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Some Indian call centres resorting to trickery
As the Philippine call centre industry plays catch up with India, the latter is doing all it can to diversify — and put customers at ease
NOIDA, INDIA–It’s a few minutes before midnight on a recent evening and Warren Rungsung can smell a sale.
Sitting in a crowded call centre in Noida, a fast-growing suburb on the outskirts of New Delhi, Rungsung has spent 10 minutes chatting up Dave, a man in his 30s who lives in Chicago. Rungsung has been trying to convince Dave to buy erectile dysfunction medication.
A handsome 21-year-old from Manipur, a state in northeast India, Rungsung rubs his hands together. He’s drawn Dave into a surprisingly intimate conversation about bedroom anxieties and Dave seems ready to place an order.
But first a seemingly innocuous question: “Where you calling from?” Dave asks over a crackly phone connection.
Rungsung doesn’t miss a beat as he answers, “Calgary, Canada.”
His fingers fly over his keyboard as he types “Calgary forecast.”
“It’s nice today,” he says as a five-day forecast for the Canadian city pops up on his screen. “But we may get rain tomorrow.”
Rungsung’s trickery speaks to the uncertain times India’s call centre industry is facing.
India’s call centres — a key cog in the country’s championed services industry — have been going through hard times as anger has simmered in North America over jobs being outsourced overseas. The issue is a political minefield and in some call centres, including this one in Noida, employees are convinced it’s easier to say they’re calling from Canada.
“It’s believable,” Rungsung’s boss Sandip Mehra says with a shrug and a grin.
Perhaps a laid off General Motors worker in Michigan would be less likely to snap at a caller from Calgary rather than one from India, the thinking goes. It’s also easier to coax a U.S. customer to provide credit-card information for a purchase if they think they’re dealing with someone “next door” in Canada.
“Many scams are happening right now and Canada is close to the U.S.,” Mehra says. “With everything going on, people think it’s less risky to send your information to Canada.”
That kind of deception isn’t isolated, industry officials say.
It’s standard practice in so-called “accent neutralization” classes to teach new employees how to sound North American.
In a chilly office two floors below Rungsung’s cubicle, an instructor gives nine new employees tips for pronouncing words like “turtle” and “bucket” as westerners do. She is quick to correct her students’ efforts.
“Please don’t take this criticism to heart,” she says, as an air conditioner roars and her new colleagues scribble notes.
But as any Anglophone studying French knows, it’s not easy to disguise an accent and the Indian accent remains a point of contention for some clients.
That’s good news for the Philippines, where locals are said to speak with an American accent, and bad news for India.
The Philippines’ share of the call centre industry has climbed from virtually zero a decade ago to 15 per cent. Meanwhile, India’s share of the market, while growing in value, has fallen to 40 per cent from about 80 per cent in 2004, the Wall Street Journal reported recently.
Earlier this year, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, president of the Philippines, boasted that her nation “with 90 million people has challenged India’s one billion population for (call centre) supremacy.”
India’s call centre business is also under fire from the World Trade Organization, which charges that the lengthy tax holidays enjoyed here by call centre companies are inappropriate.
But don’t count Indian call centres out just yet — many have begun diversifying.
At Genpact, one of the world’s largest outsourcing companies with 37,000 employees, call centre business now accounts for just one-fifth of company revenue, says chief operating officer Tiger Tyagarajan.
“It’s all about value added services,’ he says.
For one western-based financial services company, Genpact’s employees produce daily sales decks.
If the potential customer has leased a power plant, the financial services salesperson can immediately access information such as the lease rate and when it expires. “They spend less time researching and more time selling,” Tyagarajan says.
Told of Rungsung’s cunning, Tyagarajan nodded and said it’s become widespread practice among smaller industry players.
By contrast, Genpact’s call centre employees would try a different tactic. For instance, if they were phoning a customer in Boston who was overdue on paying their credit-card debt, they might start the call by saying that while the were calling from New Delhi, they were aware of a recent storm in the Boston area which might have caused the client to miss making their payment.
Back in Noida, Manoj Kumar Singh sits next to Rungsung and is similarly midway through his shift. The two started work at 6:30 p.m. and took a break around 10:30 for a piece of pizza. They make their last call to a customer each night at around 3:30 a.m.
Over the course of their shift, they figure to make 400-plus calls and speak to at least 20 or 30 potential customers everywhere from California to Florida.
Singh says some customers have asked him to become “friends” on the social networking website Facebook so he’s set up a fake profile using the name Darius Black, a name he also uses during sales calls.
“You really do have some people out there who just want to talk,” Singh says. “If it helps make the sale we do it.”
As the Philippine call centre industry plays catch up with India, the latter is doing all it can to diversify — and put customers at ease
NOIDA, INDIA–It’s a few minutes before midnight on a recent evening and Warren Rungsung can smell a sale.
Sitting in a crowded call centre in Noida, a fast-growing suburb on the outskirts of New Delhi, Rungsung has spent 10 minutes chatting up Dave, a man in his 30s who lives in Chicago. Rungsung has been trying to convince Dave to buy erectile dysfunction medication.
A handsome 21-year-old from Manipur, a state in northeast India, Rungsung rubs his hands together. He’s drawn Dave into a surprisingly intimate conversation about bedroom anxieties and Dave seems ready to place an order.
But first a seemingly innocuous question: “Where you calling from?” Dave asks over a crackly phone connection.
Rungsung doesn’t miss a beat as he answers, “Calgary, Canada.”
His fingers fly over his keyboard as he types “Calgary forecast.”
“It’s nice today,” he says as a five-day forecast for the Canadian city pops up on his screen. “But we may get rain tomorrow.”
Rungsung’s trickery speaks to the uncertain times India’s call centre industry is facing.
India’s call centres — a key cog in the country’s championed services industry — have been going through hard times as anger has simmered in North America over jobs being outsourced overseas. The issue is a political minefield and in some call centres, including this one in Noida, employees are convinced it’s easier to say they’re calling from Canada.
“It’s believable,” Rungsung’s boss Sandip Mehra says with a shrug and a grin.
Perhaps a laid off General Motors worker in Michigan would be less likely to snap at a caller from Calgary rather than one from India, the thinking goes. It’s also easier to coax a U.S. customer to provide credit-card information for a purchase if they think they’re dealing with someone “next door” in Canada.
“Many scams are happening right now and Canada is close to the U.S.,” Mehra says. “With everything going on, people think it’s less risky to send your information to Canada.”
That kind of deception isn’t isolated, industry officials say.
It’s standard practice in so-called “accent neutralization” classes to teach new employees how to sound North American.
In a chilly office two floors below Rungsung’s cubicle, an instructor gives nine new employees tips for pronouncing words like “turtle” and “bucket” as westerners do. She is quick to correct her students’ efforts.
“Please don’t take this criticism to heart,” she says, as an air conditioner roars and her new colleagues scribble notes.
But as any Anglophone studying French knows, it’s not easy to disguise an accent and the Indian accent remains a point of contention for some clients.
That’s good news for the Philippines, where locals are said to speak with an American accent, and bad news for India.
The Philippines’ share of the call centre industry has climbed from virtually zero a decade ago to 15 per cent. Meanwhile, India’s share of the market, while growing in value, has fallen to 40 per cent from about 80 per cent in 2004, the Wall Street Journal reported recently.
Earlier this year, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, president of the Philippines, boasted that her nation “with 90 million people has challenged India’s one billion population for (call centre) supremacy.”
India’s call centre business is also under fire from the World Trade Organization, which charges that the lengthy tax holidays enjoyed here by call centre companies are inappropriate.
But don’t count Indian call centres out just yet — many have begun diversifying.
At Genpact, one of the world’s largest outsourcing companies with 37,000 employees, call centre business now accounts for just one-fifth of company revenue, says chief operating officer Tiger Tyagarajan.
“It’s all about value added services,’ he says.
For one western-based financial services company, Genpact’s employees produce daily sales decks.
If the potential customer has leased a power plant, the financial services salesperson can immediately access information such as the lease rate and when it expires. “They spend less time researching and more time selling,” Tyagarajan says.
Told of Rungsung’s cunning, Tyagarajan nodded and said it’s become widespread practice among smaller industry players.
By contrast, Genpact’s call centre employees would try a different tactic. For instance, if they were phoning a customer in Boston who was overdue on paying their credit-card debt, they might start the call by saying that while the were calling from New Delhi, they were aware of a recent storm in the Boston area which might have caused the client to miss making their payment.
Back in Noida, Manoj Kumar Singh sits next to Rungsung and is similarly midway through his shift. The two started work at 6:30 p.m. and took a break around 10:30 for a piece of pizza. They make their last call to a customer each night at around 3:30 a.m.
Over the course of their shift, they figure to make 400-plus calls and speak to at least 20 or 30 potential customers everywhere from California to Florida.
Singh says some customers have asked him to become “friends” on the social networking website Facebook so he’s set up a fake profile using the name Darius Black, a name he also uses during sales calls.
“You really do have some people out there who just want to talk,” Singh says. “If it helps make the sale we do it.”
Those sneaky Indians.
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