An Indian Footnote

Whilst I completely standby my earlier comments about UK call centres being sited in India, a few extra thoughts have now emerged - and I thought I would share them with you.

The first is simply that I have now had my first successful call with an Indian call centre. Why was it good?

• The line was clear
• There was no delay
• The lady seemed to understand what i was talking about throughout the call
• She was helpful, and had a sense of humour
• She understood her own level of functionality well, and did everything she could to help, but knew her limitations as well.
• Her accent was not so strong that I couldn't understand her.
• I felt as if I had been genuinely helped

I was  pretty surprised that all of this was true, and I wonder if she was really in Manchester after all - except that there was no trace of any regional accent at all. Nevertheless, it made me realise that these Indian call centres can get there if they try very hard indeed.

They need to achieve the following:

There must be a clear telephone line with little or no delay. It really doesn't matter who is on the other end if we struggle all the time to hear what the other is saying. So, they need to shell out for more expensive phone lines in many cases.

Language - The accent has to be clear enough not to put Joe Public into “struggle” mode, Indian vowels are very different to English vowels, so this is no easy task. I would certainly struggle to speak an Indian language like Hindi, so it's understandable that they would struggle to speak my language.

That point about understanding her own level of functionality is a crucial one. In some cases, escalating the issue dealt with means referring to a UK call centre, and so the Indian person feels that they have “failed” if they do this. The result is that they become, in some cases, too keen to keep control of the call, leading to the customer feeling like they are not being listened to. We already feel like call centres are brick walls, designed to prevent contact with the company, rather than to further it - let's not make the problem worse.

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Two final thoughts:

I've always hated call centres - many people do. This move to India has had just one good side-effect. Now, when I get through to a person from the UK, I feel a kind of joy and gratefullness that was never present before.

Someone was eagerly joining in with me on this topic and started to say, “Yes and they even use them in English call centres as well - it's a bloody disgrace.”

Ouch. That's not what I mean at all.  Indian people in this country who work in call centres are, on the whole, extremely good, in my experience. It may be for precisely this reason that India was selected in the first place. Not only that, but many have broader accents than I have - and I'm talking Glaswegian, Geordie, Brummy etc.  This is not a racist issue, it's about Language, Clear Communication, Local Knowledge, Job Knowledge and Line Quality.