instead of work. People are now referred as “resources”.
However, still I have not understood why “resources” need helmets in order to take measurements (nowadays referred as “metrics”).
Midway we had rains. It clogged the drains and we had sludge and dirt all over the street. Next, the group for cleaning came – I do not know (in their parlance – “I have no information”). They lifted the garbage off the places where the sidewalks needed to be paved.
I was being a bit altruist – I requested the ‘resource’ to clean the ditch running alongside. The ‘resource’ was a truly rural Indian – betel nut chewing old woman wearing a worn out pink chiffon sarree and a pair of Hawaii slippers. What she answered shook me to my senses. Then I understood how and why India became a software outsourcing giant within such a short period of time. She said, “That’s not my job. There is a separate group responsible for cleaning the ditch. I clean only the sidewalks”. That was a stunning reply. I asked her – who then is going to clean the ditch. She said with
nonchalance – “Please enquire with the call center (centre)”.
India has learnt the lessons of the west – the days of passion in ones work are gone. Now what I need are the “competency” and “skills” to accomplish my “task”. And it is the employer who has to make sure that I have them. After a few days of “handling the process” I don’t get experienced; I don’t pass on the knowledge – I “document”.
As I said this incident brought me back to me senses. I started to my office a bit dumbfounded. But then when I reached office – I realized – I was going to give the same reply she gave to me to my clients sitting in Germany.
I’ve been in this city for a while now and I was not aware how much it has changed until I experienced it a few days ago.
I need to give a little bit of a background about before proceeding. Bangalore was a quiet sleepy town full of greenery and government employees. People were content with lives – took life as it comes and it comes slowly, very slowly. People lived a placid life and treated others with respect and honor. People worked mostly for government institutions and held one job for their entire careers.
Returning to the subject, connected with the outsourcing is the infrastructure of the city. This has been lampooned across the country and elsewhere and has been the most sought after subject of ridicule.
In order to improve the infrastructure, the city planned to pave the sidewalks (plat forms as it is called in India). Lo and behold – one fine morning, I find people busy working in our humble street – a quiet lane in the outer parts of the city (now much inside the city).
First day we have a group of people wearing helmets (as per outsourcing standards set by some western country) land in our street. They take precise measurements of the street, meticulously document it (for the umpteenth time) and they are on the way to the next street for repeating the “process”. People now influenced with the city’s hi-tech image talk of “task” and “procedure” instead of work. People are now referred as “resources”.
However, still I have not understood why “resources” need helmets in order to take measurements (nowadays referred as “metrics”).
Midway we had rains. It clogged the drains and we had sludge and dirt all over the street. Next, the group for cleaning came – I do not know (in their parlance – “I have no information”). They lifted the garbage off the places where the sidewalks needed to be paved.
I was being a bit altruist – I requested the ‘resource’ to clean the ditch running alongside. The ‘resource’ was a truly rural Indian – betel nut chewing old woman wearing a worn out pink chiffon sarree and a pair of Hawaii slippers. What she answered shook me to my senses. Then I understood how and why India became a software outsourcing giant within such a short period of time. She said, “That’s not my job. There is a separate group responsible for cleaning the ditch. I clean only the sidewalks”. That was a stunning reply. I asked her – who then is going to clean the ditch. She said with
nonchalance – “Please enquire with the call center (centre)”.
India has learnt the lessons of the west – the days of passion in ones work are gone. Now what I need are the “competency” and “skills” to accomplish my “task”. And it is the employer who has to make sure that I have them. After a few days of “handling the process” I don’t get experienced; I don’t pass on the knowledge – I “document”.
As I said this incident brought me back to me senses. I started to my office a bit dumbfounded. But then when I reached office – I realized – I was going to give the same reply she gave to me to my clients sitting in Germany.
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