Buzz of call center

Late nights, cool crowd, excited buzz, svelte accents, the latest American slang and before you begin to thing it's a scene from a discotheque, let me clarify we are talking about a job. Yes, certain work places have just decided that it fun to be young and are taking a lesson or two from college graduates - often dismissed as the bubble gum generation. Large organizations running call center operations are flocking to this very crowd and inviting them to swell their ranks. All you need to be is a graduate with above average English skills and a love for playacting and whoopee you could be earning between RS. 72,000 and Rs. 96,000 a year at a call center.

It's a job where one is paid to talk, talk and only talk to anybody and everybody from a common user of a company's product to a CEO who has run into problems. In official jargon, its called handling outbound and inbound calls but basically you need to ensure that customers stay hooked to the product as they call up for clarification on its use or to report on flaws. As most customers of MNCS are bound to be American, you need to discard the ayo, baap re, amma, achcha from your lexicon and use American equivalents to cluck your sympathy for the person at the other end of the line. And its not only language that you need to prune. To make customers feel at ease, you'll need to ensure that you can chat with them about latest American movies and songs or the weather, while they hang on till you find the information they need. So the office ensures that you are on dot with the latest American movies, hear the latest chartbusters and at time even watch television serials like Allay Mc Bealy. As soon as you join, most companies put employees through a crash course where they are taught to roll their rs and watch their ws and given a quick round-up on all phpects of pop culture. At times to make customers feel at ease, companies may give trainees long names a nickname. So thyagrajan may become Tiger because no Western customer who's hassled and calling for help about a product can ever get the name Tyagrahan right.

In the midst of the fun, frolic, the movies the music and the talk, there's serious work going on. Substance needs to accompany style. The work demands high flows of energy and an optimist, sunny team outlook. Employees at call centres can handle up to 800 calls in an eight hour shift i.e., less than one call in approximately 40 seconds. And, however, tired you need to sweet-talk the customer who insists on calling the nth time with the same problem.

The job's a swell way of learning interpersonal and communication skills. In a call centre, growth is not vertical but lateral. At a young age, employees learn to handle pressure with panache. More important one gets exposed to American market culture and gains insight into the pychology of Western customers, skills which can be carried over to the next job and used to bargain a better salary. All this topped with a vow salary. Reason enough for young graduates to be heading there!