US 800 Call Centers Mushroom In India - 'Hello, Y'all'

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.rense.com/general46/YLL.HTM

US 800 Call Centers Mushroom
In India - 'Hello, Y'all'
By Moni Basu
AJC.com Staff
12-18-3

BANGALORE, India - Ashwin Harithsa hurtles down a narrow, dusty lane on a two-wheeler, swipes his security card at the entrance of i-Seva and settles down in a fluorescent-lit cubicle, a headset hugging his right ear.

At 7:30 every evening, Harithsa becomes "Nathan," a project manager working for U.S. financial giant Citibank in Bangalore, India's answer to Silicon Valley.

His callers don't realize they are talking to a man on the other side of the planet.

Few Americans calling "800" numbers --- whether to seek a Citibank loan, to make reservations on Delta Air Lines or even to ask about their food stamp benefits --- would know they are calling India, the country that claims the largest share of corporate America's back office processing tasks overseas.

Indian contractors have aimed to prove that just about any administrative or service job that can be done over the phone or the Internet can be handled efficiently --- and far more cheaply --- in India.

"It's a very profitable business," said Chitralekha Narayan, 36, training manager for i-Seva, an information technology firm. "This industry is slated to just grow and grow and grow."

"Business process outsourcing," or BPO, includes all sorts of business, but call centers make up a huge chunk. And despite rumblings by unhappy U.S. workers who have lost their jobs to foreign firms, India's BPO sector is projected to grow as much as 30 percent in the next few years.

Already, 160,000 Indians are employed in call center operations. Unlike their U.S. counterparts who are usually high school graduates, Indians in the business boast degrees in computer science, engineering, law and even medicine.

India's call center industry accounts for a quarter of the software and service exports from the country, according to the National Association of Software and Service Companies. The market grew 59 percent to $2.3 billion between 2002 and 2003. Total employment is expected to reach 600,000 in three years.

"Offshore outsourcing is a win-win proposition," said Sunil Mehta, vice president of the association. "To remain globally competitive, American companies have to access talent --- wherever it is in the world --- at a lower cost."

Talent in the form of Harithsa, 24, and his 800 or so colleagues who staff i-Seva's two call centers. Their clients include AOL, Belkin, Symantec and Citibank. The company's six-story building comes alive every evening with the chatter of hundreds of phone calls. Posters on the walls contain large smiley faces with slogans such as "Think positive."

On America's East Coast, the day is just starting. And Nathan is ready.


He no longer speaks English with his thick Karnataka accent. Gone is the 24-year-old son of traditional South Indian parents who pushed him to become a mechanical engineer.

Dressed in denim, Nathan watches "Oprah," "Friends" and "Independence Day" to perfect his Americanization. He has viewed slides of actor George Clooney in classes on personal grooming. He has even sat through 48 hours of "accent neutralization" sessions, where he has learned to stress his r's and say, "Get outta here."

Nathan knows that it's 9 a.m. in California when it's noon in Georgia. He thinks New Yorkers are pushy and Texans lazy.

Chitchat about Braves

When a caller from Atlanta asks about the status of his loan application, Nathan makes small talk while looking up the account. He knows about Braves baseball and comments on the weather.

"Agents should not get lost or ever get caught off-guard while talking to American customers," said Persis Diana, 21, an American accent and culture instructor at i-Seva.

Call center agents work through the night and sometimes complain the hours are long, the work monotonous and often stressful. But the pay is relatively high for India at an average of $250 a month.

Agents are taken from their homes to their work stations in white SUVs --- on any given night, 6,000 of these vehicles navigate the streets of bustling Bangalore.

Ajit Isaac, who runs a Bangalore recruitment agency called People One Consulting, said he even met a dentist who wanted to be placed in a call center.

Besides the draw of good money, Isaac said, young Indians fall in love with the charm of working in an atmosphere that comes closest to being in America while maintaining the comfort of living at home with their parents in the traditional Indian way.

"It's quite appealing to them really," Isaac said. "They dress like Americans, carry the latest MP3 players and other gadgets. The cultural bandwidth is almost the same."

Backlash felt

But it isn't always smooth sailing.

Feeling heat from a increasingly vociferous anti-offshoring lobby in America, many Indian call centers, including one owned by MsourcE that services Georgia's electronic benefits helpline for food stamp and temporary cash recipients, are hesitant to discuss their contracts.

MsourcE refused to allow a reporter within its walls; the firm's agents who answer the helpline are instructed not to divulge their location.

Last month, Texas-based Dell directed some customer service calls back to staff in the United States after complaints that Indian technical support workers relied too heavily on scripted answers and were difficult to understand.

"Some people don't want to talk to Indians," said Namrata Yadav, 23, an agent for Daksh, whose clients include Amazon.com, Yahoo, Sprint and Delta Air Lines.

"I've had people ask me if I am sitting on an elephant or if I knew the positions of the Kama Sutra," Yadav said. "Others say they don't want to talk to terrorists. It can be disconcerting."

Yadav sympathized with U.S. workers losing their jobs because of outsourced contracts. But in the end, he and other agents said, it was America's notions of free trade that gave birth to their industry in the first place.

"Who are we to stop conglomerates from being business savvy?" asked i-Seva's Narayan. "What goes around comes around in this world."

INDIA Size: 1,269,346 square miles (about one-third the size of the United States). Capital: New Delhi. Population: 1.04 billion (July 2002 estimate). Racial/ethnic groups: 72 percent, Indo-Aryan; 25 percent, Dravidian; 3 percent, Mongoloid and other. Religious affiliations: 81.3 percent, Hindu; 12 percent, Muslim; 2.3 percent, Christian; 1.9 percent, Sikh; 2.5 percent, other, including Buddhist and Jain. Languages: English is the most important language for national, political and commercial communication. Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30 percent of the people; there are 14 other official languages. Government: Federal republic. Head of government: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. History: The Indus Valley civilization goes back at least 5,000 years. In modern times, Britain assumed political control of virtually all of India by the 19th century. Nonviolent resistance to British colonialism under Mohandas K. Gandhi led to independence in 1947. Sources: CIA World Factbook; World Book Encyclopedia; Research by ALICE WERTHEIM / Staff

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[skeeter]

I can tell when we are whipped.. We no longer can say we in America, are the best there is..

We are whipped, when we in this once "fine country" have to go aboard to get our business taken care of.
We are no longer a country that can brag, " we have the best people, best educated, best of what all others countries". once claimed the best country to live in.

We have taken our companies, moved them aboard so we can save a dollar for the rich, leave the working man here to become poor and struggle to survive in high taxes, and moral decline.

I once said some years ago, when I notice what was happening to this country, that before long we would have to send our young women(wives)to a foreign country to get pregnant, as everything else in made in a foreign country. I'll be dammed that may happen real soon.

We need a revolution here in this country... as fast.

[melody1181]

I am offended by the lazy remark about Texans myself. Let him meet my lazy Texan butt and i'll show him how a "lazy" person could woup him.

really though......There needs to be penalties for the companies doing this. Its ruining our country. It pisses me off. I have gotten some calls that were from indian people, I have come to know that usually if they have even the slightest accent from there, they arethere most of the time. I usually hang up. If that company wants anything to do with me then they better get an American workin for em.

I try not to call any of those numbers anymroe.