Layoffs in India.
Krishna
All major companies in India have shown either the pink slips
or reduced their workforce or are going slow on recruitment.
I am in touch with many placement consultants in India
and all of them say one thing about : No Recruitments in IT as of now.
The Call Center business is set to grow in India.
If anyone is serious we can discuss possibilities.
Krishna
yello...@freedom.net
> All major companies are laying of programmers, workers.
Good.
>
> All major companies in India have shown either the pink slips
> or reduced their workforce or are going slow on recruitment.
Good.
>
> I am in touch with many placement consultants in India
> and all of them say one thing about : No Recruitments in IT as of now.
Good. Wow! Your writing skills are good and I like what you are
writing too!
>
> The Call Center business is set to grow in India.
> If anyone is serious we can discuss possibilities.
So now Bombay is advertising? (IP trace) You've drained us of
programming work and now you are going to start on Service Reps? Or
more likely finish off on them.
Over a 3 day period my answering machine had close to 50 hang up
messages on it. I assumed a telemarketer but wasn't sure. *69 told
me that the # was "out of area" and couldn't trace it. I turned the
machine off and waited as they called me from 1pm to about 8pm. It
was MCI's telemarketing. I asked if they were in their main US office
in NY. Then I heard laughter in the background and he said "I'm in
Africa". Needless to say I told them NEVER CALL THIS NUMBER AGAIN.
So I guess "Krishna" you will be in competition for the low end jobs
now from your African friends.
Where is the US in all of this?
Sandy
InsuranceBroker
>From: sam...@vsnl.com (Krishna)
>Date: 9/3/2001 12:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <30fbe2f.01090...@posting.google.com>
>The Call Center business is set to grow in India.
>If anyone is serious we can discuss possibilities.
>
>Krishna
I hope you speek Chinese because just about when you get that center going your
going to have a red star in you front yard
Doing Insurance business in the Garden State
st1960
understanding of underlaying culture (i.e. that customer service is king, a
concept alien to most non-USians).
Will be interesting to see if it works, but I doubt it.
st
<yello...@freedom.net> wrote in message
news:tp7icbi...@corp.supernews.com...
yello...@freedom.net
> Outsourcing call centers *will* fail because good reps have to have a good
> understanding of underlaying culture (i.e. that customer service is king, a
> concept alien to most non-USians).
Have you read that they are being trained in ettiquette? The US form
of ettiquette? Seriously. US co's are sending them to school to
learn US culture, ways to speak, and overall manners in the way that
Americans are accustomed to hear. There were recent articles on it in
InfoWorld, EWeek, and even a few months ago in the Sunday NY Times
Magazine (which was very revealing btw as to Indians in Bangelore
watching shows like 90210 to learn how to speak like Americans and
even some of our favorite shows and pastimes). You might still be
able to find them online.
Scary. Co-opting an entire culture for $$.
So they are not only training them in technology, but in "our ways" of
doing things verbally.
>
> Will be interesting to see if it works, but I doubt it.
>
I hope you are right but I think at this point it's shoveling sh*t
against the tide.
Bloody Viking
Krishna (sam...@vsnl.com) wrote:
: The Call Center business is set to grow in India.
Damn. I guess a wage marginally better than a burger job is too much.
--
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 100 calories are used up in the course of a mile run.
The USDA guidelines for dietary fibre is equal to one ounce of sawdust.
The liver makes the vast majority of the cholesterol in your bloodstream.
http://www.ripco.com/~nospam/
CUIDADO: Las Puertas Estan Listas Para Cerrar.
Bloody Viking
st1960 (st1...@att.net) wrote:
: Outsourcing call centers *will* fail because good reps have to have a good
: understanding of underlaying culture (i.e. that customer service is king, a
: concept alien to most non-USians).
Telemarketers already outsource these evil call centres. Even if they have to
hire a dialect coach to erase the accent, the chance to pay them a dime an
hour is enough.
InsuranceBroker
>From: nos...@ripco.com (Bloody Viking)
>Date: 9/9/2001 6:06 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <9ngp5i$p06$2...@gail.ripco.com>
>Telemarketers already outsource these evil call centres. Even if they have to
>
>hire a dialect coach to erase the accent, the chance to pay them a dime an
>hour is enough.
Anyone who does not have caller ID should get it. "out of area" should never
be answered. One is basically stupid to buy anything from a telemarketer. It
is one sure way to get hundreds of calls. India can have all the telemarketing
jobs as far as I am concerned.
Kev
through millions into poverty and finally you ahve your global market.
Bloody Viking
InsuranceBroker (insur...@aol.com) wrote:
: Anyone who does not have caller ID should get it. "out of area" should never
: be answered. One is basically stupid to buy anything from a telemarketer. It
: is one sure way to get hundreds of calls. India can have all the telemarketing
: jobs as far as I am concerned.
I do one better. I no longer answer the phone at all, but my fax sure beeps a
lot from the wardialers. I drop the carrier, and quite often some wardialer
was demon-dialling me becuse the line is busy and I get the beep of yet
another wardialer getting my e- flipping the bird.
Worse, as you are getting financially nuked from a job injury and bill
collectors call, they set their wardialer to NOT killfile number if they get a
fax modem. It's to a point of a denial of service attack in that case. I call
others, they don't call me. I do outgoing calls only on the home phone. I use
a beeper for incoming calls.
Now, if there was only a way to bounce snailspam automatically.
Bloody Viking
Kev (jav...@yahoo.com) wrote:
: Exactly like I have said wipe out hte middle class completely and
: through millions into poverty and finally you ahve your global market.
With nobody to be able to buy anything.
st1960
I know from experience :-).
Culture, that is MUCH more difficult. If the dot-telemarketer is running off
a script, he's as good as the script, and that's not saying much. A good
pitch is a customized, personalized pitch, which the dot-telemarketers can't
do.
st
Bloody Viking <nos...@ripco.com> wrote in message
news:9ngp5i$p06$2...@gail.ripco.com...
Margaret Bartley
telemarketers.
If you have a question about a charge on your credit card,
or a strange long distance company shows up on your monthly
phone bill, or you have a question about an order that you
placed with your local department store, chances are good
that you either are, or soon will be, talking to someone in
India.
Amazon employees were talking about unionizing. Amazon just
fired all it's Seattle customer support reps, and shipped
the whole job to India. I remember reading that American
Express is mostly in India. I got some really confusing
phone charges for several months running, so I called the
customer support number on the phone bill, which was some
kind of consolidated mega-corp that handles 300 different
long distance companies. I was talking with a customer
support representative in India.
InsuranceBroker <insur...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010909232226...@mb-md.aol.com...
yello...@freedom.net
> The thing about call centers is that they are not all
> telemarketers.
>
> If you have a question about a charge on your credit card,
> or a strange long distance company shows up on your monthly
> phone bill, or you have a question about an order that you
> placed with your local department store, chances are good
> that you either are, or soon will be, talking to someone in
> India.
MCI is in Africa.
I really wonder what's going to happen to all of these places once war
breaks out in them? I guess customer support, not to mention all of
those brilliant minds taking third world countries like the US into an
e-business future will be
POOF.
InsuranceBroker
>Date: 9/21/2001 7:58 AM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <tqmas3b...@corp.supernews.com>
>
>MCI is in Africa.
>
>I really wonder what's going to happen to all of these places once war
>breaks out in them?
Who cares. let the CEO defend thier interests. Do you really want an
American kids to go get shot to protect the interest of some money grub who
would not hire the kid in the first place. They wanted Africa so let them have
the benefits that goes with being outside of the United States.>I guess
customer support, not to mention all of
>those brilliant minds taking third world countries like the US into an
>e-business future will be
>POOF.
Poof...more like Bang but as I stated who really cares.
Bloody Viking
yello...@freedom.net wrote:
: MCI is in Africa.
MCI is a scum company anyways.
: I really wonder what's going to happen to all of these places once war
: breaks out in them? I guess customer support, not to mention all of
: those brilliant minds taking third world countries like the US into an
: e-business future will be
: POOF.
I wouldn't call it "customer support" to ship the phone answering jobs to
places where people have accents with an afterburner. If the customer can't
understand the "support rep" it is not customer support. A lot of people
cannot understand a full power Aussie accent, let alone an Indian accent with
the afterburner on.
Bloody Viking
InsuranceBroker (insur...@aol.com) wrote:
: Who cares. let the CEO defend thier interests. Do you really want an
: American kids to go get shot to protect the interest of some money grub who
: would not hire the kid in the first place. They wanted Africa so let them
: have the benefits that goes with being outside of the United States.
I agree with that.
yello...@freedom.net
>
> yello...@freedom.net wrote:
>
> : MCI is in Africa.
>
> MCI is a scum company anyways.
You are being too nice.
>
> : I really wonder what's going to happen to all of these places once war
> : breaks out in them? I guess customer support, not to mention all of
> : those brilliant minds taking third world countries like the US into an
> : e-business future will be
> : POOF.
>
> I wouldn't call it "customer support" to ship the phone answering jobs to
> places where people have accents with an afterburner. If the customer can't
> understand the "support rep" it is not customer support. A lot of people
> cannot understand a full power Aussie accent, let alone an Indian accent with
> the afterburner on.
Actually there was a very good NY Times magazine article on this:
(Ever wonder why all customer service reps seem to have name's that
are "whitebread"? )
March 21, 2001
Hi, I'm in Bangalore (but I Dare Not Tell)
By MARK LANDLER
Namas Bhojani for The New York Times
Nishara Anthony (aka Naomi Morrison), left, and C.R. Suman (aka Susan
Sanders) are all-American at work in Bangalore, India.
BANGALORE, India, March 15 — With frosted glass and funky amber lights
playing off the turquoise walls, the offices of Customer Asset look
more like a Santa Fe diner than a telephone call center in southern
India. The cultural vertigo is complete when employees introduce
themselves to a visitor.
"Hi, my name is Susan Sanders, and I'm from Chicago," said C. R.
Suman, 22, who is in fact a native of Bangalore and fields calls from
customers of a telecommunications company in the United States.
Ms. Suman's fluent English and broad vowels would pass muster in the
stands at Wrigley Field. In case her callers ask personal questions,
Ms. Suman has conjured up a fictional American life, with parents Bob
and Ann, brother Mark and a made-up business degree from the
University of Illinois.
"We watch a lot of `Friends' and `Ally McBeal' to learn the right
phrases," Ms. Suman said. "When people talk about their Bimmer, you
have to know they mean a BMW."
"Or when they say `No way, José,' there is no José," added Ms. Suman's
co-worker, Nishara Anthony, who goes by the name Naomi Morrison and,
if asked, says she comes from Perth Amboy, N.J.
The point of this pretense is to convince Americans who dial toll-
free numbers that the person on the other end of the line works right
nearby — not 8,300 miles away, in a country where static- free calls
used to be a novelty.
Call centers are a booming business in India, as companies like
General Electric and British Airways set up supermarket-size phone
banks to handle a daily barrage of customer inquiries. The companies
value India for its widespread use of English and low-cost labor.
But call centers are only the low end of a much larger industry of
Indian software developers, transcribers, accountants, Web site
designers and animation artists who work on projects for foreign
companies from Indian offices. By 2008, such assignments will generate
800,000 new jobs and $17 billion in revenue for India, according to
the consultants McKinsey & Company.
"India is on its way to being the back office for the world," said
Shriram Ramdas, one of the founders of Bangalore Labs, which manages
Web sites and other information networks for companies from a
futuristic office in the International Tech Park on the outskirts of
Bangalore.
Doing back-office chores for advanced economies may not sound
glamorous, especially for a nation that has created an $8 billion
computer software industry virtually from scratch in the last decade.
But it could spread the wealth of India's technology revolution beyond
the pockets of prosperity that exist today in Bangalore, Hyderabad and
a few other hubs of high technology.
"Right now, when you come to our campus, you're leaving India behind,"
said N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman of Infosys Technologies, one
of India's most successful software companies and the first to be
listed on Nasdaq. "We're living in a make-believe world."
With its putting green, aerobics studio, basketball court and even a
deer park, the Infosys headquarters is a powerful symbol of what
technology has brought to India since the late 1980's. Companies like
Infosys and the rival Wipro Ltd. are deeply embedded in the microchips
of dozens of the largest American businesses.
Unlike Taiwan or South Korea, which became known as low-cost producers
of computer hardware, India made its name as an unparalleled customer
service agent. While their American clients sleep, software writers
churn out code, which is then beamed by satellite to the United
States.
These services became so valuable that the founders of Infosys and
Wipro were able to take their companies public at dot-com-like
valuations. Mr. Murthy became a billionaire, and stock options
showered unheard-of riches on even low-level employees. The man who
serves tea to Mr. Murthy recently cashed in his options to buy a
$100,000 house. His driver bought his own car.
About 2.8 million people work in India's technology industry, even
with a steady exodus of top software developers to Silicon Valley or
suburban Boston. Yet the industry, despite its breakneck growth, still
accounts for only 2 percent of India's total economic output of $450
billion.
For all the talk about the Indian technology revolution, the
technology industry has made only a glancing impression on the
physical landscape of the country. Bangalore is ringed by technology
parks that could be in Palo Alto or Austin. But the city itself is a
mess, with potholed roads, crumbling buildings and a ramshackle,
overburdened airport with no international flights.
For technology to make a dent in the pervasive poverty of this
country, Mr. Murthy contends, it must account for 10 percent of
India's gross domestic product. At current growth rates, India will
have a $900 billion economy in 2010; technology would then have to be
a $90 billion industry. "We need to broaden the base of technology in
India," Mr. Murthy said. "This new business will be very valuable as a
way to generate jobs for people who are not as skilled as software
programmers."
Although back-office work is not particularly challenging for a
company like Infosys, Mr. Murthy said he would consider expanding into
it, if only to create thousands of more jobs in Bangalore.
Jobs in call centers are coveted here. While the salaries are hardly
lucrative by technology industry standards — anywhere from $1,600 to
$2,100 a year — they beat those for most clerical positions.
"In the U.S., these jobs are taken by housewives or kids who haven't
decided what they want to do with their lives," said K. Ghanesh, 39,
the founder of Customer Asset. "Here, they are career jobs for college
graduates."
The back-office business may help cushion India from the economic
slowdown in the United States. As companies cut their spending on new
computer systems, Indian software producers are likely to feel the
pinch.
But routine work, like processing insurance claims or settling credit
card bills, goes on no matter what the economic climate. Indeed, as
companies look for ways to cut costs, more of them may send such work
to India, where wages often run half those in the United States.
Sending jobs abroad in uncertain times does not bring good publicity
to American companies. None of the foreign clients of Customer Asset
permit the company to disclose their names, and the offices are
scrupulously bare of any reference to non- Indian clients. A spokesman
said only that Ms. Anthony and Ms. Suman serve a telecommunications
company based in the United States.
It would not be the first time that America's misery is India's
opportunity.
Ashok Soota, a prominent technology executive who recently started his
own software consulting firm, noted that India's high-technology
industry was born in 1991, a recession year, when American companies
first looked overseas for skilled, but cheap, programmers to update
their computer systems.
"This slowdown will force us to explore new markets," Mr. Soota said.
"But this time, there is another factor — bandwidth."
In the last two years, India has installed reliable high-capacity
telephone lines in most of its major cities. That makes it possible
for people in this country to communicate with customers in the United
States, by phone or over the Internet, with no discernible difference
from a calling center in Nebraska.
The improved telephone network has essentially erased the advantage of
other countries that offer back- office services — notably Ireland,
one of the growth leaders of the expensive new Europe.
India's greatest strength in this business may prove to be its ability
to adapt, chameleon-like, to its customers. For a decade, Infosys,
Wipro and others have run development centers in the United States to
reduce the anxiety of American companies in dealing with foreigners.
Now, companies here are blurring the line between India and the United
States further. Mr. Ramdas of Bangalore Labs plans to relocate to
Northern California so he can live among his customers. Mr. Soota's
partner, Subroto Bagchi, also plans to move, to North Jersey, in two
months.
"We see ourselves as a next-generation company that is neither Indian
nor American," Mr. Bagchi said.
In recent years, the best engineers and programmers left India for the
United States. But as India's industry has matured, émigrés are
returning home to apply the lessons of the American market in local
companies. In some cases, they bring home the culture as well.
At Customer Asset and other call centers, Indian trainers who have
lived in the United States drill new employees in phonetics, American
pop culture and colloquialisms.
"If you're hiring people for Citibank," said Gayatri Balaji, vice
president for client services, "you want them to know that bulls and
bears are not just different animals found in nature."
The regimen includes listening to the likes of "Friends" and "Ally
McBeal" without the picture, and then reconstructing the dialogue. The
new recruits are put through role-playing sessions in which the
trainer, posing as a caller, interrogates them on American movies,
sports and television programs.
At Customer Asset, employees are allowed to fashion their own
telephone aliases and identities. Ms. Anthony chose "Naomi Morrison"
because, she said, she has the same skin tone as the model Naomi
Campbell and is a fan of the late Jim Morrison.
"If I gave people my Indian name, it would be too confusing," said Ms.
Anthony, a 26-year-old from Cochin, a coastal city. "The whole
intention is for them to understand us, and us to understand them."
And what happens if a caller asks too many questions?
"When the conversation goes too deeply into Chicago," Ms. Suman said,
"you just ask politely, `Can we get back to business?' "