[May 6, 2005]

Call Center Workers Allowed to Hang Up

By David Sims, TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist

India's call-center workers have had enough.

With more and more call-center companies deciding that hanging up on the rudest callers is no longer a sackable offence, the days when irate western callers could unleash torrents of abuse on captive offshore workers across India are coming to an end.

“I think it's a fantastic development,” says Sunil Mehta, vice-president of Nasscom, India's software industry lobby, speaking to Financial Times. “Indians are by nature courteous towards foreigners, but there can be too much of a good thing and companies increasingly provide assertiveness training. If people felt in the past they had to be polite in the face of brazen rudeness, now they say, ‘I don't think I do.’”

The problem is not merely rudeness, according to IndiaDaily: “ Perversion and sexual urges in some make the people from Western countries abuse the Indian girls over phone working at call centers. These well-educated, elite society girls take the abuse to earn a much average salary from these call centers servicing American and European companies.”

The shift marks a significant moment in India's call-center industry, which is again on the front foot now that the protectionist backlash of last year's US presidential election has receded.

Anti-offshoring lobbies have barely exploited a recent security glitch at Mphasis, a Bangalore-based outsourcing company that allowed $350,000 to be stolen from Citibank account holders in New York.

“What to do with abusive callers is decided at contract stage with each client,” says Santanu Choudhury, chief operating officer of business process outsourcing at GTL, a Mumbai-based IT services company.

IndiaDaily reports that not only can workers end the call, “they can also blacklist the person and put him in the ‘Do Not Call’ list. This way other executives are spared from calling the person up in the future.”

Sonal Raje, a team leader from Global Telesystem Ltd, says “Hanging up in the middle of a conversation is not acceptable in our profession, but when they turn abusive we can now disconnect the lines politely, which was not the case earlier.”

Most service agreements will not permit operators to hang up on incoming calls from customers.

Rules for “outbound” marketing calls are more flexible.

Diana Christian, head of training at Stream, a call-center operation in Mumbai, teaches workers a “traffic light” escalation system. When the customer is happy, the light is green.

If voices are raised, it turns orange.

David Sims is contributing editor and CRM Alert columnist for TMCnet.

To discover how contact centers can save money and increase productivity by making the switch to IP Telephony, be sure to attend TMC's IP Contact Center Summit May 24-26, 2005, in Dallas, Texas. IP Contact Center Summit is co-located with the Speech-World conference, where you can get expert guidance in the deployment of speech technologies to strengthen customer relationships.