Well, the US and Canada are using call centres located in prisons. So I
guess we are still cost compeititive. Now what was that about China
employing prison labour??
Arthur Cordell
-----Original Message-----
From: S. Lerner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: March 12, 2001 7:37 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED];
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fw: FW: DELHI CALLING
Futurework indeed...
>Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 21:13:46 -0800
>From: "Michael Gurstein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Fw: Fwd: DELHI CALLING
>To: "cpi-ua" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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>Status:
>
>> DELHI CALLING
>>
>> It may look like a UK number, but do you really know where the person on
>the
>> other end of the line is? Luke Harding visits a call centre in India
where
>the
>> staff take crash courses in Britishness
>>
>> Friday March 9, 2001
>> The Guardian
>>
>> It is 6.30pm and in a smart open plan office in south Delhi, the air is
>> humming with a thousand telephone calls. Sitting in a row of
>sound-muffling
>> cubicles, a group of pleasant-looking young Indian graduates are talking
>into
>> their designer headsets. Some are dressed in jeans; others in bright
>salwar
>> kameez . Their customers, however, are rather a long way away, in a place
>> where it is still lunchtime and probably cold.
>>
>> They are in Sidcup, perhaps, or verdant East Cheam - dotted across a grey
>> island nation that from here seems remote and eccentric. The customers
>have
>> rung a number in the UK to check their mobile telephone bill, or to ask
>about
>> a new product or service. They are, for the most part, spectacularly
>unaware
>> that their inquiry has been routed thousands of miles away to an Indian
>call
>> centre, which serves rotis in its upstairs canteen and has a good view
>from
>> the roof terrace of a giant lotus temple.
>>
>> Not, of course, that there is much to give the game away. The subterfuge
>is
>> truly magnificent. Callers are greeted with a "good afternoon" when it is
>> already evening in India and dark. Should the caller lob in a reference
to
>> David Beckham or the Queen Mother, Indian staff are able to give a
>suitable
>> off-the-cuff reply. Nothing is left to chance.
>>
>> This is Spectramind, one of India's newest and most sophisticated call
>> centres: a place of soothing pastel colours, tasteful lighting and
>expensive
>> green carpets. The entire four-storey building exudes the smell of fresh
>> paint - and of colossal corporate self-confidence. Here, recruits receive
>a
>> 20-hour crash course in British culture. They watch videos of soap
operas,
>> including The Bill, Emmerdale, Brookside, Coronation Street and
>EastEnders, to
>> accustom them to regional accents. They are told who Robbie Williams is.
>> They learn about Yorkshire pudding. And they are taught about Britain's
>> unfailingly
>> miserable climate.
>>
>> Each computer screen shows Greenwich Mean Time and the temperature in the
>UK,
>> in case a staff member feels the urge to reveal that India is enjoying
yet
>> another day of blue skies and sunny weather. "We find showing new staff
>videos
>> of Yes, Prime Minister is particularly effective," says Raman Roy,
>> Spectramind's sleek, pipe-smoking chief executive. "They get a two-hour
>> seminar on the royal family. We download the British tabloids every
>morning
>> from the web to see what our customers are reading. We make our new staff
>> watch Premier League football games on TV. And we also explain about the
>> weather, because British people refer to the subject so frequently. It is
>a
>> science," he adds, proudly.
>>
>> And so it is, so much so that Britain's 3,500 call centres are justly
>worried
>> that their jobs will soon disappear entirely - as more and more firms
>relocate
>> or "outsource" key elements of their businesses to India. This
>apprehension
>> was confirmed by a report published last month. It said that the Indian
>call
>> centres were superior to their British counterparts in every way. They
>were
>> cheaper - costing only 35-40% as much. They had better technological
>> facilities. They had smarter staff.
>>
>> American Express and British Airways started the trend eight years ago,
>when
>> they transferred their "captive" customer service empires to Delhi, and
>then
>> Bombay. BA was attracted by India's seemingly unlimited pool of
>> English-speaking graduates, 25% of whom fail to find jobs. Indian
>graduates
>> required starting salaries of only #2,500, as opposed to #12,500. They
>were IT
>> literate, and highly motivated. The savings were enormous.
>>
>> Gradually, other British companies cottoned on. Last year, Harrods
>> controversially shifted its store-card operation from Leeds to Delhi. It
>has
>> been joined by Debenhams, Top Shop, Dorothy Perkins, Burton and,
>fittingly,
>> Monsoon. The insurers RSA and Axa Sun Life have recently moved elements
of
>> administration to Bangalore, India's IT capital.
>>
>> Not surprisingly, British unions are starting to complain loudly. They
>object,
>> in particular, to the fact that some Indian call centres encourage their
>staff
>> to change their names to sound more, well, English. Thus Siddhartha might
>> become Sid, or Gitanjali could be Hazel, not Gita. At Spectramind staff
>keep
>> their original names, Roy explains: "It is not a disadvantage to be
called
>> Ramakrishna these days." (It was obviously merely a happy coincidence
that
>his
>> sari-clad secretary was called Sarah.)
>>
>> It is no secret within the industry that "agents" are taught to minimise
>their
>> Indian accents, to speak more slowly, and to watch the BBC news. "We
don't
>try
>> and teach our staff to speak with British accents. But after talking to
>> British people they do start to sound like them," manager Mr Viswanathan
>> admits. Even after intense training, though, some callers from Britain
are
>> impossible to under stand, it seems. "We borrow tapes from the British
>Council
>> in Delhi. But even after listening to them there are about 20% of callers
>who
>> don't make any sense at all," says Padmini Misra, vice-president
>(training).
>>
>> That India has so many charming and intelligent English speakers is
>clearly
>> one of the nicer legacies of colonialism - so we can hardly complain 50
>years
>> on that they are stealing our jobs. Most of Spectramind's new recruits
>have
>> been educated at English-orientated schools. They spend Friday nights
>watching
>> Goodness Gracious Me and repeats of Blackadder on Star TV, India's most
>> contemporary channel. But watching Rowan Atkinson prance about in an
>> Elizabethan ruff is no substitute for actually having visited the UK,
>which
>> most of them have not done. This is where Misra's crash course comes in.
>"We
>> have training modules on geography, history and the monarchy, and on
>Britain's
>> social structure," she says. "We teach them about British food -
Yorkshire
>> puddings for one - which would not be familiar to a young Indian fellow
>here.
>> We give them quizzes on Britain and allow them to surf the net. And we
>tell
>> them about what high-street shops there are."
>>
>> Misra also sheds light on why the old sit-com Yes, Prime Minister goes
>down so
>> well among the staff - it's because the rococo bureaucracy of Whitehall
>> corresponds so closely with India's own. Such are the sensitivities
>involved,
>> however, that most Indian call firms refuse to discuss their methods.
They
>> also strive to conceal who their clients are - or what, exactly, they do
>for
>> them. "We have to decline your request," the US finance group GE Capital
>> sniffs, when I ask to have a look round its huge call centre in Gurgaon,
>on
>> the road between Delhi and the historic town of Jaipur. "Why tell our
>> competitors how we run and manage our business?" GE handles the
store-card
>> accounts of Harrods and other major British chains, such as Russell and
>> Bromley. It has some 2.5m British customers but does not believe in the
>> virtues of transparency.
>>
>> "Clients don't always like the customer to know that any service from
them
>to
>> the customer has been outsourced," Matthew Vallance concedes. His firm,
>> CustomerAsset, recently opened two new call centres in Bangalore and he
>> predicts that more and more British firms will shift to the subcontinent.
>But
>> it is not just the UK that is outsourcing to India: a huge amount of what
>is
>> known as "remote processing" is now being done in India for the US
market.
>> While Tennessee slumbers, members of Spectramind's American team are
busy.
>> They are working on invoices that have been scanned and emailed to them
>from
>> halfway across the world, or preparing to chase up students who have
>defaulted
>> on debts of #10-#50.
>>
>> The US-orientated staff are trained in the nuances of baseball in the
same
>way
>> that the British team watch The Bill in a shiny second-floor classroom
>> decorated with photos of Tower Bridge and Prince Charles. Blue "Tennessee
>> Titans" pennants fly above the American team's desks. "Geography is
>history.
>> Distance is irrelevant. Where you are physically located is unimportant.
I
>can
>> log on anywhere in the world," Roy declares.
>>
>> His firm is not deceiving the customer, merely providing a "global
>servicing
>> resource", he explains. After a successful career at American Express and
>GE
>> Capital, he founded Spectramind 11 months ago. The firm is now hiring 150
>new
>> graduates a month and receives 8,000 applications from a single
>advertisement
>> in the Hindustan Times. It is already hunting for a second overflow
>office, as
>> the number of employees shoots up from 400 to 2,000.
>>
>> With the industry doubling in size every couple of months, India is well
>on
>> the way to becoming the call centre capital of the world - with a
>turnover,
>> analysts predict, of $3.7bn by 2008. In a luxuriantly illuminated waiting
>room
>> decorated with a photo of a giant eagle ("Leaders are like Eagles. You
>only
>> find one of them at a time") a group of applicants is comparing notes
>after a
>> fourth gruelling interview.
>>
>> "I've already written three exams. I'm an honours engineering graduate,"
>> whispers one young male applicant who is wearing a tie. He and his fellow
>> candidates are in their early 20s. They are bright, middle class and
>tidily
>> presented. They are, in short, the kind of people who wouldn't be seen
>dead in
>> a UK call centre - unless the bailiffs were knocking at the door or the
>> student loan had to be paid off urgently.
>>
>> On the floor below, the British desk, which starts work at 6.30pm (Indian
>> standard time), is still greeting callers with a "good afternoon". The
>shift
>> finishes at 2.30am, just as Britain is washing up or settling down on the
>sofa
>> to watch the telly. The Indian graduates are then ferried home in luxury
>> Toyota Qualises, through still-warm streets full of somnolent cows,
>yapping
>> pye-dogs and snoring rickshaw drivers. We are a world away from Sidcup.
>The
>> darkness is only broken by the flood-lit lotus temple, serene and milky
>white
>> in the distance.
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
>>
>>
>
