India's call centre industry has grown rapidly in the past decade, but recent research suggests it's no longer the world's biggest. Some British and American companies are moving operations back home, so what's the future for Indian phone bashers? In a classroom above a bus station in Mumbai, a group of students is being given a language lesson.
The students, who are mostly college graduates in their 20s, are doing vocal exercises: "Cake, Lake, Take," they chant in unison, trying to perfect their accents, as Mr Rosario waves his hand in encouragement. The lessons here at the Let's Talk academy are designed to teach young Indians to speak with a "neutral-sounding accent" to train them for work at a call centre. The sound of an Indian accent at the end of the customer service line has been frustrating for many consumers in English-speaking countries who have had difficulties understanding or being understood.
And some customers evidently just don't like accented speech even when they can understand it. It can often lead to irate and heated conversations, which workers at the Indian end are also trained to deal with. He went in depth on the technique. With his intuition for dialect, the 26 year old Calcutta native moved up the rungs of the call center ladder quickly. He excelled, and began a career in the position that would take him to ATT, Yell, Dell, Talk Talk, and eventually Orion Edutech, the private preparatory course where he was teaching when we met him.
Deep was a success story, the kind that the young masses looked up to as they applied en masse to work the call center floors. But Deep also fell victim to his success, and the strange hours that the job demanded of him.
The hardest part for him was the time change. Deep worked graveyard shifts for months on end, basically living on US time in India. It burned him out, and isolated him. As for his social life, he summed it up quickly. You can forget about friends.
Adding to the stress of the hours was the culture shock. In the call center, he spent his energy training people to think like Westerners, to talk like them, and to spend all day talking to them. The culture seeped through, but not all of the culture. Most of the people who work on the floor have never been to America or Great Britain. They know only what they have learned in school, in training, and in their routine conversations with customers. There are enormous gaps in their mental picture of America that they simply fill with their imagination and the movies, sometimes seeing the West as little but the rock concerts, parties, and fast lifestyle the entertainment industry loves to promote it as.
The conservative nature, the ethnicity, it gets lost. For Deep, the isolation and stress of the switched hours, the quasi-immersion in Western culture, and the enormous, rapid jump in disposable income led to a host of unhealthy lifestyle decisions.
He began to abuse drugs, and became a heroin addict. The addiction stuck with him for five years, though he had been clean for more than a year when we interviewed him.
Deep also grew alienated from his family, not seeing them for months and missing important holidays. Tensions were high.
He had to get off the floor. He took a job at Orion Edutech because he could get away from the headsets while still employing the teaching and accent skills he had worked so hard to master. It was an expensive lifestyle change- it pays around a quarter of his previous salary. After hours, he now helps other recovering addicts at local NA meetings. But the call center is the catalyst. I always make sure I tell them what to expect and what to avoid. Deep decided to make our second session at Orion Edutech about cultural differences, one of his favorite topics.
He picked up a red marker and scribbled our topic on the white board in big, block letters; East vs. You have ten minutes to prepare.
Once he left the room, two of the students from North India started speaking Hindi to each other in hushed, concerned tones. To kick it off:. As on the first day, Krishna was writing extensive notes. He used the example to contrast to Americans, who have no problem blurting out their opinions. He described them as rude and aggressive on the phone. Better to use a fake name. At least the Canadians and British are better. Here we go.. If you have business operations and consumers outside of your time zone, it makes perfect sense to outsource your call center services.
With a twelve hour time difference, India makes for the best possible call center outsourcing destination and they can offer full after hour support for many North American and European businesses. By outsourcing all your call center services to India, you will be able to offer support to your customers no matter day or night across the globe.
Indian universities have a stellar reputation for churning out a highly-educated workforce. On an average, India produces approximately 2 million English speaking graduates and 75, IT graduates in a year.
This gives India a unique advantage over other call center outsourcing destinations in the world. This country offers an extremely high-quality workforce who are well-versed with the English language. In fact, French, Spanish and German languages are also becoming popular in India. Furthermore, the presence of a massive workforce definitely works in favor of the diverse IT outsourcing enterprises.
India continues to be one of the primary destinations for outsourcing multi-location sourcing strategies. For more than 20 years, India has proved to be an invaluable call center outsourcing destination.
Call centres in India are so many because of the cheap expense that is involved in setting up those facilities. This is why a lot of organizations in the western nations look to open up their call centres or hire service providers in India.
This keeps the cost-benefit intact for the BPO organizations. Nations where real estate prices are up, the overall charge for the services will be automatically high.
So, Indian call centres are the apparent choices for companies around the globe. The Telecom Giant. This empowers Indian call centres with high-end technology backup that is needed to offer seamless and uninterrupted services to the businesses.
India has over 25 million cables laid all across the country making its telecom competency quite effective and efficient. Along with this, many Indian private and public sector companies have successfully installed around VSATs escalated across the country. This heaves the hosting of business process outsourcing companies across the nation. BPO-Friendly Government. Since call centres have become the primary source of employment in India, the government through its BPO specific policies to ease the amplification of the outsourcing sector.
Leverages such as the rebate on taxes imposed on the export of ITES and call centre services and easy availability of necessary ultra-modern infrastructure and high-end software technology has made the operation of call centres quite easy to stretch legs. India has a natural competitive advantage over other nations when it comes to outsourcing.
The time zone between Indian and the USA is approximately hours, making it a perfect outsourcing destination for the companies looking to provide around-the-clock assistance to their customers.
In addition, since the BPO industry has employed millions of professionals, the trend of having a rotational shift is quite common. A lot of Indian call centres operate in night shift from a long time so workforce here is quite well-versed with the working environment in odd shifts too.
A wide array of Outsourcing Solutions. Call centres in India are known for their holistic approach to offer stability and growth for the businesses of all sectors. Owing to be the most experienced and competent outsourcing nation, India has call centres that provide a wider range of services like:. Along with this, as a client, you can always keep a close check on the performance of the call centre India through an integrated call centre management platform.
This tells you whether the offered services are in conformation with your business bottom line or not. Indians are tech-savvy. Seeing the present CEOs of Google and Microsoft Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella respectively , one can simply understand that India is a country that produces engineers and experts that love to juggle with the new tech. So, when it comes to comprehending, adopting, and installing new technologies like cloud, AI, RPA, etc. Call centre in India is equipped with the trending technology that is utilized to offer exceptional service and an outstanding customer experience.
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