The Hindu Business Line : Seven Ps that apply in call centres

AMONG the hottest career options is a job in a call centre. It's something that offers a link between information technology and the English language, and also often between the East and the West too. The side-effects are more than living through the disturbed biological clocks and time-zones but also faked persona. To the enthusiastic, Arjun Raina advises, "Don't put on any accent." His book, Speak Right for a Call Centre Job! from Penguin (www.penguinbooksindia.com) is `a complete training guide for international telephone interface'. Fight to stay true to yourself; if you have any history of disturbed sleep or depression or any other psychiatric stress, stay away from the job, instructs Raina. "Once you have enough energy to take on the job, respond to life around you. Don't exist in a bubble, the deadly corporate capsule." Why? "You work elsewhere, but you belong here. Make an extra effort to locate yourself in this reality... Negotiate the duality of the job."

The author, trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, has worked as voice and speech trainer at the National School of Drama, New Delhi, and now coaches communication personnel in call centres. There are seven Ps to remember, writes Raina in the intro: "Promptness, answer the phone in three rings because the fourth is too late; politeness, do all the nice things that nice people do; preparation, don't waffle while searching for info; precision, be precise with numbers and even feelings; professionalism, concentrate on customer needs and deliver; practicality, stay real and pragmatic; and positivity, because that makes your job easier."

We've heard of Ramesh becoming George and Sushila turning into Susan when talking to American callers. Is that okay? "In a country where cultures are based on the celebration of names of a million gods, this loss of conscious choice and control over personal names and identities is a cause for serious concern. Business must look at this issue very seriously if not for what it is asking of a whole generation of young Indians, then at least for its own success and survival."

Pay heed to the call of Raina.

Go the grid way

PERHAPS you are a neophyte to the database arena and are looking for a way to fast-track your knowledge." Or, maybe you have been working in the industry for a number of years and are considering a move into a different RDBMS. Or, someone has walked into your office and uttered what some feel are the most dreaded six words in the English language - "So, you're the new database administrator." If so, there is every chance you're reading Oracle Database 10g: A Beginner's Guide, by Ian Abramson, Michael Abbey and Michael Corey, published by Tata McGraw-Hill (www.tatamcgrawhill.com) . The book presents fundamental concepts in 10g admin and programming, through self-paced tutorials and in-depth intro to SQL, PL/SQL, Java and XML programming.

The product has undergone many name changes: v6, 7, 8i, 9i and now 10g. "Oracle Database 10g is the culmination of thousands upon thousands of person hours building an infrastructure to deliver data to a hungry, worldwide community, just as electricity is delivered to a three-prong outlet near you," says the intro. But you ask Larryji about the `g'. And a four-letter word may hit you back: grid. "With grid computing, the industry envisions a computational grid where machines all the way from Intel-based server to the high-end servers from HP, IBM, and Sun are interlaced with one another in a massively scalable and sharable environment." The analogy to electricity grid indicates that in grid computing, idle processor time is deliberately consumed by shared applications. "Imagine if computing power from the quiet time (11 p.m. to 7 a.m. EST) in North America can be absorbed by users in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka."

The authors would answer simple questions too, such as: "What is the major difference between the clob and blob data types?" Sounds like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but the answer is: "The clob stores only alphanumeric data, whereas the blob can accommodate any type of data, including sound and video." Or, "which method do you normally use to shut down a database." For this, the experts respond with a discussion on shutdown normal, alter system checkpoint, shutdown abort, startup restrict, and shutdown immediate. Okay, next question: "What is the best way to become a good Oracle DBA quickly and then to keep improving?" Here's my answer: Read this.

Owners of knowledge economy

IN 1972, Edumund Pratt became the CEO and chairman of Pfizer. In 1982, the GATT Ministerial Declaration contained a decision authorising GATT Council to examine the question of counterfeit goods.

On July 1, 1986, the manufacturing clause of the US Copyright Act is allowed to lapse. And on January1, 1995, TRIPS entered into force. What's the connection between all these? For answer, you need to read Information Feudalism by Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite, published by Oxford (www.oup.com) .

"Who owns the knowledge economy?" is the question that serves as the subtitle, and the authors start chapter 1 with a shocking scenario of parents receiving notice from police - giving the option of paying a licence fee or face prosecution for patent infringement - because their child was found to be swinging not forward and backward as usual, but side to side by pulling on one chain first and then the other, a patented method. The chapter on `piracy' informs how the profession is one of the oldest, and that its practitioners were respected.

"Under Elizabeth's reign, piracy became a large-scale business involving old aristocratic families and high-ranking navy officers." It was an organised crime, because England was poor compared with Spain. IP rights began life as tools of censorship and monopoly privileges doled out by the king to fund wars and other pursuits, the authors narrate.

Another chapter titled `biogopolies' is on the patenting game; between 1981 and 1998, revenues from licensing and litigation of US patents rose from $3 billion to $100 billion.

In `infogopolies', the authors discuss `software blues'; "IBM's strategy of linking software to copyright and patents has led the Internet into an era of public-private regulation."

What's the bottom line? Information feudalism is not economically efficient, observe the authors, because it does not get the balance right between rewarding innovation and diffusing it; and it rewards guilds instead of inventive individual citizens.

"It makes democratic citizens trespassers on knowledge that should be the common heritage of humankind, their educational birthright. Ironically, information feudalism, by dismantling the publicness of knowledge, will eventually rob the knowledge economy of much of its productivity."

Grim analysis.

Tailpiece

"If I copy off a pirated CD, will you call me a pirate of the second order?"

"No, just a pirate, because once a pirate always a pirate."

Books2Byte@TheHindu.co.in

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