Insulting British callers

[xoxoxoBruce]

A story on Telegraph.co.uk, claims that the nasty Brits are causing health problems for the twenty-somethings, manning call centers in India.

Research carried out by India's booming call centre industry has found the 1.6 million people who work in them, mostly in their twenties, are plagued by ailments arising from the stress of dealing with irate customers.

The Indian government is so concerned about the problem that it is preparing to launch a health strategy for the workers.

A study conducted by Strathclyde University for the Union of IT Enabled Services, which informally represents call centre workers, found that 77 per cent felt "very" pressurised and 45 per cent identified difficult customers as the main source of their stress.

The salaries paid by the call centre industry have transformed the lives of a generation of young, middle-class Indians, giving them independence and money to spend on shopping, eating out, holidays and parties, but the price is proving high.

"Youngsters love spending the kind of money their parents only dreamt about, but I'm worried that stress and illness will turn them into zombies," said Karthik Shekhar, the union's general secretary.

At first I though they were talking about help desk calls for computer problems, but further reading says they are also talking about catalog sales and the resultant complaints.

Nidhi Aggarwal, 24, said she had never heard some of the insulting language used - including the word "Paki" as a term of abuse - before she began taking orders for a British catalogue company, which routes its customers' calls to a Bangalore call centre.

"At first, I thought I'd get used to it, but it's been a year now and it's not getting easier," she said.

"On its own, maybe I could cope with the abuse, but there's also the stress of finishing calls in one minute and hardly having time for breaks."

Miss Aggarwal, an English graduate, said she planned to quit, tired of wishing customers a good morning only to hear: "Oh, I'm through to India am I? Put me through to someone who can understand English, you f****** cow."

I hardly think this is only Brits, just the British slant for a British paper, as these call centers in India get worldwide business.
If they want to reap the rewards of the "first world" business climate, they are going to experience the pressure cooker that climate lives in.

[Flint]

Call the waaahmbulance. Why do I have a big frickin' bottle of TUMS on my desk? My stressful-as-hell job supports my family. So I do it. Nobody is doing a survey about how much stress my customers cause me, the idea is laughable! I'm on call 24/7; I never get a chance to stop worrying.

[Shawnee123]

Amen, Flint.

Try having all those people bitching right to your face, rather than across a phone line a billion miles away.

boo freaking hoo

[kerosene]

As a former call center employee, I would have to say that I agree with Flint, also. Boo-friggity-fraggity-hoo (just adding to Shawnee's boo-freakin-hoo). Millions of customer service people all over this country deal with the same thing and have been for a long time. It's a job.

[TheMercenary]

Outsourcing is a bitch eh? Cry me a bucket of tears. You wanted the jobs, now you got em, put up with it.

Hey wait! This is about those nice polite Brits?!?!?! I thought Americans were the rude ones? Well those paki's must have done something to make those nice non-bigoted non-racist Brits angry... {joking already}

[Flint]

I get people bitching at me over the phone, in my face, through e-mail, poorly-worded Service Center tickets, on my cell phone in the middle of the night (my favorite). I'm the guy that the call center gets escalated to. I get to tell people that I'm going to fix things that I can't do anything about, and then I get to call another call center to get it worked on! I support the biggest crybabies in the world: computer-illiterate doctors!

[BigV]

For the record, "Paki" is roughly equivalent in emotional impact to "Nigger".

/amateur anthropologist

[TheMercenary]

Where is George Carlin when you need him...

Then I appologize to all these people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs

[toranokaze]

It is a call center for people who are already pissed off that what ever didn't go right. A call center job is really a job to let people vent. Just a thought, in a call center position you are being payed to have people mad at you where as a stripper you are being payed to have people lust of over you. So which is truly worse lust of hate?

Random comment:
Who uses Darky ?

[bluecuracao]

Eh? Lust is bad?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by toranokaze

Random comment:
Who uses Darky ?

Random Response: A friend of mine who is in his 60's, born and raised in Ireland, he calls blacks Darky or Blackie.

[toranokaze]

so is hate

[binky]

Merc, that reminds me of my best friends grandmother(she was in her 80s at the time) in a buffet restaurant, calling the little black kids pickaninnies

[lumberjim]

my grandmother called them darkies.

so....no one feels any compassion for these indian call center victims? where's danac? cloud??

know your role, people!

me, myself? i'm indifferent. our economy drove those jobs overseas. no americans want that job. i do roll my eyes when i know that i'm talking to someone in bangladesh about a nissan account for someone that lives in new jersey....but..when it gets serious, and they have to escalate the call to the supervisor level...those people have southern accents......texans. which is worse...a texan or an indian?

i kid.....i love texans. they're so mellow. but for some reason, they all sound like kindergarten teachers to me. at any rate....they're all better than having to talk to people from the north east.....we're dicks up here.

we don't even try to be polite. yo! you need to call customer service....not dealer assistance! hold. i'll transfer you. click!

[ZenGum]

...found that 77 per cent felt "very" pressurised and 45 per cent identified difficult customers as the main source of their stress.

And the other 55% identified...?
middle management being slave driving jerks who can't manage human resources? senior management setting unrealistic performance goals? Being made to work next to that rude bastard Ravi who always smokes and smells bad?