Indian Call-Center Abuse

[JohnnyWalkerBlackLabel]

The San Francisco Gate is running an article from the perspective of
Indian call-center employees, who are consistently insulted and
attacked by Americans angry over out-sourcing. 22 year old SBC
employee Saurabh Jha, says a woman phoned from Texas recently and
told him that, thanks to outsourcing, "You are getting money, food,
shelter. You should be starving."Noida, India -- While irate calls
are a mainstay of customer service work in any country, many Indian
call-center workers say they regularly face particular abuse from
Americans, whose tantrums are sometimes racist and often inspired by
anger over outsourcing.

This vitriol has fueled a "searing anger" among the Indian
employees, says Vinod Shetty, a Bombay lawyer who has formed a
collective for call-center workers. "A lot of trauma is caused."

Debalina Das, 22, a computer help-line agent in the city of
Hyderabad in south India, punched the button last winter for a call
from the United States.

The caller greeted her with a torrent of racial and sexual slurs,
accused her of "roaming about naked without food and clothes" and
asked, "What do you know about computers?"

The diatribe ended with the comment:"This company is just saving
money by outsourcing to Third World countries like yours."

Such telephone tirades are fueled by outrage over outsourcing, which
is expected to move 3.4 million U.S. service-sector jobs overseas by
2015, according to the consultancy Forrester. Most of the work comes
to India, where young, low-cost employees now handle a range of
American tasks -- they draw cartoons, interpret heart scans,
adjudicate insurance claims, reserve flights and chase debtors.

Das, who quit the job after four months, said she learned to dislike
Americans. "Rarely, there are people who are good," she said by e-
mail, "but then others remind me that all they believe in is
cursing, and they don't have respect for others."

Her opinion is not uncommon among many workers in India's burgeoning
call-center industry.

Relations between India and the United States have grown closer in
recent years. India now sends more students to American colleges
than any other country.

Indians form the wealthiest and one of the fastest-growing immigrant
groups in the United States. And in the last decade, American
companies have increasingly sought Indian customers and employees.

Not everyone is happy about the growing ties between the two
nations. An anti-outsourcing movement has drawn wide support as
layoffs continue to mount at such U.S. companies as IBM, which is
cutting 13,000 jobs in Europe and the United States and adding
14,000 in India, according to the Washington Alliance of Technology
Workers.

In the first three months of this year, state legislators proposed
112 bills to stanch the exodus of American jobs, according to the
National Foundation for American Policy.

Some opponents of outsourcing, often fired workers themselves, have
rechanneled their rage at job-slashing CEOs toward India. On the Web
forum Is Your Job Going Offshore?
(isyourjobgoingoffshore.com/forums/) contributors variously describe
India as depraved, as a haven for terrorists, a "giant leech" and a
nation of "back-stabbing cowards."

It is this kind of commentary that has shaped a perception among
India's customer-care workers that Americans are
intolerant. "Everybody thinks like that," said Samik Chowdhury,
assistant manager at an IBM office in northern India. "Every time,
it's racism only."

This attitude is not typical of most urban Indians, who tend to
admire the United States for its strength and entrepreneurial
spirit. In a recent 16-country Pew poll, India had the highest
percentage of citizens with a favorable opinion of the United
States, 71 percent.

The less favorable view, though, is beginning to seep into Indian
popular culture. The scripts for a new sitcom called "The Call
Center," scheduled to air this winter on the leading channel NDTV,
depict Westerners as arrogant, immoral and comically rude.

The show's villain, the Indian manager of a call center, is an India-
bashing blowhard, a disposition he picked up at an Ivy League
business school in the United States.

One of the episodes recreates a real-life exchange that occurred in
January between an American and an Indian agent that has become
notorious among the call center crowd here. On the Philadelphia
radio show "Star and Buc Wild," host Troi Terrain phoned an Indian
call center pretending to order hair beads for his daughter. The
call quickly turned vicious.

"Listen to me, you dirty rat eater," Terrain growled, to muffled
laughter in the studio. "I'll come out there and choke the -- out of
you. You're a filthy rat eater. I'm calling about my American 6-year-
old white girl. How dare you outsource my call?"

Indian offices have taken measures to thwart such attacks: Agents
typically adopt anglicized names, undergo "accent neutralization"
and U.S. cultural training, and sometimes claim to be located in the
United States. They are taught to suffer attacks politely and try to
calm customers. Failing that, many offices now offer callers the
option to be transferred to agents in the United States.

These humiliations, say observers, are tolerated by a labor force
that savors the opportunity to join India's growing middle class.
With monthly incomes of about $200, call-center employees live well
in a country where many are poverty-stricken.

"They feel like it is their duty" to swallow insults, says labor
researcher Babu Remesh.

Sumit Bhasin, a 25-year-old call-center worker for HCL BPO
Technologies in the northern Indian city of Noida, says American
customers tend to have an "egoistic, bossy kind of attitude." When
he was young, he said, he used to dream of traveling to the United
States, as many Indians do, but after working in call centers for
several years, he is not so sure anymore.

However, he loves his job, because he makes $440 a month and gets to
learn about high technology like routers, modems and concepts of
networking.

But for others, the abuse is taking its toll.

A group of SBC call-center workers, also in Noida, sat recently on
the clipped grass in front of the silver-glassed office building
where they field Americans' Web connection problems. Callers often
dismiss them the moment they detect their Indian accents, they say.

"A whole lot of the time, people are yelling," says Kapil Chawla,
23. "They just want to talk to an American."

Saurabh Jha, a 22-year-old in blue jeans, says a woman phoned from
Texas recently and told him that, thanks to outsourcing, "You are
getting money, food, shelter. You should be starving."

She berated him for 12 minutes before she finally allowed him to
offer advice that promptly fixed her problem: to unplug her computer
and plug it back in.

"I was speechless," he says. "She didn't even give me a chance."

[Andrew Johnson]

The same Americians who are angry about out-sourcing say things like:

They don't pay me enough to do that.

That's not in my job description.

They are the same people that think labor unions are still needed in this country. When in reality labor unions make out-sourcing much more attractive to big companies.

The economy of this country is going to shift, in the comming years. Some will adjust and survive, others will just piss and moan. There is an even more global economy on the horizon. ( In my opinion)

[Quinn]

The caller greeted her with a torrent of racial and sexual slurs,
accused her of "roaming about naked without food and clothes" and
asked, "What do you know about computers?"

LMAO...

-Quinn

[BlackAdder]

I cant blame them..the Indians ive spoken to have been SINGULARLY unhelpful.....they read like like a childrens book and anything at all outside of the box blows there mind......

I totally SPAZZED on this Indian girl they i was connected to one time for problems with my Sprint phone....She totally was not getting what i was saying about the reason i was unhappy with Sprints service, and kept repeating the same things over and over again like she was reading from a deal-with-americans-manual.

No spanks, Ill deal with an American.

[TrueBeauty TS]

The same Americians who are angry about out-sourcing say things like:

They don't pay me enough to do that.

That's not in my job description.

They are the same people that think labor unions are still needed in this country. When in reality labor unions make out-sourcing much more attractive to big companies.

The economy of this country is going to shift, in the comming years. Some will adjust and survive, others will just piss and moan. There is an even more global economy on the horizon. ( In my opinion)

I disagree with a few things you've said. I believe any american will do just about any job if they are paid FAIRLY. It's like the excuse people use for illeagal immigrants, saying Americans won't do the jobs they will do. Well, that's only PARTLY correct. Americans won't do those jobs for the slave wages they are paying the immigrants. If farmers paid $10-$20 an hour to pick fruit (which it probably should be for back breaking work), I'll bet there would be enough americans doing that work. If lettuce costs $5 a head, then I won't buy lettuce if I can't afford it. If the farmers go out of business because of it, then so be it. That's capitalism. We would just get our lettuce from some other country like we do with a lot of other fruit. (As an aside, I saw a program on the discovery chanel that showed machines that can virtually pick any crop there is. I think the farmers are just too fat (gov. subsidies) and lazy to change.)


As far as outsourcing, I really don't blame the Indian people, or any country that benefits from OUR company's greed. I'd do the same thing. They now are getting a middle class and their standard of living is going up.

Now is when we need labor unions THE MOST. With corporations posting record profits, and american CEO's making millions, it's obscene that they want to cut benefits and lower pay, or outsource american jobs altogether. Especially when those same companies are getting tax breaks and government subsidies (that means that YOU and I are paying THEM to get rid of OUR jobs!)

Back in the 1920's (approx) unions were started to make sure there was not corporate abuses of child labor, safety standards, and a fair living wage among other things. By the 1960-70's, unions got too fat and then they got a bad reputation in america, but now they are needed again. The pendulum always swings back and forth - it never stays in one place.


I agree with you that the economy of this counrty is going to shift (it IS shifting!) but I fear that means that while the standard of living goes up in other countries, the standard of living is going to go down in this country. I think it's more serious than "Some will adjust and survive, others will just piss and moan." What are we going to do with millions of people who don't have the skills or education for good jobs? And what IS going to be a good job? Boeing and other aerospace companies are outsourcing those kind of jobs too. Airlines want to outsource all repairs and maintanance jobs outside the USA.

In the future of America, I see a very wide gap between the rich and the poor, and no middle class at all. And the middle class is what made this country the envy of every other country in the world at one time.

Don't get me wrong. I love my country. I am a Patriot. But I won't be silent when I see my own country being sold out by my own countrymen.

[beatmaker]

We'll, I have mixed feeling about this article, as a Black American. It's funny, I'm watching Michael Moore's "Bowling from Columbine" on the Bravo network while typing this and it just highlights this "White Judeo-Christian Middle American" narrow mindedness, so pervasive in America (especially post 9-11). I have been treated like the "outsider" or "perennial threat", as most black men not in denial have, at some point in their lives. So, I can understand the anger and confusion at being greeted and treated as an inferior, just based on your race or ethnicity. Matter of fact, in my 9-5 job, I deal with companies and their offices in regards to various issues including billing/insurance payments. I just had to meet with my manager, because of a complaint levied against me by some employee who I spoke to about some insurance billings. I informed her that we didn't make payment to them, because we never got those specific claims and she went on this "high and mighty" rant and I told her she didn't understand the submission/processing steps here, so I would go over it with her. She got on this "who do you think you're talking to" and "I know more than you do" shyt, so I said have a nice day and hung up on her ass. Unfortunately, there is a undercurrent of racist, superiority that me and some of my co-workers of color notice sometimes. You sometimes hear things like "Do you people know what your doing", "You're lazy" or "You all need to be fired". I tend to notice these calls come from offices in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, where the spirit of Archie Bunker and his spawn run rampant. I have a college degree and make very good money, but I'm not on a plantation and will not allow someone to treat or speak to me as such. These pea-brain cowards like to hold your job over your head, so they can spout racist innuendo, overtly or covertly. I pull the plug on that shyt real quick and if that means my job is lost, hey! I make about 80% of my yearly salary on side (music, investments, etc.). When I double my salary (late 2006-early 2007) they can all kiss my ass! I have no wife or children, so if it comes to that, I can still maintain. These idiots who call these call centers, say things they only say amongst friends and on the internet, which they would never have the balls to say to an American, even a low-level customer service rep. This is when the "covert" stuff rises to the surface (lazy, stupid, dumb, incompetent etc.), in American service industries.

However, on the flip side, there is an extreme bias in Indian culture, as it relates to darker skinned people. I was reading one of the Black men's magazines and they interviewed a fine ass Indian girl from South Africa and when asked about modeling over there, she said only "light skinned" Indian women (see: Aishwarya Rai") are promoted. She was about Halle Berry's complexion. You also see this silly whitewashed version of beauty on Latin television as well (Telemundo, Galavision and Univision). Just listen to some of your favorite Latin trannies talk sometime. This is a byproduct of European colonialism, which can be seem in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin & South America (see Brazil), India, South Africa and other places where blacks, browns and whites co-exist. I've had numerous racist encounters with Indians, so I have a hard time feeling sorry for them, even though I don't endorse that type of depraved treatment. I don't know how many times I might be browsing thru a magazine at a newsstand and get the "No Reading" thing, when I see a white man or woman reading a magazine and they don't say shyt, even when they were in the store before me. It's just a brainwash thing, that is based in global white supremacy, but I will leave that for another discussion. I have black friends and co-workers from Guyana and Trinidad and they really don't care for Indians. They have spoke of (East) Indians there, as having a very superior, smug attitude with their black countrymen, bordering on contempt and seem to aspire to whiteness.

Just my two cents!

[rick_932]

dont blame the workers, blame the guys in charge for outsourcing the jobs for the sole purpose of making more money by paying workers less.

[MoonAndStar]

dont blame the workers, blame the guys in charge for outsourcing the jobs for the sole purpose of making more money by paying workers less.

co-sign

[BeardedOne]

I've been on both sides of this coin, as cutomer and as customer service employee. Neither is an easy trip. Even with my experience on the receiving end of such abuse, it still hasn't cured me of losing my mind when I'm frustrated over some broken program/item/credit card (And these temper tantrums aren't aimed at India or any other nation/race in particular, just the easy target at the other end of the line). Even though I will usually apologize for my rants (Unless the CSR is truly a moronic dickhead) it doesn't un-ring the bell and reflects negatively on myself and the customer base as a whole (No matter what country we are calling from/to).

I always end most of my CS calls by asking the employee where the call center is that I am speaking to. It's been especially of interest since so many of the calls now go overseas. My last call was taken by a fellow in Mumbai (Sp?), India, just after the tsunami. Though the center was in the hills of central India, he said that a lot of the people there had family along the coasts that were hit by the disaster and we talked about that for a bit. Very intelligent man, well-educated, not a "bedsheet-wearer" or "dothead" (And I'm sure he doesn't eat rats, though they might be quite tasty). Once we got past the scripted part of the conversation (How are you today? Would you like to hear about our new products? How 'bout them Mets?), he was able to help me with my problem and we traded notes about my account and ways to better manage it. A very positive experience.

It's not his (Or their) fault that a company posted a Help Wanted ad and they answered it and got a well-paying job. It's not their fault that corporate America (Or any well-run business, for that matter) hired them in an effort to cut expenses and increase the bottom line. Yet, we somehow feel that picking up the phone and kicking them in the teeth is going to change how the economy works. Personally, I don't give an aardvark's patoot if Nanook of the North takes my call, so long as I can understand the language he's speaking and it keeps my interest rates or the price of my tech equipment down.

The money I save from the lower costs/interest and my chats with Nanook? I turn it back locally, to independent contractors, electricians, landscapers, etc.

And if the new call center, built five miles from my house, is any indication, they haven't yet shipped =all= of that work to Guam.

[TrueBeauty TS]

IMO, this is not about racism as much as it is about economics. Although all those idiots that called over there were most likely racist. Instead of calling those call centers cussing them out, they SHOULD have called the CEO's of those companies instead. They are the one's that sold them out.