The Hindu Business Line : <I>Call centres </I>

I have come to the conclusion that non-proliferation should not be limited to nuclear weapons, but should be extended to call centres as well! My experience over the years with these outgrowths of firms in the line of consumer goods and services has invariably been miserable. Actually, call centres are of help, if at all, only to mammoth organisations with world-wide range and spread, for scouting for business, laying the groundwork for expansion, or getting feedback from the field. For outfits which are manageable in size, especially those whose territorial jurisdiction, scale and variety of operations are not extensive, they are a waste of resources. Indeed, as a means of generating "customer delight", they are a flop.

If there is a customer who has been delighted by dealing with any of them for resolving a problem or redressing a complaint, let him lift his hand. The reason why call centres are irritating stumbling blocks between the customers and the companies setting them up is precisely that they are intended to be so by the companies themselves which use them as a protective shield to keep disgruntled customers at bay.

The prospect of customer delight changing into customer dread is inherent in the staffing of the call centres which employ young and inexperienced persons just out of school or college, purely on their ability to string a few words of English interspersing their half-baked responses with plenty of ingratiating `Sirs' and `Madams'. They are just live mail boxes promising to forward customers' frustrations to the concerned technical or sales personnel, with profuse assurances that they would call back soon. Of course, they seldom do, leading to a fresh round of futile venting of hard feelings.

Instead of aping such exogenous artifices, Indian companies should learn to deal with customers direct from the respective departments. This will make for better customer relations with a human touch, besides saving expenses on call centres.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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