Call centres, love life don't mix

They have changed the way youngsters earn, giving them the flying start that only (and probably) an IIT graduate could dream of. They have changed their eating and sleeping patterns.

Now, the industry sources and psychiatrists fear call centres are changing the way the young business process outsourcing industry executives view commitment in relationships.
"People are shying off from making a commitment towards long-term relationships and acceptability of short-term arrangements has increased by large. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that both men and women are equally inclined to go into a relationship without making any commitment," says Rajiv Kotnala, manager at a leading BPO.

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While Animesh Upadhyaya, a BPO executive, believes commitment is a subjective issue and varies from person to person, he agrees that cases of relationships taking a back seat are on a rise.
He blames odd work hours for this chaos in personal life.
"You can take an example as simple as making a commitment to meet someone on a particular day. You make a promise but in-between, your shift changes. You are left with no choice but to call it off. Such situations arise often," he says.
"The problem worsens if you are staying with your family," he continues, "on work days your family hardly gets to see you, so obviously they want to spend time with you on your off days. You get stuck between your work and social obligations, with hardly anytime to carry on with a relationship."

Insiders say an increasing number of people are taking refuge in short-term relationships with a tacit understanding that they need not make a life-long commitment to each other.
Karishma Pandit, another call centre executive, elaborates: "To give you an idea of what the emerging scenario is I can very safely say that many a times a relationship is only as long-lasting as a particular shift. Your partner changes with your roster."

Dr Jitendra Nagpal, a psychiatrist at Vidyasagar Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (VIMHANS), explains: "Most call centre agents are in an age group of 18-25, youngsters who want to make a fast buck. They do not want to attach any relationship tags at this age, but since work environment is so cohesive they cannot resist Cupid's arrow."
Although those involved in short-term relationships argue that there is nothing wrong in having 'walk-out-when-it's-comfortable' arrangement, as both the partners enter the relationship knowing the terms and conditions, the psychoanalysts refuse to buy such an argument.
"It is unhealthy to break a relationship abruptly even if both the partners pre-decide to 'walk-out-when-its-comfortable' because after the relationship is called off one person might come out of it while the other hasn't severed the bond yet," says Dr Sameer Parikh, a psychiatrist at Max Healthcare.

Psychiatrists believe the tendency to not-to make long-term commitments stems from bio-chemical hormonal changes that occur in body of an individual due to erratic sleep-awake pattern.
"Working in irregular night shifts disturbs the sleep-awake pattern of a person. Add to it the stress generated due to lack of socialising. All these factors have an overbearing on a person's day-to-day behaviour," says Dr Parikh.
"Not wanting to keep a long-term relationship is a reflection of changing psyche of a person, which is not healthy," he says and he admits more and more couples from call centres are coming for psychiatric aid as their marital life is suffering.
The reason for this, he cites out, is that they do not get to spend quality time with each other.
Dr Nagpal differs slightly as he says, "more than being together all the time it is important to know the value of missing each other in a marital relationship."
He, however, agrees with Dr Parikh that it is unhealthy to go into 'walk-out-when-its-comfortable' flings and says, "if expectations run high and one of the partners becomes possessive, the relationship might end up in fights, anger, resentment and, at times, even crimes originating from passion.

He does not rule-out repercussions like suicidal tendencies if one of the partners has high expectations out of a relationship while the other believes in hop and skip flings.
With mounting deadline pressures, erratic sleep patterns, and a drive to achieve-it-all stress is becoming a reality.
Shying off from commitments in relationships is an offshoot that not only reflects rising anxiety levels of an individual, but also threatens to wear out the social fabric of society, psychiatrists say.

A life In The Call Center

There was a friend of mine and i am going to share his thoughts which he shared with me when we both were working in a B.P.O. sector, we both had different designation. I can't say he was my friend as he is much older than me but after viewing his enthusiasm & energetic personality no one can judge his age, thats the only reason i always call him by his nick name.

I've been in technical support since 1997 and it's changed over the years into a struggle to survive. With outsourcing, lower pay, lower morale, we are looking at a burnout factor for many of our most brilliant techs. I think I can speak for many in my field when I say we are often regarded as a bunch of apes answering phones. Some companies treat their employees with respect while others make you out to be a line worker.
I recently left the cable company and wanted to keep my opinions low key in fear of losing my job among other things. During the article I'm not gonna disclose the company names in respect of hurting their reputation. I'm not here to bash a bunch of companies in some angry public article, I'm just giving some examples of what these poor guys go through on a daily basis. Most customers who call think of us as a bunch of arrogant snobs that know everything and we are above our customers. Thats not true at all. Most people want there problems solved right away and dont give any tech the time to figure out anything. We get yelled at with customers saying, "You dont know?" Some of those techs are not entirely familiar of the product yet and are often from a different back ground. If they are new to the phones this is exactly the case. Customers get angry about the IVR (Instant Voice Response) system where they will punch buttons into the phone to get to the right dept. More often than not, they need to be routed somewhere else. When the customer finally talks to a human being, they are out for blood. Most companies dont setup the IVR properly and this tends to make the company look bad and their customers at a heated rage.
When first worked for my local cable company I was appalled of how their employees were treated there. For doing an excellent job we get awarded a plastic mug or a candy dish. I felt like I was back in kindergarden. We would all receive a 2% raise every year and if we were lucky we get a small bonus check. Most of the people in the call center get paid around 11 to 14 an hour and go up around 25 cents every year. In New England thats chump change and you'd probably end up living with your parents or a group of people like bunch of villagers grouped together in a hut somewhere. There are plenty of places to transfer too, but most would get close to the same pay as before or pick someone that knows nothing about the job, that has been there longer than you. Basically, a 10 year veteran slacker, they cant fire, but can pay cheap. The real money would be a plant manager or team manager, but most technical support people just 3 years ago were getting the same pay as middle management is now. Often enough these people dont have a clue. For selling their overpriced product you would receive an award, if you didnt meet your goal you would be reprimanded or at some point fired.



The goal is to get as many people to subscribe as possible, even if you have to lie to get them in the door. After the install, the poor technical reps have to "save" the sale by offering more products or credit incentives. This practice goes on a regular basis and our customers only get angrier. Every year cable prices creep higher to pay for some newer products that are non-functional and havent been tested. They would roll out a cable product to the population and if things go wrong they would roll back a update to get things fixed. This practice is the same as modern software companies do. You can imagine our day, with all this going on and the amount of customers yelling at our techs and reps about our problem. You find yourself helpless and unable to give them the credits they deserve without getting fired. This isnt just the cable company, this stuff happens almost everywhere.
As far as trying to get into another position in the company ,I've tried contacting our HR dept and no one would answer my phone calls or e-mail. I would have to get permission first by going through 3 people above me and if they say yes I can contact them. After that I get no response for days and if I'm lucky, they call me back. It's sad that we can't help our customers or ourselves. They told us that they care about their employee's and it's part of our three pillars of success. These pillars are; Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction and Financial Success. Pretty catchy huh? Out of my experience they only care about one of those and that's making money. Often enough the training materials provided are not adequate and we get thrown to the customer pool with little to no information. Our computer systems are out of date and I could barely read the blurred text on our computer monitors, since they are trying to pass on to electronic heaven. Our applications we use to document our daily mess are down half the time as our IT dept scrambles to get things running again. We would have a 5 min bathroom break in between our two 15 min breaks a day, in addition to a 30min lunch. I try stuffing my body of nourishment and sometimes don't get a chance to finish my meal.
HR would frown on taking sick days or vacation. We would submit a request form to ask for a day off and they would say yes or no to it. Thats about it. If your sick more than 3 days you need some kind of doctors note. If you have to go to the hospital you need to be drug tested every time you go and a note of course. We would have business meetings every week and a supervisor would read off of a piece of paper all of us get, so we understand completely about what is expected of us. When the company makes a change that will make our customers upset we need to read off of that piece of paper that our marketing group wrote to make it sound acceptable to the customer. I would ask, what is our incentive to work here if there is no job expansion, decent pay and time for our families? We come in sick and make everyone else sick, because we are afraid of taking the time off we need to get better. Their response was, "Go somewhere else if you dont like it here". This is open door policy? Would you like to work there? How many of us have a choice? The company knows the job market is in their favor, so all we can do is work and take the punishment. Life is more like surviving than living in these kinds of places.
Before joining the evil empire of the media world I worked for another tech company. We serviced computer systems for gas stations out west. One day my manager pulled me aside and asked, "Your numbers are terrible here, you need to get these people off the phones. We get paid for every call they make". I just explained some of these folks cant speak English well and I need to talk slow and make sure these problems are solved. He told me that he didnt care if these problems are solved, he wants those numbers higher or I'm gonna be on probation. Their call statistic system was primitive back then. It only collects how many calls I answered and doesn't record the duration. To increase my numbers I would hang up on about twelve to fifteen people on the que and wait till they call back. This way my numbers would go up very quickly and when they call back I can help them. I was awarded for this behavior and believe it or not, management didn't know how I increased my numbers so quickly until after I left the company.
Managers play this number game and for the most part thats all what matters to them. We all sit in a 5x5 cube, talk to our customers and follow protocol. A lot of times I feel like im in the borg hive and say the same things all day long like a drone. When customers want to speak to a supervisor they say the same thing. Is this the kind of service people actually want? I know I dont. Now that companies outsource many of those tech jobs foreign techs dont know how to relate with American values and needs. They pretend to speak and act American, but thats like asking a chipmunk to act like a squirrel. We all can see right through it. It's not their fault, they are only doing a job just like us.

Corporate mentality is to make money as fast as possible. Some make there investment pack up and close, while others make a product and ride the wave. It doesnt matter who they walk over it, as long as the formula works. I expect some respect from an employer or at some point I just move on. At the same token I do the same. I work hard, come in on time do what needs to be done and beyond to get my company's cogs to move towards making a profit. Thats my job and quite often I do it well. If I ever leave I give a two weeks notice and let them know my vacations well in advance. I come in and do overtime when needed and do extra if the company is in a jam. We should all be a team to help our customers with our products. There is a lot of us techs that love our job, but hate the companies we work for. The next time you call about a problem think about us behind our desks being watched vigorously and told what to say. A lot of times we break rules just to help. In my opinion, we should help whatever we can in principle, because it's our customers that pay our paychecks and thats something that most companies seem to forget.