Call center blues

According to this article in the Mumbai Mirror

I deal with those a**holes in America, I live like them too," says 19-year-old BPO exec Yogesh Rautela, 10 months into the job. His credit cards are stretched, his money is spent on “boozing, partying, discos”, he doesn't believe in saving. Somewhere, an FMCG or apparel-maker's Marketing Manager is jumping for joy.

Colleges, coffee shops or the local McD's, you can't miss today's teens. But what happened to the idealistic, penniless teen, strumming a Beatles song under the trees? Hasn't hangin' out, the perennial pastime of pre-20s everywhere, never been costlier? Well, it hasn’t, but no worries, nowadays it fits the rest of the bill just right.

Well, I could very well be one of the asshole that Yogesh Rautela gets to deal with in his daily job.

About two weeks ago I received a marketing call, like most of them, at dinnertime, peddling the services of Dish Network. Now all our friends have Dish Network installed in their homes, because they also broadcast desi channels like Zee, Sony, B4U, bundled into their package.

Over the past few weeks, we had been discussing terminating our cable service, because of the steep increase in their price and also since we do not watch TV much. We are also trying, with limited success, to dissuade raising a TV addict, out of our son, Sidharth. I’m with Bill Gates on this point. Then again, football season starts this week, and Seemz watches Cramer on CNBC, occasionally!!! So we were still ambivalent about disconnecting the cable service.

So with this in mind, I listened to the young man on the line, extolling the great deal that we were about to get with Dish Network. And truly, a great deal it was. Now the accent of this chap, despite the American accent camouflage, sounded distinctly Indian, and so did the speed of delivery. Indians may be the only people in the world to get their sentence across in such a hurry.

When asked ‘where are you based out of?’, this operator replied ‘New Jersey’ and so I didn’t pursue it any further. Since the offer that he was making was exceptional, I decided to go ahead with the order, despite being put off by the hurried tone of the operator. He would hardly let me complete my question, before answering it in an condescending tone as if to suggest ‘Is this the kind of question to ask?’

At every query, this operator would rattle off the details and then kept on pestering me to sign up immediately. So despite having everything free for the first two months i.e. equipment, service, installation, DVR etc., he wanted my credit card number to sign up. This is where we parted ways, and started going back on forth as to why he needed my credit card number. Instead of explaining patiently, he was parroting lines about company policy, ‘why don’t you understand’, etc. So I slammed the phone down.

A few days later and we are at dinner and the phone rings. Someone from Dish Network asking for me. Only, this time it’s a gal. Whoopee Doo, lets send in the sweet voice to qualm the jerk, shall we?

Same deal, Indian accent, rushed tones, rushing me into signing up. One of the very first questions I asked her was ‘Where are you based out of ? ‘ and she replied ‘Colorado’. Hmm. We then do the song and dance about the great deal blah blah blah and then finally I relent to sign up. She asks me for the credit card number which I now divulge and she then wants my social security number, for a background check.

Ugh, ugh why does someone need my SSN for credit card verification? So we stop right there with her trying to convince me every which way that it was safe to part with my SSN. To no avail. She then brings on her supervisor to make the jerk see the error of his ways.

This guy has an accent so thick, that I just had to ask him ‘Where are you physically located right now?’ and he replies “Calcutta”. Ugh huh, that’s what I thought.

Now we begin to spar over the SSN and he starts giving me techno babble as to how they don’t store the SSN on their system yadda yadda yadda. And how when they take down the information from one screen to another, the details they entered on the previous screen disappears, and its not stored anywhere, is what he explains to me. Ahem, say what now ? We then delve into the architecture of e-commerce and how the browser works and session variables and all that good stuff. Doesn’t matter, he still wants my SSN.

At the end of this discussion he was left begging for the last four digits of my soc., which I obstinately refused to divulge. If indeed there was some way, that they could circumvent the background check, using my SSN, then they would have my business. Woefully, he relented, and gave up on me. No Dish Network for us.

Last week we received a call during, guess when, dinner again. This seemed like a local call, from Dish Network. The difference this time was that the operator was courteous, in no rush, did not give me any yarn about any details, and patiently answered all my questions. In fact she gave me details that the previous three operators had not provided, important stuff, like contract duration and terms after the contract expires, breaks in pricing etc..

We signed up for Dish Network, and yes, I also provided the last four digits of my SSN. The installation has been scheduled between 3-5 PM, Saturday. Uninterrupted football, here I come. Desi call center, one less sale for you!!!