Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Night vigil with 'gaali' music

Just came across this interesting article at the times of india site: "HYDERABAD: Apart from the snazzy accent, confident diction and good communication skills, call centre executives can do with an ability to endure an earful of swear words every day at work.For customers can give free rein to their vocabulary from their secure distance. And Indophobia inching higher in the west over the loss of jobs, call centre conversations can turn nasty once the caller discerns from the accent that he is talking to an Indian. "Hearing gaalis (abuse) are part of our job. If you cannot handle them, you can't work here," says the HR manager of a call centre. Agents say four-letter words are casually flung by many US customers. Some of the abuses are not part of what they teach you in accent training classes. Not being familiar with the street language of Tacoma, Texas, call centre executive can be left baffled by some of their conversations, sometimes not even knowing whether one has been sworn at. " read full article here. Anyone here in pk got nasty stories to share with us from a call center?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Customers like to yell and bitch. Its their nature. It doesnt matter where the call center is.. India or France or Germany. I can understand people might be especially pissed when talking to someone with an accent because in the average white american's book someone with an accent is automatically considered an idiot.

I used to work at two different inbound call centers catering different products and to different types of people. The cussing however was the only thing common, regardless of the accent of the accent of whoever answered the phone.