Call Center Services In India
India is the leading example of companies that host outsourced call center services from the United States. Selling points that help convince American companies to locate call center operations in India are the very low salaries, a large English-speaking population and an abundance of college graduates lining up for the work.
Just how low are the salaries? A typical worker in an Indian call center makes $350 to $450 per month for working full time. Compare that to the overall annual per capita income in India which is in the range of $500 - $800 depending on the source. Although the call center salaries seem horribly low by American standards, they are actually outstanding By Indian standards which is why the call centers are able to attract, and in fact even turn away, large numbers of college graduates. (As an interesting note, the per capita income (PCI) in the United States is approximately $40,000. If American call center agents were paid at the same ratio against PCI that Indian agents are - approximately 7.3 times PCI - American operators would make $295, 000 annually!)
Although Indians learn English in school, it is obviously not their native language. Call centers offer language neutralization classes to try get the employees to sound Americanized. They also take classes in American culture to help them understand the backgrounds of the callers as well as references the callers may make in conversation to things not directly related to the product or service in question. Another tactic is to have them adopt American names that either resemble their real names or are based on the name of their favorite Hollywood star.
Due to the time difference between the United States and India, call center agents there work largely overnight which is a more than reasonable trade off for the salaries relative to their peers. Also, agents work in modern, air-conditioned buildings which can be a luxury they are not used to.
Indian call center agents report a backlash from some American callers when they detect they are speaking to an overseas representative. Although taking abuse from inconsiderate callers is an unfortunate aspect of any customer service phone position, this can be extreme when callers accuse the operators of stealing American jobs and hurl racial slurs at them.
Taking all things into account, the trend towards outsourcing to Indian call centers is likely to continue since the pay is so high from their perspective and the cost savings from American companies' perspectives are so huge.
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