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Americans who LIKE Indians complain about call centers

September 14, 2010 by admin
Categories: Call Center | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Americans who LIKE Indians are also complaining about call centers

It is common at Noida Call Centers for managers to encourage their workers to become less Indian — to erase their Indianness and become a fake American or Britisher. The point is that Americans and English live in very cosmopolitan societies where people of all backgrounds are accepted to a greater or lesser degree. Sure, it is good to blend in, but the bigger issue is how you interact.

My Tamil-American Friend

I have a friend who as born in Tamil Nadu.  He loves India and visits regularly, but he has lived in the United States since early childhood.  He thinks that Indian culture is the best in the world and married an Indian lady born in the West as well. Every day I talk to him he tells me something new about how great Indians are, and how great Hinduism is.  But, when an Indian call center calls him, he gets annoyed right away.  So, even Indians in America get upset at Indian call center workers. He takes offense that they always have a fake American sounding name, and that they pretend to be in America.  The words that come out of his mouth are, “Let’s be honest, what’s your real name Rocky? Is it Rakesh?, and where are you really located, you are not in Memphis — that is for sure”.  Misrepresenting your location, having a fake name, and trying to push a product you don’t understand well is not flattering to my friend.  Once again, honesty and good interaction skills are what sells.

My American Friend who Loves Indians

I have an American friend from a meditation group that I used to belong to.  He loves Indians.  Half of the people he knows are from India.  He loves Indian food, culture, languages, and everything else you can think of that is Indian.  He too gets annoyed that these call centers bother him and the workers have fake names and refuse to disclose their real locations. So, is the problem that people don’t like Indians?  Americans like Indians, they just don’t usually like Indian call center workers for a long list of reasons.

American Stereotypes about Indians

Americans think that Iranians are terrorists, they are terrified of Pakistanis, and think that Arabs want to kill us all.  These are all cultures that Americans can not tell apart from Indians.  Dark skinned people, who wear strange clothing, have bizarre beliefs, and worship a scary god that is different from our god.  You can explain to Americans that Allah is the same god that Jesus prayed to, but this fact will simply not register.  But, the American stereotype of Indians is that they are GENTLE and INTELLIGENT — non-threatening.  This group of exotic brown-skinned people is NOT out to get us — we can trust them — and they are amazing with computers too!  But, this positive stereotype of Hindustanis — the new model-minority in America changes when we meet pushy call center workers who talk without listening, have fake names, fake locations, and fail to understand any of the prospective buyer’s concerns.

An example of an Indian who got ahead.

I know an Indian who got ahead — far ahead.  He did multi-million dollar deals for decades and was one of the most sophisticated people in his industry.  According to the philosophy of the North Indian Call Centers, he would have to be fair skinned, and have one of those “NEUTRAL” sounding accents, and throw his Indianness in the garbage to get ahead.  The truth is that the Indians who try to de-Indianize themselves are making about 100 rupees per hour.  This particular Indian who got ahead makes several crores (millions) on a bad year.  He is very Indian, and at the same time very worldly — speaking five different languages flawlessly.  He has a very typical South Indian accent, and he looks like a typical South Indian.  He uses his real name, he never plays games about where he is located — which is never a constant.  Breakfast in Singapore, lunch in Qatar, and dinner at Nariman point would be a typical day for him in his business.  If this gentleman was the only person who you knew who was getting ahead, you might think that call center workers need to be MORE Indian and use their real name!

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The art of the email

September 5, 2010 by admin
Categories: Marketing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The art of the email

People email each other all the time.  There are personal emails, business emails, mass emails, bulk emails, spam emails, and more.  The key here is how to make emails effective.

I get emails all the time from India introducing their company to me.  Most do not even mention my name in the email which makes it IMPERSONAL.  This is bad and should be avoided.

I get emails from clueless individuals stating that they are ready for “the” job. There is no job. I never advertised a job.  It is better to ask where I think they might be able to find “a” job.  Don’t go looking for work where it doesn’t exist.

I get emails from companies who want me to give them outsourcing work.  But, they never seem to ask what type of work I am interested in having done.

Making it personal
The key here is to successfully introduce yourself, and your company, and to create a dialogue with the other party. Most emails get discarded without a second thought.  So, the art you need to master is getting favorable attention and creating dialogue.  Step one is to know the name of who you are emailing and something about their company and their needs.  If you send generic emails to many companies, you will get ignored by all. However, if you make a special effort to get to know an INDIVIDUAL and make it personal, you might get some attention, especially if you are providing exactly what that person needs.

Mass emailing
Emailing for business is highly effective, and almost all companies use this tool. However, there are correct and incorrect ways to use this tool. If you email people materials they don’t want, or didn’t ask for, you are going to get marked as a spammer.  However, if you develop rapport with the people you are sending emails to, THEN you can send mass emails, providing that the particular materials you are sending are of interest to ALL members of the group you are mass emailing.  Mass emails can create a magical momentum for blog marketing, or just keeping in touch with your clients. I use mass emailing DAILY, and I do it correctly, and get 20% response rates from blog promotion emails, simply because I know all of the 7000 individuals I am mailing, and know what they like to read about.

Segmenting
Read any MBA book and they will talk about segmenting.  If you are emailing an individual, you customize the content of the email to please the individual who is reading the email. Answer some of their SPECIFIC questions and you win the game.  If you fail to answer their question, but give them a link to some generic page which touches on similar issues, but doesn’t really answer their question, then you alienate the customer by making them feel pushed to the side.   But, if you are emailing a GROUP, how do you customize your email to please the group?  You segment.  If you have 10,000 clients, you figure out how to divide them into groups according to their interests or needs.  My blog promotion emails are sent to people who are active in a particular directory, and I study their click behavior. I keep track of what types of posts or articles they like to click on, and then I write more articles that are similar in nature, although each article is unique!

Conclusion
Step one is to find a way to get to know your contact person.  Answer their particular questions, and find ways to meet their individual needs.  Once you know a person or a group on an individual level, you can email them regularly with materials which they find interesting. The minute you send them materials that they don’t like, or fail to answer their questions, then you lose the game and alienate your contact!

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Alternatives to having a fake call center name

September 3, 2010 by admin
Categories: Call Center | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Alternatives to creating a fake call center name

It seems to be a formal rule that is recorded in the constitution of India, that all call centre workers will have fake names — or be immediately throw in jail for not shunning the culture that they are from.  But, why not have a policy of having TWO NAMES…

I personally have a name that I translate into many languages.  I have an English name, a French name (spelled the same as the English name, but pronounced differently), a Spanish name, an Arabic name, a Hebrew name, and lastly a very classy Chinese name which sounds surprisingly similar to one of their literary scholars (which was a complete accident).    If I go to China and people ask my name, I say, “Wo de zhong-wen ming-zi shi ma jue min”.   That means, my Chinese name is Ma Jue Min.  I make it clear that this is not my legal name, but this is the Chinese version of my name — Horse Awaken the People.  Incidentally, the name was meant to be the closest phonetic match of my English name, but has a very poetic meaning in Chinese, and is almost identical to Li Jue Min who was a literary scholar in China — a happy coincidence.

In any case, living in America, we meet people from all around the world.  Before 911, I met a guy from Lebanon.  If I met him today, he might hide his real name for obvious reasons.  He introduced himself this way — “Hi, my name is Ousama, but my friends call me Oos — Just call me Oos”.

So, picture a South Indian call center worker being honest about his name and location. “Hi, my name is Rama-Chandra Sri-Kumar Venkatchalam — but, you can just call me Mike… everybody else does”

There is a legitimate reason to adapt an alias name if your name is too hard for Americans to say. Please remember that many Americans live in places like New York where we hear 30 languages every single day, every day of our lives. We are used to hearing names of all types ranging from African, Indian, French, German, Chinese, Korean, etc. For cosmopolitan Americans, being able to pronounce a name like Rajesh would be a piece of cake.  But, for whitebred folks in Oklahoma or North Dakota who don’t have much diversity at all, it might be an issue to grasp ANY Indian name at all.  To me it seems logical to keep your real name unless it is just impossible for more than 5% of Americans to remember or pronounce.

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An LPO company comes to visit me!

September 2, 2010 by admin
Categories: LPO | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Legal Processing Outsourcing company came to visit me!

It was an exciting moment in my life as the manager of an outsourcing directory.  I had spoken to many companies in India and the Philippines on the phone, but I had only met a few programming and web design companies who I had used for my own business needs.  This was a first — a meeting — and an exciting one.  A Legal Process Outsourcing company boss from India took a tour of the United States meeting with their business contacts in various parts of the United States.  There were two gentlemen, both very well spoken. We discussed marketing strategies for their business.  I will omit their names and locations for their privacy.

In any case, we discussed ways to improve their site which looks really nice.  Also, I came up with many ways to promote their overall web presence using SEO techniques. I might be able to find them clients from the U.S. over time as I develop my business presence. I hope that I develop a great relationship with this company.

It is my dream to have a close relationship with many BPO and outsourcing companies in the future. I might pay India a visit in 2013 and visit several different cities. I might visit the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates as well.  It is hard to handle my workload and travel too, but I will find a way once I make many of my processes more streamlined.  Every month I find a new way to make one of my processes just a little bit more effective or efficient, and over time the results are phenominal!

See our list of LPO companies worldwide!

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