Outsourcing Industry-The Brighter Side

This post is an attempt to bring forward an aspect of the Outsourcing industry which has never been talked about. Though lot has been written about the grey side of this industry and the life of people associated with it (in books like One night @ call centre and many others)- it is strange that nothing has ever been written about the brighter side of this business model. Based on my first hand experience of working in this industry I have put forth some of the uniquely positive dimensions of this industry.

It was 3am and the screeching sound of the station wagon forced me to rush towards it as it was time to leave for office. As soon as I entered the cab I saw people in different attires engaged in different interests. I greeted one of my colleagues, Raj, with the pat on his shoulder – I don’t think this was because I was too friendly with him, rather it is just that his ears are always occupied with the earphones which he uses to enjoy the loud music so I needed to pat his shoulder to get his attention. This was also the case with another colleague of mine - Rahul who is just like Raj, the better part,however, was that we could talk as soon as I entered the cab.

The car sped away to the highway, The two glowing eyes of the car ripped through the darkness on the road, which used to horrify me in the initial days but now I had gotten used to it. Being a foodie, it was my routine to ask the driver to stop the car at one of the mother dairy outlets near the highway so as to savour the flavoured milk. Rahul joined me in this indulgence. The entire journey used to be so scary that I looked forward to reaching safely to the office.The scenes of the accidents were very common and made the whole journey worse.Apart from the flavoured curd another interesting fact about the journey, however, was the sight of aircraft crossing our car when we passed the airport and that was something which I always liked. After about an hour long of adventurous drive we finally reached the office.

One thing I particularly like about this industry is the immaculately organised work processing. As soon as the car entered the office premises and stopped for security check, the car number along with the passenger list was fed into a computerised system.This data was then instantly transmitted to the corresponding lead so that they can know at what time a particular employee arrived. This reminds me of an incident which happened when one of my friends joined one of the BPO companies. It happened during the early morning hours- his working shift was Graveyard Shift( in BPO terminology it means the midnight shift) and his working hours started at 3am.On that eventful day he arrived at 2:50 am and since he had some time at his disposal,decided to grab a bite at a neary Dhaba (roadside restaurant). In doing so however he completely lost track of time and by the time he reached the office floor it was already 3.30 am. As expected his Senior enquired about this delay .Unaware of the intelligent system of attendance and cab’s arrival entry information he lied about the late arrival of the office cab and that’s all the humour started.His senior showed him in the system the exact entry time of the cab. It was really an embabarrasing moment for him.

Now it was time to enter the office. The office entrance gave me a feeling of being in a different world. The only world which was so brightly lit up at 4 in the morning.

The receptionist was always formally dressed and greeted us with an evergreen smile, and we stepped on the shiny floors to find people roaming around in their best of outfits. There were many like Raj who could only be greeted with a pat or a slight gesture. At 4 in the morning this was certainly an amazing environment., Men were dressed in their best outfits - formals, casuals it was all there. Women were dressed to flaunt, some in formals, some in skirts, some in traditionals and all of them loaded perfumes and makeup which at times was suffocating in the elevator. Girls will be girls. It was difficult to believe in the existence of two such contrasting worlds - one outside which is sleeping at this hour and one in here where people were keen to deliver their best even at such odd hours.

2^nd Floor- Office

It was time for serious stuff now for which this industry is very well known. I punched in my access card and stepped into the amazing workplace . The sight of this floor always excited me and whatever laziness I had till now due to the long drive or the odd hour of the day vanished, replaced by a surge of energy in my body. I don’t know where this energy came from. Everywhere there were people sitting with headphones over their ears and there were voices all around- Thank you for calling, I apologize, I will make sure its done, How may I help you, Thanks for your appreciation. Hundreds of people all talking at the same time. The whole place was buzzing with energy and a drive to deliver.

It was time to find my own seat. Here I must tell you that, unlike other organization, in BPO operations there is no fixed place for any employee as it works in shifts So while I was entering the office it was time for the previous shift to leave. I managed to grab an empty seat and was about to log-in in when my colleague signalled me to join the daily meeting. This was a general meeting held at the start of the day so as to decide the agenda of the day, strategies, concerns within the team etc. After this 5 min meeting, it was time to work.

Here I must tell you certain details about how things work over here. Every employee is provided with one Desktop PC and a special phone with a Headset connected to it, These special phones are designed to receive calls that are routed to them from different locations and therefore can be answered by employees working in this office. Let me make it even simpler for people who are new to this concept. What happens is that Customers call a Toll free number of the organisation which they have a concern with, for example if a particular customer has some problems with his PC then he would dial the customer care number of the Service centre of that PC say Dell. Now Dell has outsourced such jobs to Indian companies who are taking care of Dell customers and therefore, such calls are immediately routed to random customer service agents to corresponding companies in India and the customer wouldn’t even realise that he is talking to someone from India and not from Dell in the US. Such calls are received by people at this office.

Okay. So after such a detailed technical description let me move on to how things work over here. As usual I logged in to my PC and at the same time I had to login to the special phone as well with my unique four digit phone ID. I opened all the required tools along with my Outlook Mail client on my PC and pressed the red button on the phone. This red button is used to activate the phone and now whenever any call would be routed to my ID I shall be able to respond to it via my headset which is almost a part of my body now.

Bing ( Alert for an Incoming call): I pressed the button to receive the call and started off with my scripted speech- “Thank you for calling. My name is “Anonymous”. May I please have your customer ID. Now the amazing game of synchronization starts where mouth, ears and hands work at the same time for different things guided by the brain.

As soon as the customer started providing information, my hands started to work on the keyboard to type the information on the Notepad as that would be noted for further reference and at the same time while noting down the information I asked him questions either related to his information or for most part of the time just general discussion to soothe the customer as usually a customer is irritated about the product Writing , listening and talking all so synchronised that I always thank God for designing us to be able to handle this. I remember on my first day it was so difficult for me to manage all my sensory organs effectively, however, work itself teaches how to do it effectively.

After wrapping up the call it was time for a short break.I punched in the 15 min break code and rushed towards the bathroom as my bladder was about to burst and any further delay could be embarassing for me. After a divine relief I headed towards the Eating Zone to savour some noodles and a soft drink and the worse part was I had to wrap all this within next 10 min as nature's call had already consumed 5 precious minutes of my time. Eating Zone is how we used to term this small room. Silent from outside(thanks to the sound proof doors) and one could see the laughing, smiling happy faces through the glass which is a rare scene at their desks :) Opening the door would bash your ears with music channel being played on 65 inch LCD TV, Yellow walls and wooden floors complimenting the youthful environment. Walking past loads of people talking, chatting, giggling, I greeted couple of my colleagues and rushed towards the Food counter to order a dish of noodles and a soft drink. While the dish was being prepared I started chatting with some of my colleagues and the topic was mostly the grudges about the office and the office policies and some official gossip as well. The order was ready by now and I could only manage to hurriedly swallow my fav noodles without relishing them as the ticking clock sounded like a hammer on my head. I knew, as always, I would have to leave my meal unfinished. At the end of my 10 minutes I bade goodbye to my colleagues and rushed towards my seat, punched in the In Time and was ready for another call.

Time between two calls is our relaxation period which increases with the increase in the gap between two calls. It was 7am now and usually the call flow during this time is less. I loved the sight of people during this time. Headsets stucked onto their heads and instead of working on their official tools people could be seen busy playing computer games, listening to music , chatting to their friends sitting next to their seats. You must be thinking whether the company is so liberal in allowing games, social networking sites to be opened on the PC? Is IT department so friendly? No ways. Its the talent of our Indian engineers who can find a loop hole in almost anything under the sun and are able to play with the security structures of the Online systems The result of this efforts is sheer pleasure in the form of a whole package consisting of Games, Music, Social networking sites and what not.

Rising of the sun makes us behave in an opposite manner to a normal human - in a lazy and sleepy way. The reason is attributed to the biological cycle and now there was this deep urge to hit the sack but we still had few more hours to go. The only way to keep an employee energised is a Dirty call from a customer or a verbal thrashing by one of the Managers. Dirty call- No it doesn't mean vulgar calls rather it means handling a customer who is hell bent on suing the company and that means is going to be very hard to one of us on the call. This reminds me of one of my calls and to make things worse it was my first call. It was a bad experience however somewhat interesting, It was our first day of our job and we were told that we would be put on calls. That day it really meant putting us on Warfronts we all were very excited except those who were already into this business. We were given a round of the office floor and we could see how people were talking calls, hundreds of hands typing at the same pace, many voices talking with headphones on their heads and together it generated a mixed voice, We all were then asked to assemble in a training room where we were about to be addressed by one of our Managers. We were given basics of training and our hearts were pounding as to how would the first experience would be. Our seniors were trying to calm us by saying that it would be fine and no need to worry and in case of any problem they would be there to handle the call so no need to worry. I still remember that I was so nervous that I asked one of my seniors that would it be possible to experience a dummy call first rather than straightaway moving to the Live call to which he refused.

The clock signalled 5 in the morning. Those two needles of clock were no less than sharp arrows ripping me apart.

5 am First day, First Call

We were shown our seats and I managed to grab a seat next to the manager. I did this deliberately to be safe in case of any problems. We were told how the phones work and how to receive the call. My future manager was standing next to me,reminding us to start with the scripted opening speech consisting of Mechanical words " Thank you for calling. My name is .... May I please have your customer ID”, and Greeting the customer"

Bing( the beep on the phone indicating the incoming call) and being the first time this Beep was No less than a Bang much severe than Big Bang. My manager signalled me to punch in the incoming call button and start off and to my surprise and shock he left, yes he left. I was clueless as I was not expecting this. I started off with "Th..Th.. Thank you for calling. My name is B.( this was the inner feelings for my manager which came onto my lips) My name is Harsh. May I please have your customer ID. And to my shock from there came the reply. To hell with your Hi and Hello and your customer ID.I tried to pacify him by ignoring the speech and asked him his concern. This guy had some problems with his computer and now he was not able to connect to his computer, I asked him could you please connect the Lan wire to your computer, to which he replied,” I am at the beach side you moron.” I was cursing myself, my goodness this is my first call, why do my first customer have to sit at the beach side accessing the internet and what kinda man he is, sitting at the beachside and accessing the internet- there are lot many interesting reasons for which people go to beaches, he could have enjoyed , savoured the delicacies rather than accessing the internet and if he had to do this why me GOD, WHY ME?????

I was sweating like hell.I didnt know what to do and tried what all I could do and finally assured him a callback. I ended the call without a closing speech. As I ended the call and turned back that same manager for whom I had so many adjectives in my mind was standing behind me and was staring at me. He told me that he was monitoring my call and as per him it was fine. FINE- I guess that was a blunder, a complete disaster. As he left I rushed to the Eating Zone and ordered something to eat and without knowing the timing constraints I had my meal and enjoyed the Eating Zone for about half and hour and while I was walking to my seat,I realised that I had missed one of my calls. Now this was a big blunder as this was picked up by the intelligent system of this industry. Everything over here is so minutely monitored that it amazes me sometimes. Each call was monitored by two persons- 1 technical and 1 communication coach. These 2 ppl give a detailed feedback on each of the calls and if things go below the expectation then the person taking the call is given appropriate feedback. Every call should be accurate not only in terms of content and presentation but also with respect to the time taken on call. Average call takes about 1 hour 55min to be precise and thus maintaining this pace one can accomodate 8+ calls in a day and deviating from this would lead to less number of calls and thus poor performance. This time is referred to as Average Handling Time(AHT). Apart from this, calls are also monitored on the basis of the duration of holds and pauses for which customer has to wait while on call. So many parameters for a single call. Amazing infrastructure.

Clock signalled 7am with its inviting hands and it was time to enjoy the breakfast. As the clock hands were moving towards our impending time of freedom for the day, I punched in the 30 min break and forced some of my friends to accompany for the breakfast. We all rushed to the elevator to reach ground floor. We walked towards the Grand canteen which is much bigger than the Eating Zone. A large hall full of dining tables and chairs which were occupied by hundreds of people. I must tell you that this office accomodates 3000 people in a single shift and at any point of time hundreds of people could be seen in the canteen having their meals. Needless to say that there is a dedicated department which is responsible for the maintenance of the canteen. On top of that there is a dedicated team that works to make sure that employees get nutritious food and that too of their choice for which surveys at regular intervals are being conducted which keeps the canteen up to the expectation of the employees.

Amazing industry giving employment to thousands of people thus generating huge employment which in turn is generating GDP for the country as a whole and thus justifying the WIn-WIN situation for everyone. Perhaps the only industry which is using the huge Indian manpower in the most effective way and giving opportunities to everyone ranging from Simple Graduates to Professionally Qualified persons and thus bringing them on a single platform.