Posted on 05/30/2005 5:22:31 PM PDT by kingattax
Abuse from British and American customers is driving increasing numbers of Indian call centre workers from their jobs, defeated by the strain of handling persistent rudeness.
Irate customers was cited as one of the main industry stress factors in a recent survey of call centre staff and some organisations have begun employing psychiatrists and counsellors to help employees to cope.
'I've had people tell me, "Back off, Paki, and don't call me again", said Eugene, 27, whose former employer, Spectrumind, provided an accounts services for BT. 'There was a lot of racist abuse once people detected from our accents that we weren't English. I saw girls reduced to tears by it.'
Pooja Chopra, 29, from Delhi, who spent two years fielding calls for BT Cellnet and America Online, faced similar abuse. 'People would say, "You're a Paki, I don't want to talk to you, pass me to someone who can speak my language".
Workers face a spectrum of rudeness - from sexual harassment to fury at unsolicited sales calls, to open racism. Industry analysts have seen the phenomenon of racist clients grow in recent years, as customers in the UK and the US become increasingly sensitive to the political issue of jobs outsourced to India.
Shyamanuja Das, editor of Global Outsourcing magazine, which published a study on the stress factors triggering call centre resignations, said that hostility from clients was one of the factors which caused workers to quit - 25 per cent of those questioned said client vitriol was a major cause of stress.
'The anger in the West over job losses and fear about offshoring has made this a growing problem. Some people call up with deliberately difficult questions. Most just say things like: "You're from India. You don't know anything. I don't want to speak to you", he said.
Vijay Mukhi, a call centre analyst, said websites have sprung up in the US giving phone numbers of companies which use call centres in India, and listing Hindi swear words to be used to abuse staff. 'When you move jobs away from a country, there's going to be a lot of pent-up frustration which gets let out on Indian workers,' he said.
As staff turnover is a major problem, with some companies battling an annual departure rate of 60-70 per cent, organisations are taking radical steps to help staff to deal with abuse. In recent months some firms have decided to provide psychological support to their workers. Sanjay Salooja's Delhi-based firm, Empower, has 20 trained counsellors who tour the city's largest call centres, providing support to harassed employees.
'Most employees are very young and don't have the skills to allow them to cope with this kind of abuse,' he said. Workers are already feeling the stress of having to work through the night and are under extreme pressure to meet productivity targets. 'They are vulnerable anyway, and an abusive call really knocks confidence. They don't want to take another call for an hour or two, and their performance is impacted.'
The idea of consulting therapists remains taboo in much of Indian society, but the stigma is waning. 'Our research shows that about 50 per cent of workers would like the chance to receive counselling,' Deepal Raheja, one of the programme's psychiatrists, said.
The therapists try to help staff realise that the abuse is not personal and to put things in perspective, he said. 'Somebody I counselled was very upset after a British customer had asked for an address near Trafalgar Square and he had to admit he didn't know where Trafalgar Square was. His customer became very abusive, and the incident really dented his self-esteem,' he said.
Some companies still specify staff must anglicise their names, adopting forenames such as Mary and John, to try to stave off resentment.
There are no unions yet to represent the 350,000 workers in the Indian call centre business, but unionist Gautam Mody, who is trying to launch the first call centre workers' collective, said this was a problem that needed to be addressed urgently abroad. 'Some workers are deeply hurt by this abuse. The issue of xenophobia cannot be resolved from this end; there must be a battle against it in the countries responsible.'
More organisations have started to let staff hang up on persistently rude customers (formerly a sackable offence), after warning them three times to mind their language. Trainers try to help new staff understand the different cultural forms of rudeness they are likely to encounter.
'British customers can be very rude but in a polite way,' Anita Bhuttar, training vice-president of GTL, a Mumbai-based company, said. 'Usually they won't use abusive language but you can tell from the tone of their voice they're angry.'
'I found it difficult to work for British clients,' Pooja Chopra said. 'They wouldn't call you names, but you could hear the hostility in their voices. The US customers were generally much more easy-going.
I'm shedding crocodile tears.
I plead the Fifth...
British customers can be very rude but in a polite way.
That can make such a difference /sarc
I was never rude to a call center person, but I returned my Dells and found a company with US customer service.
Good.
Bring our jobs back home.
"...the incident really dented his self-esteem..."
Oh my dented self-esteem. I shall never recover! (Swooning on faiting couch, stage right.)
You'll love this one ping.
Racist clients growing in number...People are angry and reactive, but it is perceived as racism. Sounds familiar. Like on the illegal threads.
That's right..!
You just can't understand those suckers. They can't understand us either...!
Gimmi someone who speaks, American.
Give us our jobs back.
I had to call Lynksys's customer service number. The guy was Pakistani, which I assumed from the accent. He was very helpful and very nice.
brother,
where do you find these articles? [LOL]
PRAY YOU AND YOURS HAD A GREAT MEMORIAL WEEKEND.
GODBLESS OUR VETERANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
I was rude to a person once on the phone when in college. I hated the way it made me feel, like a real loser. Hence, I've not been rude to anyone since. I was taught to be a lady. Even if someone is hard to understand that's no excuse to insult someone's ethnicity. Having said that, I ordered my Dell laptop and they sent me three bags and three travel protectors by mistake. Should have sent me three laptops too :-)
"Some people call up with deliberately difficult questions."
Stupid customers. They should just do without whatever help they need so that the staff doesn't wind up feeling bad about themselves. /sarc
i hope the same for you and your family :)
Ditto. All the times I've had to speak with someone overseas, they've been routinely patient and helpful.
Thank you, thank you.
This news is just so F#@kin' beautiful!
A. Knows less than you about the subject.
B. You have difficulty understanding because of an accent.
C. Have difficulty understanding you.
When professionals call IT support it's because they've exhausted their knowledge and want to speak to someone more knowledgeable.
At the last company I worked for, I was in charge of Desktop support. We used exclusivly Dells. When Dell moved all their call centers to India, our call times went from 10-20 minutes to HOURS, yes that multiple in some cases. You couldn't understand the person on the other end, they had no idea who to assist; oly being able to read from a script, and generally made life hard on my techs. I had techs that would refuse to call Dell support when there was a problem; I didn't blame them.
Long story short, I was blowing off steam with the regional Gateway Rep, and he wrote a phone number down on a piece of paper and gave it to me. I was the number of a Gateway call center in TX. Needless to say, the next PC order we made was through Gateway.
What's not to like about unsolicited sales calls?</sarcasm> How are people supposed to know that they are being rude if you act as if their intrusion on my dinnertime were welcome? I don't need to hear an accent to know that if the phone rings and nobody answers my "hello" immediately it's a boiler room call. And I'm not desperate for company so I see no reason to be anything more than minimally polite, if that.
Cold calling is disreputable. If I don't feel like being polite, them's the breaks. The main thing that tempers my reaction is concern that I might be abrupt to a legitimate caller, or even a misdialing caller.
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