Having a name people can pronounce rather than a fake American name.
If you work at an Indian Call Centre, it might make better sense to have an Indian name which Americans can pronounce, rather than trying to pass yourself off as “Mike from St. Louis”. If your name is RamaKrishna Subrahanium, it might be hard for Westerners to pronounce your name. But, if you claim to be “Mike from St. Louis”, then people will know you are a fake. So, what about names like Rakesh, Hari, Ravi, Mahesh, Kumar, Sujata, Angeli, and other easy to pronounce names. For folks in middle-America, it might be hard for them to pronounce these names, but they would get the hang of it after a while. You need to make Americans feel comfortable with you to acquire more call center business.
I saw a comedy about American call centers. The call centers researchers had learned that customers are happier if they can talk to the same rep each time they call. So, the call center had all their representatives have the same name. Every single guy there was named John, and each girl was Cindy. There were 100 Johns and 106 Cindy’s. This is a very comical, fake, and ineffective way to please your clients, however, for Indians there is a benefit.
Americans will never be able to pronounce multi-sylabic South Indian names like Tiravanantapuram (a city in Kerala). Even Indians call this T-vandrum for short. But, if Americans keep hearing names like Angeli (NO, not Angela, but Angeli), Anita, and Kumar, they will get used to it. After all, after our unfortunate war with the butcher of Bagdad, we can all pronounce the word, “Hussein”. And after 911, we can all pronounce the name, “Oussama” (which varies in spelling, but is pronounced the same way regardless). So, since we heard the word Oussama 1000+ times on the news and can now say it, then if all call center workers in India adopt exactly 10 easy to pronounce Indian names like Krishna, Sujata, and Ravi — then in another five or ten years, every American (Even people in the midwest) will be able to pronounce these names properly! In fact, we might even start naming OUR kids Krishna and Ravi.
If Indians master the art of being the best call center staff in the world — and keep their names — and are honest about being in Navi-Mumbai or Noida; then after a few years, it will be Americans who will be out of work unless they change THEIR name to Ravi, and pretend to be located in Secundrabad. If people think that the ONLY good call center workers are in India, we will all have to pretend to be in India.