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I just called to say 'I hate
you'
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - For those who thought that
the anti-outsourcing backlash against India, one
of the biggest back-end service providers
to multinational firms in the world, was an
issue limited to the US presidential elections,
they have it wrong.
In what has
been termed individual vigilantism by the people
affected, there are reports that an increasing number
of blatantly racist and abusive hate calls are
being made to harass Indian call-center operators who
take queries from US customers, sitting in India.
Curiously, this phenomenon has taken on alarming
proportions consequent to the results of the US
elections, with incumbent George W Bush considered
to be more positively inclined toward
outsourcing, in contrast to John Kerry, who lost
the polls.
The Internet, for one,
which always provides a forum for what is
running through people's minds, has proliferated
with messages that urge fellow US citizens to wipe
out the movement of jobs away from the US, which
has resulted in the coinage "Getting Bangalored".
Call-center executives, who form a chunk of the jobs
that have moved offshore, especially to India,
given its large English-speaking population, are
facing the brunt of the ire. The following is just
a small sample of what is making the rounds,
though many are not printable due to explicit
language:
Q: I'm curious as to what kind of responses
you have been getting. Do you use curse words at
them?
A: I made an Indian woman cry and
promise to quit her job in 60 seconds. You can
do it too!
Actually, the usual response is confusion
... I get the impression these are not the
brightest bulbs in India's chandeliers. Often,
they give me a "courtesy laugh" as if I were
joking and ask how they can help me. Usually, I
limit the calls to 60 seconds anyway, so I can
call back and really hammer them. I've been
doing this about 20 minutes a day. It's great
fun.
I have inside knowledge of call centers,
having worked in several. It's crucial that the
agents be efficient. Barraging them with
60-second calls will ruin their stats and also
lower their morale. Eventually, they'll start
thinking "another damn rude American" every time
a call comes up. All of this will have a
cumulative effect. If 100 people across the US
would commit to spending 10 minutes a day, we
could cripple them, and bring those jobs back.
Indians are particularly miffed
at a recent parody aired by a radio station that
made a call to an Indian call center. The
conversation that followed was laced with hate,
sexism and racism. American radio jockeys Star and
Buc Wild, in a terrible attempt to be make people
laugh, broadcast an abusive call that was placed
to an Indian call-center worker. The "call" was
aired during their morning show on Philadelphia's
Power 99 FM radio, wherein the caller places an
order for beads, inquires whether the call has
been outsourced to India and then abuses her.
While the producers thought the script was funny,
it has provoked angry responses among Indians all
over the world. Though the script has been removed
from the official website of the radio station, it
has been picked up by several blogs on the
Internet. The transcript reads as follows:
Steena (executive in India):
This is Steena. How may I help you?
Star: Hi, Stain-a, you say?
Steena: Yes.
Star: (In
fake Indian accent) Yeah, I called and I just
got hung up on. I'm calling from America about
the quick beads for my daughter's, uh, hair.
Quick beads.
Steena: Okay. May I have
your ZIP code please?
Star: 10274.
Steena: 10274?
Star: Yes.
Get it right. Now are you in India? Because I
just spoke to someone in India who hung up on
me.
Steena: Thank you. I am from
India, ma'am.
Star: Okay. So my call
is being outsourced to India.
Steena:
That's right.
Star: In ... in regards
to my six-year-old, white American daughter who
wants to get the quick beads like Serena and
Venus Williams.
Steena: Now. I'll
definitely place an order for that. See ...
Star: What's that?
Steena:
... In the ad, she called to place a quick bead
of counier. To ensure proper handling ...
Star: Ma'am, I don't know what the
hell you're saying. Hang on a second. Let me try
and get something straight here. The quick
beads, like Venus and Serena Williams, that to
advertise to - to the white kids on television.
This call has been outsourced to India?
Steena: That's right.
Star: Well, ma'am, what the 'eff
would you know about an American white girl's -
uh, uh - hair? And quick beads.
Steena: Just to inform you, ma'am,
we're a national chain services company. And
we're just taking calls on the opposite ...
Star: Listen, bitch! Don't get slick
with the mouth! Don't you get slick with me,
bitch!
Steena: Now if you continue to
speak this language, I will disconnect the call.
Star: Listen to me, you dirty rat
eater. I'll come out there and choke the eff out
of you. (laughter)
Star: You're a
filthy rat eater. I'm calling about my American
six-year-old white girl. How dare you outsource
my call? Get off the line, bitch! (Laughter, end
of tape)
Star: Pull it up. (Laughter)
Star: Heard they listen well out
there. This is not the first time the
two, especially Star, have been involved with a
distasteful and unseemly episode. Star had earlier
staged singer-actress Aaliyah's death on air. He
played a bloodcurdling scream followed by a loud
crash - Aaliyah had died in a plane crash. Buc
Wild was on vacation then, but Star's then
co-host, Miss Jones, was disgusted and walked off
the show.
However, in the latest
instance Star has correctly, even if
unethically, approximated what is turning out to be quite
a common occurrence now - of sober
Americans, instead of the usual drunken ones that
exist everywhere, calling just to abuse. There are
now several complaints, being widely reported by
the media in India, of call-center executives having
to deal with customers who are downright uncouth.
Executives working in call centers now say that
there are at the receiving end of nasty phone
calls more than ever before.
"Earlier,
people would get abusive if we didn't answer their
questions satisfactorily. Now, I get calls - on
some days up to five a shift - from people who are
calling only to abuse," Shalini J, a 22-year-old
engineering graduate who works in a major call
center in Mumbai, has been quoted as saying.
Some prominent call centers in India such
as Wipro, Spectramind, Daksh, Exl and Convergys
have tried to bring about technological changes as
well as staff training to deal with the problem.
As per the norms followed by them and the
guidelines set by clients, no call can be
disconnected once it is received. Some call
centers have installed screeners and filters to
blank numbers with a repeated record of abusive
calling. Others have given the option to
executives to mute their response when the caller
is being unnecessarily rude. This prevents the
caller from hearing any spur of the moment retort
by the call center executive who can continue with
the conversation once the tirade is hopefully
over. In this way the concerned executive can keep
his/her cool and avoid being stressed, one very
common complaint among call center operators who
have to keep long night hours to keep US time in
India as well as deal with a barrage of inquiries.
The macro picture, however, seems to be
bright for Indian offshore service providers.
According to estimates, the business and process
outsourcing industry will gross US$5.7 billion in
revenue in the year 2005. A recent McKinsey report
on the information technology-enabled sector has
revised previous figures of $17 billion to $21-24
billion by the year 2008, with India slated to
garner 25% of the offshore market, with the US the
largest source, providing 60% of the business.
Estimates suggest that 200,000 to 400,000
jobs have moved from the US since the outsourcing
trend began in the 1990s, which is still a
fraction of 138 million jobs in the US. The
Information Technology Association of America says
only about 2% of the 10 million computer-related
jobs have been sent abroad; 12% of IT companies
have "outsourced" work, compared to 3% of non-IT
firms. The most high-end projection is by
Forrester Research - a loss of 3.3 million jobs by
2015, including 1.7 million back-office jobs and
473,000 IT jobs - which will create a dent in the
US job market and not the wreck everyone fears.
With US industry firmly backing
outsourcing, given productivity increases, higher
profits and lower costs, one does hope that the
latest distasteful happenings are just a blip in
the phone lines.
Siddharth
Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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