Poor Call-Center Service Angers Indians, Too

(page 2 of 2)

"It's not answering a call quickly, but making sure that when it is answered, i…when the caller starts speaking, he is speaking to a person who has the right tools, the right training to solve the problem."

That doesn't necessarily mean call centers have the real issue—keeping customers happy—figured out. After all, call centers' real clients are the companies to which they sell contracts, not the people who call them for help. Dimension Data found that the $130 billion industry has been slow to figure out how to measure customer satisfaction, instead focusing on cost-cutting and efficiencies.

Taking Training Seriously

In the six years that Seattle-based Hyperquality has been in business, it has listened to over 5 million calls between customers and agents, trying to help some of American's largest companies figure out how to keep customers satisfied. The biggest issue, says Chris Coles, Hyperquality's CEO, is training, but in some cases, accents and cultural sensitivity also come into play.

But for Indian call centers that serve Indian clients, Coles says the issue is basic: pay and prestige. "Folks in the contact-center industry are always looking for an improvement in compensation and status," he says. "There is certainly a food chain, so the effect is that talented folks that may enter in the domestic sector are looking for ways to move themselves [to] foreign language."

Unlike in the U.S., complaints in India are not about the fact that jobs have gone overseas, of course, or about accent or language. Instead, like Americans, Indians just want quick service. "It is unbelievable sometimes," says Anupam Mathur, who manages several bank accounts for his employer, a New Delhi-based furniture company. "They don't understand my questions, they don't have any answers, they don't have the authority to solve my problems."

To some extent, business is aware of the issue. Express courier service DHL's India operations made a big splash two years ago when it promised that every call would be answered by a real live person within three rings, a promise that DHL says it largely delivers on. "The customers love it, they really do," says Sheba Varghese, a spokesperson for DHL. "They don't have to press a 1, then a 2, then a 3. They speak to someone right away."

That someone, by the way, is in Cyberjaya, Malaysia.

Srivastava reports for BusinessWeek from New Delhi.

Business Exchange

Track and share business topics across the Web.