Indian Call Centres

When businesses are young and we call them, we speak to the boss - as happens with my own tiny company. As they grow, many companies acquire the services of a receptionist or personal assistant to the owner. He or she then answers the phone instead of the owner, and this person becomes a line of defence when people call the business. With a receptionist installed, the owner can easily be “unavailable” or “in a meeting” at any time. This constitutes:

Stage One -  Client Displacement.

As a company grows, it can have many departments, between which we callers can be cheerfully passed, and almost all responsibility can be satisfactorily avoided. This constitutes:

Stage Two -  Displaced, and confused.

Then, when a company reaches its pinnacle, it employs a call-centre, full of people with no knowledge of the business whatsoever. Armed only with a handful of scripts, the eager, or not-so-eager, call centre employees happily ring us up and read those scripts out to us. As clients, we feel undervalued and, frankly, pushed away. This constitutes:

Stage Three - Complete displacement

Stage three was, up until recently, the ultimate in distancing the customer from the company - and most employers agreed that it was working a treat. Rarely was there any danger at all that a customer might get through to someone with the power to help with their problem. Customers felt completely pushed away and utterly devalued.

Job done. Or so we thought.

I can only imagine the smiles on the faces of Britain's business elite, when they realised that they could kill two birds with one stone by moving those call centres to India.

By using Indian call centres, costs were greatly reduced, because Indian workers are very comfortable with being paid next to nothing for their work. Not only that, but customers are now both culturally and physically removed from the companies they call.

The only barrier is the high cost of calls to and from India. But wait - that was all a lie!  International calls don't really cost an arm and a leg after all - certainly not if you buy in bulk and use 'B' grade carriers, often TCP/IP based. (ie. Internet carriers)

So there you have it - there simply is no downside, and those worthy business people have truly discovered:

Stage Four - Total Rejection

Now, we have to speak to people who do not know where “Der-ham” is, and who take 3 seconds to respond because the the time-lag. Line quality is poor and there is a feeling that we would do a lot better with a form or maybe some sort of automated system.

This is not the fault of the worthy and smashing people in Bangolore, who are justifiably trying to earn an honest crust - many of them staying up really late studying English in order to serve us better. They are great people - but they are being asked to do the impossible.

The companies concerned have been very up-front about all this. The Indian call centre thing is all about them saving money. Nothing else. We felt rejected enough by the British call centres - to move those call-centres abroad was always going to make it worse.

For a while, they had me on the 'back-foot' by suggesting I was being racist, but that really is not the case. It's about calling through to someone who has to wrestle with a huge time-lag, a foreign language, a lack of local knowledge and an inability to make the key decisions that matter.

They are disempowered, we feel frustrated and rejected.  Lose - lose.

I think this is one manifestation of greed that the great British public will not tolerate.

Comments

[Jason]

You ARE a racist though, aren't you? When will these companies realise that the real answer is to use dangerous convicts, orphaned children, or the terminally ill to manage call centres - none of whome would require ANY payment, bringing the jobs and services back to Britain AND saving us money. Win - win - ker-ching.

[John Cooper]

A few month ago I needed to talk to the bank about a DD which had come out of my wife and my account. I got through to a call centre and tried to get it sorted out, but because the DD was for my wife only they would not speak to me about it - evn though it was a joint account which the money had come out of. I asked them to put me through to my branch but no luck. I eventually had to ring back and LIE to get through to the branch and they have now given me there direct number. The point is it took me 30 mins to sort out something which would have taken 2 minutes to my actual bank. Why not employ 1 person to do admin and answer the phones here rather thatn loads to act as buffers elsewhere in the world.

[Liz]

Quite John, couldn't agree more. The thing I struggle with is being polite to the people who are reading their scripts whether it be when I've rung up with and enquiry or it's a cold call from some company. After all, they're only doing their job .... why should they feel my annoyance? But then it's impossible to get through to someone who is responsible to express that annoyance. So, as you say Andy, it's lose - lose, for everyone.

[Mr Mavin]

I am too angry to post a meaningful post

[Gary]

Its bad enough that this government allows these freeloaders to enter our country to infest our lives but they are taking our jobs from the comfort of there own mud hut.
btw im passionate about my country, if that makes me a racist then so be it!!!!

[AndyC]

I'm not going to remove your comment Gary - but I do think it's sad that these kinds of racist views still exist.

I was careful to keep my comments relevant to the quality of the service - which is what is so frustrating.

You, on the other hand, are making openly racist comments from the relative safety of your AOL account.

I wish to disassociate myself completely from what you are saying. These kinds of xenophobic and racist statements are in no way representative of AndyBlog or what I believe.

I leave the comment here, only because I believe in free speech. No other reason.

[Angela]

Recently I've had problems with my internet connection. I rang BT and got through to THE INDIAN CALL CENTRE. She told me I didn't live at my address then gave instructions on how to unplug my modem, computer etc then replug it in a minute later. Rocket science or what? She also wouldn't (or couldn't?) reply to any of my questions, probably because they weren't on her 'script'. Unfortunately the operator got the sharp end of my temper when it's really the fault of some BT big wig. Such is ....

[AndyC]

You read postings this old, Ange?

Sadly, your experience is similar to a great many people. I just wish companies would take some responsibility for their goods and services.

I hope people pressure will win the day.

[Laura]

I recently had two experiences of indian call centres. i am, in no way, racist, but it irritates the hell out of me to get an indian on the other end, who cannot understand what i am asking, who doesnt answer my questions, and who keeps repeating themselves endlessly in the hope that the information they are giving me, might be useful, even though it wasnt on the prevous 7 times they said it.
The 2 recent experiences i had were with BT and a tv station who broadcast on sky, incredibly they were using an indian call centre.
On the latter one, the person i was speaking to told me they were unable to help me as they didnt have the answer to that question in front of them and told me to email the company instead (the question was in fact, when their website would be back up and running! so how could i email them when their site wasnt working to give me the email address to sent the email to?!). I asked them for the email address, they didnt know it.
Its nuts, the whole world has gone potty and we're just supposed to sit and let it happen.