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ADVANCED INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION (AICC)
Complete
training/coaching scheme to equip Indian call centre Agents / CSRs with the
‘tools for the job’: intercultural communication skills to meet
Western consumer expectations and achieve high customer satisfaction
Executive Summary: What is AICC Training for and about?
from Preface of AICC Trainer’s Handbook. Copyright: John Twitchin and Centre for
Inter-Cultural Communication, 2008
AICC addresses Western customer dissatisfaction with
Indian call centres:
the symptoms of the problem,
its causes,
and its practical training solution.
In 2008,
Heads
of Training and/or Customer Services, both in
A
first difficulty in seeking to improve offshore C Sat levels by enhancing
front-line ‘soft skills’ of communication, is that the way
everybody speaks is largely unconscious. This is why appropriate, high quality, properly focused communications training is
vital: to help Indian CSRs to realise when things are going wrong in
their interactions with Western customers; to understand why this
happens; and then of course, to know what
to do to repair any misunderstandings or confusions as these occur.
Up-skilling in cross-cultural
communication is needed to equip Indian CSRs to achieve consistently high
quality service in the West (UK/US), and so to boost customer loyalty and the
client company’s brand image.
It’s a second difficulty that senior managers
of Western outsourcing companies and their Indian providers share strong
commercial incentives, if not to deny, then to ignore or down-play cultural
differences. Attracted by the lower labour costs in Asia, Western executives
persuade themselves that UK or US call centres can be ‘transplanted’
easily enough to the Indian context, and/or that if an Indian CSR and Western customer can
both speak in English, they will therefore understand each other - at least
well enough for ‘tele-talk’ services matching the C Sat levels of
Western call centres. With straightforward queries, within a prescribed
‘call flow’, Indian CSRs do communicate accurately enough. But as
soon as responsive, interactive talk is required, socio-linguistic research has
consistently shown for over
40 years that it’s wholly unsafe to think, just because both parties in a
cross-cultural exchange are using English fluently, that mutual rapport and understanding
are being achieved. But of course, ‘building rapport’ is exactly
the competence most needed for resolving or preventing ‘difficult’
calls and ensuring customer loyalty in the West. How to achieve
‘rapport’ and ‘empathy’ in tele-talking across cultures is Indian CSRs’
biggest single communication difficulty and biggest single training need.
A third difficulty is that few senior managers or
heads of training - or indeed, their ‘cultural training’
consultants - have studied intercultural linguistics. It leaves them prone to a
wishful assumption that, in order to communicate better and so improve their C
Sat results, all Indian front-line CSRs need in training is to (a) brush up
their basic English grammar and study meanings of Western colloquialisms, and
(b) become ‘orientated to Western culture’ - ie, to learn some
social anthropological facts about UK or US - and then apply that information
in their calls. To meet need (a) some companies bring in TEFL- or TESOL-trained
tutors to get their Indian CSRs certified in ‘Business English’. To
meet need (b) they get trainers to provide social facts about UK or US; or
import a cohort of call centre staff from UK/US to act as mentors on the floor;
or arrange for Indian front-line staff to visit their US or UK facilities.
Disillusion then sets in when they find that investing in (a) + (b) has only
marginal effects, wholly inadequate for remedying the ‘C Sat
deficit’. Not knowing what else to do, at this stage many Western
companies pull out of
However,
now for the first time, thanks to funding support by British Telecommunications
plc in 2007, hundreds of calls from Indian contact centres have been newly
analysed, using authoritative tools of applied socio-linguistics – the
relevant academic field. The findings show clearly how Indian CSRs’
communication difficulties with consumers arise not just from the obvious ‘failed’/
‘difficult’/‘low-scoring’ calls (where exasperated
customers get angry or abusive) but from much more frequent un-obvious ways that Indian CSRs damage
customer satisfaction in the West, without the CSRs or their Quality
Analysts/Coaches even realising it. The ‘C Sat deficit’ actually
derives far less from surface differences like Indian CSRs’ accent or grammar, or from Western customers’ anti-Indian prejudices or use of unfamiliar colloquialisms
than from more subtle cultural differences in assumptions and speaking
styles brought to customer service exchanges – specifically the interplay
between CSRs’
‘Indian-English’ and customers’
‘British-English’ or ‘American-English’. Essentially,
it is (wholly unintentional) misunderstandings
across cultures, and the odd-sounding
effects of ‘Indian-English’
to the ‘British/American-English’ ear of customers that create unsettling misgivings,
confusions or irritations for Western customers (or worse, fan frustrations
into anger), so undermining their confidence in Indian call centres in general,
and in the brand image of the company that uses them, in particular.
We all know that cultures vary around the world. We
all accept that the culture we are brought up in powerfully influences the way
we think, behave and talk as adults. When someone can’t speak another
person’s language, problems of
communication are obvious and expected. But when two people from different cultures are
speaking relatively fluently in the same language (in this case English) then
without training founded upon linguistic analysis it is hard to bring into
conscious focus how differing cultural backgrounds, together with the influence
of different ‘mother-tongue’ first languages, strongly affect the
way each speaks and uses the language interactively across cultures
- producing misunderstandings and consequent misperceptions of intentions which
are all the more difficult and damaging because unobvious and unexpected.
AICC
is therefore not another ‘off-the-shelf’ ‘Business
English’ language or ‘accent neutralisation’ course; nor is
it another ‘cultural training’ programme offering an amalgam of
loose generalisations about British or American society, together with cultural
behaviourist observations drawn from dated books addressed to managers about
‘business etiquette’ overseas. Those are wholly inadequate for
improving C Sat levels. Setting out sociological information about UK or US, or
anthropological abstractions about
‘cultural differences’ (like uncertainty avoidance, attitudes to
time, individualist / collectivist values, etc.) is all very interesting, but functionally irrelevant to the dynamics
of modern customer service interactions on the phone and the specific
difficulties of cross-cultural
communication that these pose for Indian CSRs.
This
Handbook does more than explain the
causes of the problem of Western consumer alienation, the ‘C Sat
deficit’. It provides the full training solution: 27 Exercises, Handouts
and Checklists in 12 Modules (see Contents list on p 25 below), to equip Indian
CSRs with practical skills of Advanced
Intercultural Communication (AICC). These are the ‘tools for the
job’ that CSRs need, to ensure they do not, because of their style of
communication in speaking English interactively, confuse or irritate Western
customers, or mishandle any ‘difficult’ calls. Trialled and piloted
in major Indian contact centres in Noida and Bangalore in 2007-08, the AICC
training scheme supplies Indian CSRs with the precise skills of intercultural communication needed to meet Western
customer service expectations – in particular to recognise and then repair the cross-cultural
misunderstandings which aggravate Western customers, and to build rapport across cultures. Such skills are important for success in any
international business exchange, whether face-to-face or on the phone; but they
are crucial for equipping Indian CSRs to win Western customers’
confidence, improve levels of C. Sats and/or customer loyalty, and so enhance
the brand image of Western outsourcing companies.
The research base of AICC
§ Linguistic analysis of
hundreds of real recorded customer service calls from
§ The AICC training
case-studies of interactions between Indian CSRs and Western customers have
powerful credibility, since they are all authentic calls, not invented
‘mock drama’ exchanges. They are presented in wholly practical, non-academic terms. But the concepts for analysing the quality of
customer service calls, and the communication
skills provided for CSRs, are
distilled from systematic academic research in the field of intercultural
applied socio-linguistics. Though crucially relevant to any international
dialogue across cultures, few Customer Service Managers or Heads of Training,
or indeed ‘language and culture’ consultants in either
§ Qualitative survey of
Indian CSRs and their supervisors. [Full data report available as an Executive
Briefing.]
§ 5-day trial workshops of
AICC methods and materials with Managers, Trainers, TLs and QAs at major
contact centres in Noida and
§ Two years’ piloting
roll-outs across whole floors of Indian call centres, 2007 – 08.
The author
John Twitchin, BA Oxon.;
FCIPD, is a specialist in international business communication across cultures.
Director of the UK Centre for Intercultural Development (CI-CD) since 1992, in
2007 he researched and trialled new communication skills for India’s
IT/BPO industry, in projects commissioned by British Telecom, National Rail
Enquiries, Barclays Bank, MBNA (Bank of America); HCL Technologies, Infosys
BPO. He has been speaker at International Customer Relations conferences in
In charge of management
training output at BBC TV for 25 years, he produced and directed over 100
documentary training films on diversity, many
Training Media Award winners, which have been broadcast many times on BBC TV,
and on SBS Channel in Australia (see ‘DVD/Videos’ via website.)
These include
unique film of cross-cultural business interactions filmed in
Clients for training in international cross-cultural
communication include United Kingdom Trade and Investment (UKTI); European
Commission; BAE Systems; Honeywell; CSC; Telstra; Westpac Bank; Merck; EDS HQ,
Dallas; Polaris; Avery Dennison.
For details of corporate clients; training DVDs;
publications; training evaluation reports; conference presentations, see CI-CD ‘Who we are’.
à To see the topics/needs covered by
the 12 Modules of AICC training, see Contents
page of AICC Handbook
à To see Research
Report: evidence of UK and other Western Customer Service Dissatisfaction with
Indian call centres; the linguistic source of the problem; the training
solution. (Extract from AICC Handbook
Introduction.)
à To access the AICC materials, customised for training
applications in