Indian call centers experience hang ups.

CALCUTTA, India, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- India is often referred to as the back office of the world, fielding enquiries from across the globe on everything from credit cards to handling personal trauma cases. But here is an incident to prove that Indian call centers could be entertaining as well.

A few days ago, a U.S. resident had to call Citibank and was connected to an operator, a friendly chap who asked "so how's the weather in Maryland ma'am?" (The caller lives in suburban Washington, in the state of Maryland)

Caller: "Very well. Thank you. And how are you...are you in Bangalore?"

Operator: -silence-

Caller: "Or are you in another Indian city?"

Operator: "I'm so sorry ma'am, but it is company policy not to say..."

Caller: "So I guess you ARE in Bangalore!"

Operator: "Oh I cannot say...company policy..."

Caller: "Must be difficult, though, working the night shift."

Operator: "(giggling now) Oh, it's company policy, I cannot say!"

Indeed, India's back office soldiers may be manning the 24-hour call centers of multinationals round the world, but this incident is just one of the many instances reinforcing that in their zest for skyrocketing growth, the quality of many Indian call centers may have started taking some flak.

"This can be more than just an irritant," says James DeBeau, an Irvine-based resident. "I have nothing against Indians, but they generally should not be in positions where they interact with the general public."

The problem is, even as its much touted English-speaking ability makes India perhaps the most attractive call center outsourcing destinations, Indians certainly do not speak their English the way Americans do, and even the British English with which they are much more familiar tends to take on a unique flavor.

And in the process, quality problems such as these have already started rubbing outsourcers the wrong way. Last year, Dell Inc, the world's largest computer vendor decided to shift its customer support work for corporate clients back to the United States and later Lehman Brothers followed suit by taking away its internal computer help desk from IT major Wipro. In its parting shot Lehman said that it was dissatisfied with the skills offered in India.

According to Niels Kjellerup, publisher of Australia-based Call Centre Managers Forum, these problems are inevitable.

"The English spoken by Indians is a very heavy dialect," he said. "In fact, in face-to-face conversations, I found it very difficult to understand what was said. How will this play out over the telephone with people much farther away?"

Moreover, he adds that the non-existent customer service culture in India makes training of representatives mandatory and difficult, "since such a luxury as service is not part of everyday life in India."

The Indian call center industry however insists that great efforts are taken to train call center operators.

"We do teach recruits how to use phonetics, we work on intonations -- how to stress the right words, how to pronounce English names and to measure the pace of their speech," said Romola Nath, vice-president, Next, a call centre training institute which trains agents for the back office of HSBC, Microsoft, Honeywell, and many others.

And added an official in the human resource at EXL Services, a leading call centre company, "We have an extensive program for voice and accent training and it is customized according to the requirements of different geographies."

What then, is going wrong?

The explanations range from technological limitations to plain old lack of talent, training or empowerment. Or even financial resources. "Customer service is often just not cost effective," said a call center operator.

But the most important reason is a staggering attrition rate. Dissatisfaction in the job, working odd hours, many emerging physical problems like backaches, indigestion, etc, and lack of career growth has taken the attrition rate in the country's call center sector to a staggering 40 percent level, which even touches 70 percent at times.

And owing to a high attrition rate, running an efficient call center is not getting any easier. Call center owners say that to keep up with the burgeoning business, often a service provider is forced to deploy newly appointed staff without adequate training. And that gets reflected in their performance.

There's another emerging human resources headache for the industry; labor unionism is entering the infotech bastion, reaching out to the low-wage sweatshops that business process outsourcing outfits have become.

Recently, the global Union Network International has launched a new organization, The Centre for Business Process Outsourcing Professionals that targets workers in Indian back-offices.

The rise of a labor union has already spooked the industry."This is bad news for the sector," said Pavan Duggal, a senior cyber law expert and Supreme Court advocate. "Over the last few years, the BPO segment has emerged as a major foreign exchange earner. Growing trade unionism will kill this industry."

Although strictly speaking, the centre does not term itself as a union, but its mandate is not much different. "We are not a union; it is an old word, we are a forum. However, we will take up issues that need to be addressed to ensure the well-being of the workers," centre chairman J.S.R. Prasad says adding that, "The BPO industry is unregulated and has many problems. The management do not take care of the workers' health or fix proper working hours. There is no job security," Prasad said.

Yet the call center sector is confident that, despite a few short term hiccups, the country's attraction as a help desk destination remains intact. "The proof of the pudding is in eating," said an official of industry lobby National Association of Software Service Companies.

"The industry has had tremendous impact on the economy and society, employing around 250,000 people directly and many more indirectly in industries like catering, transportation, security, property, etc" added the NASSCOM highlighting that in 2003-04, back offices- which is still dominated by call center business- brought in $3.6 billion of revenues, up from $2.25 billion in the previous year, and is slated to go up to $5.7 billion next year.

Nevertheless, experts warn that a Indian call center strategy that concentrates on only the less-skilled jobs is fraught with risks. At the lower end, competition tends to be entirely in terms of price. And it is quite possible that in the near future countries with much lower labor standards could become price competitive, leading to large-scale cuts in wage and infrastructure costs.