Are Indian Telereps the Victims of Racism?
Indian call center reps can’t take it any more. They are quitting over the abuse they get from British and American customers. And obviously, this abuse is prompted by racism and resentment over offshore outsourcing, right?
Not quite, according to an article by Simon Caulkin in The Observer.
To blame the anger on “racism and the effects of offshoring is to ignore the fact that belligerent customers are a major stress factor for U.K. and U.S. call centers, too,” Caulkin writes.
“Does that cause a dim light to go on somewhere?” he continues. “It should. The important thing is that customers have had it up to here, everywhere, and their reasons are everywhere the same.
What are they upset about?
“At bottom, companies are still producing to suit themselves rather than the customer. ‘We don’t care about the color of the person we’re talking to,” says professor Harry Scarbrough, director of the U.K. economic and Social Research Council’s evolution of Business Knowledge program. “But we do care about being fobbed off with people working to a script. Call centers don’t have the knowledge available in a local bank branch or shop. What customers get is knowledge that is pre-packed, shallow, mass-produced and inflexible. People don’t like that.”
But aren’t call center reps being served with data in real time? And doesn’t this enable them to deal one-on-one with customers?
Caulkin doesn’t see much of that, especially in the offshore call centers.
“The problem starts with the distance of the call center from the reset of the organization, metaphorically as well as literally. It ought to be the company’s window on the world, a vital and sensitive two-way connection with customer; instead, all too often it is a bolt-on cost center, a lowest-cost sponge for mopping up the mess of initial product inadequacy.”
Worse yet, he thinks they’re run on a 19th century model, and with “toxic western management techniques.”
Is it as bad as all that? Or is this really just a wake-up call? Please send your views on this flap to [email protected].
