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If only Indians would talk like
Americans
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - The accent now is on accents.
India's much touted English-speaking back office
soldiers who man the 24-hour call centers of
multinationals round the world have taken some flak in
the recent past. The problem is that they certainly do
not speak their English the way Americans do, and even
the British English with which they are much more
familiar tends to take on a unique flavor.
This
can be more than just an irritant, as vouchsafed by Dell
Inc, the world's largest computer seller, which decided
to shift its customer support work for corporate clients
back to the US, in November. And last month, Lehman
Brothers also decided to take back its internal computer
help desk, which had been outsourced to Indian IT major
Wipro, due to dissatisfaction with the skills offered in
India. One of the dissatisfied customers widely quoted
in news reports is Ronald Kronk, a Presbyterian minister
from Pennsylvania, who said that he spent four months
trying to solve a problem that resulted in his being
billed for two computers.
Kronk has been quoted
as saying: "They're extremely polite, but I call it
sponge listening - they just soak it and say - I can
understand why you're angry - but nothing happens. I
even said to them once that I'd like to speak to someone
in the US. They gave me a number, but it's a recording
and I can't speak to a human being."
There are
even reports of racial customer screams - "You bloody
Indians, you don't get it, do you?"
These
problems, at one level, seem inevitable. In spite of TV
and e-mail, people living thousands of kilometers away
and without local knowledge cannot always answer
inquiries authoritatively. According to reports, England
is full of jokes about operators in India who master
Scots or Midlands accents, but falter over small
physical details. Kate, a doctor based in England,
recently on a visit to India, told this correspondent
that grappling with rail inquiries in the United Kingdom
can be quite hazardous as often the information is
incorrect as the person at the other end just does not
understand the query.
The fear in India, as
exemplified by the Dell and Lehman Brothers examples, is
that the quality of the Indian Business and Process
Outsourcing (BPO) industry might not be as good as some
would believe.
Indeed, the threat to the BPO
industry is generally seen as one of resistance in the
developed world to jobs shifting to countries such as
India. Yet the economic benefits in terms of lower costs
are so substantial that firms often cannot afford not to
tap into India's potential, even if it means some
political backlash in the home country.
A recent
instance quoted is the Indiana Senate panel's refusal to
support a sweeping bill to limit foreign workers (read
Indians) in the American state's contract jobs. Union
commerce and industries minister Arun Jaitley said in
parliament recently that the Indian government has been
assured by the US government as well as industry that
they would not approve opposition to business
outsourcing to countries such as India, as brought in
through legislation in New Jersey and some other states.
The Indian BPO industry has grown at a
mind-boggling 60-70 percent annually, with revenues
rising from US$565 million in 1999-2000 to almost $2.4
billion in 2002-2003. The projections look brighter too
- employment of over a million people by 2006, up from
the current 200,000. Revenues are estimated to increase
to well over the current $2.4 billion mark by 2006. It
is said that while the Indian IT industry took 15-20
years to start making its presence felt, the Indian BPO
industry has done it in less than 10 years.
According to an Economic Times Intelligence
Group study, ET Knowledge Series, call centers account
for almost 65 to 70 percent of the Indian BPO industry
in terms of revenues and numbers. And herein lies the
problem, as most of the growth has been at the lower end
of the skill pyramid.
Indeed, according to
observers, dissatisfaction with the quality of manpower
in India in relatively less-skilled services could
result in an immediate flight of jobs should even a
slight price differential happen. Examples quoted are
shoe manufacturer Nike, which moved from South Korea to
Malaysia and then to Indonesia. Another instance is
competition that a country such as Bangladesh provides
to Indian exports at the lower end of the garment
industry due to lower infrastructure and labor costs.
The writing is for all to see - that no resting place is
permanent. Each is determined by cost effectiveness.
India must guard its lead, which is the essence of
globalization.
The warning has been sounded by
Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, who recently
said that the next round of the globalization of jobs
might see China, Malaysia and the Philippines competing
with India in what Tong called the world's "information
technology and back office". HSBC, Citibank and Standard
Chartered already have service centers in Shanghai and
Guangzhou in China, and Cyberjaya and Penang in
Malaysia.
The prescription is twofold -
re-training call center executives adequately to retain
the current business, as well as moving up the value
chain in terms of the quality of jobs outsourced.
According to Sabira Merchant, a speech-voice
consultant, on how Indians speak English: Indians have
excellent control over written English, yet when it
comes to pronunciation, we do not always sound right.
The problem is while Americans think in English, we
think in our mother tongue and translate it while
speaking. As a nation we do speak good English. That is
why most Indians score easily over people of other
nationalities. But it will still take time for Indians
to speak with a polished accent and fluency."
Yet call center executives are confident that
business is not going to move in a hurry to other Asian
countries. As Prashant Bhardwaj, a manager with a
leading call center says: "By the time the other
countries produce the required English speaking
manpower, the world will be used to the Indian way of
speaking and business won't shift unless there is a
substantial cost differential. A Chinese speaking
English will take a whole lot more time to get used to
when Indians are already being spoken to on such a large
scale."
However, experts warn that the Indian
BPO strategy that concentrates only on the less-skilled
jobs is fraught with risks. At the lower end,
competition tends to be entirely in terms of price. And
it is quite possible that in the near future countries
with much lower labor standards could become price
competitive, leading to large-scale cuts in wage and
infrastructure costs.
The long-term solution to
sustaining the ongoing BPO boom will have to provide for
opportunities of career growth within the industry and
working conditions will have to be kept at levels that
keep attrition rates to a minimum, in the face of price
competition. In the more traditional IT industry, even
if local firms offered lower-end jobs, individuals
always had the option of moving to greener pastures
abroad. But the value of the BPO lies in location. Hence
the long term-sustainability of BPO will thus depend on
the quality of outsourcing, industry-specific training
and a constant endeavor to move up the value chain,
instead of being counted just by numbers and cost. And
inculcating the right diction.
Siddharth
Srivastava is a New-Delhi based journalist.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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