Niki Seth-Smith conducts a face-off between a British call center operator and her rivals in India.
My friend in the UK has what can only be called the Holy Grail of call center jobs. Amy’s company (which will remain anonymous) fund-raises on behalf of schools and universities in the private sector. By contacting alumni and conjuring up memories of their sunny schooldays, Amy and her colleagues raise around 10 to 15 grand a month (around Rs 7 -12 lakh) and earn nine pounds (around Rs 700) an hour for their pains. Amy is British, decidedly middle-class and university educated. Tele fund-raising is not a permanent career for her but a cushy side-earner she can pick up and drop as easily as a phone receiver. She’s aware of the 1.6 million-strong Indian call center industry on the other side of the globe but is confident that, even in the face of recession, her job is too elite to fall into the hands of offshore operators.
Is Amy's confidence in the safety of her job justified? Aspirants looking to bag Amy’s position must have “good self-motivation, a personable phone manner, excellent communication skills” - and, to read between the lines, a voice fit to cut glass and dine with Princess Anne. I put this description to Rajat Kothary, whose decades-long career in the Indian call center industry with Convergys and E-Excel Services – two of the leading players in India offering “offshore customer services” - makes him something of a guru in the field.
Rajat homed in first on “personable phone manners’: “Today, the big call centers train their agents to really get into the psyche of the client country. In a typical month-long training programme, the agent has to absorb the country's culture. He learns about their transportation, religion, holidays - that way, he’s able to be much more friendly and understanding.”
This nightmare vision of a ‘more British than the Brits’ workforce who know their Harrods from their Harvey Nicks and can recite a recipe for Yorkshire pud has long been a subject of horrified fascination for the British public. Slumdog Millionaire, in having its protagonist attend just such a ‘cultural immersion’ class (albeit as a chai wallah) was merely probing an already sore spot. However, such professional ‘Anglicization’ hardly threatens Amy. While Indian operators may be able to chat about Kate Moss and real ale, they lack the real life experience that could give their persuasive banter the ring of authenticity. Amy’s ability to prompt alumni into donating to their old schools is reliant, to a large extent, on genuine shared ground.
If Amy wins on ‘personable manners’, what about ‘communication skills?’ According to Rajat, when the industry was in its infancy in the early 2000s, the dominant focus was on accent. Now emphasis is placed on what he calls the ‘neutral voice’: “Companies are no longer going for mimicry of a given accent. They’re concerned solely with clear communication – the agent has to be understood.” While I wonder exactly what such a voice might sound like, the prioritization of neutrality seems fitting for a multicultural Britain in which so-called 'Queen’s English' has definitely toppled from the throne. It's no longer acceptable to presume that even Amy’s public-school alumni possess Received Pronunciation across the board. While the irony is striking, Indian agents may be more adept at communicating with clients who speak in a variety of regional accents. Although school-taught English in the subcontinent is still definitely RP, several Indian call center companies have incorporated regional accent tutoring into their rigorous training schedule.
What about “good motivation”: the third criteria given by Amy’s company? The boom centers in the three main 'communication' metros – Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore – house agents in their tens of thousands. Such work conditions notoriously breed faceless, unmotivated, and therefore inefficient workers. Then there’s the time difference, meaning many operators face night shifts, disrupting both their body clock and their social and family life. The ensuing low morale, I hazard, must affect call success rate. As a quality analyst, Rajat’s duty was not only to listen in on calls for deviation or bad practice, but also to intervene if agent’s cracked up or broke down while on call: “I used to get 20 or 30 people a day, a lot of girls, who would just start crying while on the line because of client abuse. The guy on the other end probably resented being called from ‘somewhere in the East’ and just let rip. And the night shifts aren’t meant for everybody. There are lots of people who quit after just one or two shifts.”
Yet Rajat is quick to explode my dreary vision of plugged in drones: “The Indian industry has seriously bought into the concept of R&R (Rest and Recuperation). There’s competitions, various fun activities in the office – people can’t wait to go to work the next day. Lots of the larger companies have introduced events outside of work time to encourage employees to socialize within themselves.” The clincher, of course, is the high wages provided by such multinational or outsourced companies. The wages in turn add glamour and social status to the position. Rajat remembers with a chuckle how his relatives were less than impressed with his new job as an agent at the start of the call center boom: "They said ‘You’re answering the phone. What’s so good about that? And you’re working at night. Thieves work at night." The company advertisement hadn’t even offered a job description as such, but mentioned a ‘5 star hotel-like position’. Nearly a decade on, with millions of educated career-orientated young Indians gagging for their slice of the ever-expanding call center pie, this once-cheeky ad is not far from the truth.
It seems, then, that the biggest threat to Amy’s job is her own nonchalant attitude. Her company, of course, is expert in fostering the competitive spirit. I remember Amy flushed with excitement, returning home with sackloads of freebies, once even a bottle of foul-tasting champagne. But despite due attention to employee morale, British call centers will never be able to foster the kind of motivational atmosphere found in their Indian counterparts. This is because the equivalent jobs are profoundly less desirable in the UK. Most call centers in Britain would not even dream of skimming the cream of the degree-holding crop to fill their full-time agent positions.
Amy might be able to talk to her heart's content about quads, 'prep' and tapioca pudding with an authenticity which an Indian-educated operator could never possess (no matter how many Hardy Boys books he'd read). But her minimal training in comparison to her India counterparts puts her at a disadvantage in terms of general communication skills. The jewel in her crown, her flawless Received Pronunciation, is no longer the ultimate weapon in Britain that it was only decades ago. Weighing the balance, Amy's side-earner is probably safe, at least until she ceases to need the extra cash. What the comparison shows, however, is the growing might of the Indian call center and its ability to threaten even the most coveted niches of the industry.
Niki Seth-Smith is a British journalist with The Statesman. ‘Making the Call’ is the fourth in a series viewing Kolkata through a Londoner’s eyes.
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