BPO calling…….

Once out of college, everyone wants to hold a job of their own and not expect anymore pocket money from parents. Ten years back, the scenario was different when our brothers and sisters were out of college. It was very difficult to get a job. But now its not a tough task for any graduate to get settled with a comfortable job, especially for an engineering graduate.The controversy is about whether all of them work on what they have studied and slogged for years together. If there were twenty thousand engineers passing out of college, hardly five percent of them land up with their 'study-related' work. Whereas the majority of them were and are still bound to work in an area which is nowhere related to their degree. For instance a mechanical engineer does marketing, a production engineer creates complicated codes for some 'XYZ' bank in the UK or US. And if it is a non-engineer, he/she has to spend months for getting a decent job.

The growth of call centers have thrown a huge opportunity for freshers. A call center agent has to do nothing much but to handle a foreign customer in 'our' odd hours. We can't conclude that as an easy task because, the variety of customers who call up the centers are immense. And handling each one of them in their own way is a tough job. Most of the call center processes deals with the US and UK people which gives a difference of minimum five hours. So one has to work in a complete night shift or in UK hours(2.00 p.m. to 10.p.m Indian hours). Apart from this they also have a graveyard shift which usually starts at 4.00 a.m. Naturally then the alarm should struck by 3 a.m.Funny to even think about.But this is what is happening.

Coming to the qualification part of the employees,there is no particular degree required for this job, except for well versed English knowledge and great communication skills to handle various customers.There are intensive training programs offered by the company themselves to train our people to understand and communicate with the foreign customers. 'Bite your lower lip' for a ‘V’(Vee) and 'kiss the air' for a ‘W’(Dub u) are the techniques by which an Indian takes a transformation. Naturally it takes sometime for us to get used to their accent. And the immediate reaction of the customer while attending a call is whether the agent is from India. They are clever enough to differentiate through the accent no matter what the Pseudo-Name is. Pseudo-Name is a unique name given for each agent, where-in Ram becomes Raymond, Sai as Sam, Hari is known as Harry and so on. This way the first step of customer satisfaction starts were-in we give them a feel of non-foreigners.

Now the question arises of what exactly is the work about.Basically troubleshooting or online sales.In the former the customer calls up the agent for any problem with their computer or 'any' product; whereas the later deals with marketing and selling of products through tele-calling.Nothing much about the job, except for a thorough study of troubleshooting techniques and to follow the various call-flows which deals with the techniques to handle tough situations.The most difficult part of it to handle the customer especially when a computer illiterate. There are wide range of customers. A very common group are the 'irate' ones who get irritated when their issue is left unresolved.These customers are the ones who escalate calls to supervisors.Secondly we have the 'flirting' customers who make a call to the agent without any issue but to just flirt and kill time.A common method adopted to handle such customers are to usually warn them and cut the call.

These days the youngsters are very keen in earning a handsome amount of money.So without much hesitation and delay they chose their first job, whatever comes in hand.There are a few people who feel 'Why a call-center?' But outsourcing has a lot of scope.Whatever job they choose, job-satisfaction and dedication is what needed for a successful career.Happy calling!