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Research Report
Western consumer alienation from
Indian contact centres:
its scale; its linguistic causes; its training solution.
extracts from Introduction to AICC
Training Handbook © Centre for
Inter-Cultural Development, 2008
à click for 2-page Executive
Summary ‘What is AICC for and about?’
-
why Indian contact centre staff frequently encounter
irritated responses or complaints, and find these hard to resolve, when
communicating with native-English-speaking consumers (or indeed, global company
colleagues) outside India.
-
how intense marketing competition in the service sector
in the West (especially utilities, IT, financial services and telecommunications)
puts an ever-increasingly high premium on achieving top quality customer
relations.
-
how, in order to ensure high levels of customer
satisfaction, Indian CSRs need training to be adept
at ‘reading between the lines’ and picking up Western consumers’
confusions or misunderstandings; to be skilled at resolving frustrations and/or
anger; and to be competent at building rapport in ways that meet Western
customer expectations.
-
analysing the specific difficulties Indian call centre
Agents/CSRs face in developing such communication skills
across cultures (a training need that by definition does not arise for Western call
centres with Western customers) and in adapting their communication style to be
able to boost customer loyalty in the West.
-
why communication difficulties and stress experienced by
Indian contact centre staff arise less from lack of proficiency in English
language (eg, from differences of accents, or
grammar, or unfamiliar idioms/colloquialisms in spoken English) than from lack
of skills of intercultural communication,
ie, ways of using spoken English in interactive exchanges across cultural
differences.
Customer service ‘tele-talk’ from
According
to India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), by 2006
India was ‘undisputed king of the business’, with 44% of the global
market for all tasks that can be done
over a computer network. Nasscom’s
2008 Strategic Review set a target for 2010 of no less than US$ 60 billion in software
exports and US$ 75 billion in service revenues – a net added-value of 4%
of
The reasons for this success are well known:
In fact, the benefits of
lower labour costs have become so illusory for many high-profile Western
companies that they have prematurely pulled out of India altogether (eg, Powergen, Lloyd’s TSB,
Abbey, NatWest, Aviva) – or admitted publicly that it’s only the
prohibitive expense of cancelling contracts that keeps them there. Indeed, according
to Simon Caulkin, Management Editor of The Observer, “outsourcing is
going through a mid-life crisis”. He reports a 2007 survey by the
consultancy Compass which analysed
240 large outsourcing contracts - and found that fully two thirds were unravelling before the contract’s full
term. Caulkin concluded:
“No wonder Western customers are
unhappy. If they’re cynical about customer service with an Indian or
other foreign accent, it’s partly because they know it’s an
accurate reflection of their supplier’s reliance on low cost and mass-production
attitudes in their training methods for dealing with them.”
Executives of Western companies
which outsource offshore are naturally worried to find their brand image
suffering from ‘C Sat deficit’ – ie,
lower average customer satisfaction rates from Indian call centres as compared
with Western call centres, an average difference acknowledged by Nasscom as
ranging from 12% - 35%. Many discover that they were over-optimistic in
assuming (a) that call centres can be simply and automatically
‘transplanted’ from the West to Asia without such deficit, or (b)
that if a CSR in India and a consumer in the West can both speak fluently in
grammatical English, with neither using a strong accent, this means they will
achieve mutual understanding, build rapport (and so boost customer loyalty); or
(c) that the ‘soft skills’ training (variously called
‘Language/Voice’ or ‘Cultural Communication’) offered
by most Indian IT/BPO provider companies for front-line CSRs
equips them with sufficient cross-cultural communication skills to meet Western
customer expectations, and so prevent ‘C Sat deficit’ and its
consequent damage to company brand image.
By 2007, for companies
off-shoring in
Does the promise of cost benefits
offshore - even if these are fully achieved - come at too high a price in terms
of customer service dissatisfaction in the West?
There
were many such comments in the press in 2006-07. All mere
subjective impressions? Or do published facts back them up? A 2006
survey of outsourcing companies by specialist consultancy CM Insight found that
“Service
quality levels dip by 75% with offshore operations. Call quality and customer
satisfaction are below par with
Mike Havard, MD of CM Insight concluded: “With
service levels falling demonstrably below average C Sats
levels in the West, we expect increasing customer discontent and disaffection.”
His prediction proved correct: a glance at the
§
Kwik-Fit Insurance announced it had completely pulled out of
§
Powergen, the major utility
company, declared it had decided to close its Indian call centre “because
of negative effects on customer service satisfaction”. According to the
independent watchdog Energywatch in 2007, customer complaints at Powergen dropped by 78% within a year; from bottom of the
satisfaction league it moved to second from top.
§
Esure, the online insurer,
announced that after only two and a half years, it was pulling out of
§
A 2007 survey conducted by Contactbabel found 73% of
§
96% of
§
At a UNICOM
conference on international customer management in 2007, three companies
reported ‘failed calls in
§
Direct line Insurance ran national TV
advertising campaigns from Spring 2006 based on a
reassuring voice announcing ‘And we’re on the phone in UK-only call centres’. Its price
brochure highlights: ‘Plus we’re on the phone only in the
This
approach seems to have strong customer appeal: already in September 2006 researchers
at Finaccord
reported that direct line had “become
the most effective brand in
§
Churchill Car Insurance adopted a similar approach
in 2008. One TV commercial emphasised on-screen: ‘And you can speak to a real person in this country’.
Another, featuring Rolf Harris, says in voice-over: “Call our UK-based call centres”. In TV
commercials in January 2009, customers are shown specifically asking
Churchill’s iconic ‘British Bull-dog’: “Do you have UK-based Call Centres?” (to which the dog makes the emphatic reply, in a strong
§
Nat West Bank has advertised for a long time on TV with the line
‘Phones answered 24/7, only in
§
First Direct highlighted in its TV commercials, May 2008: ‘Talk to a real person here in
§
Yellow Pages highlighted in a 2007poster campaign at rail and bus
stations countrywide as its single selling point: ‘All our call centres are based in the
§
Standard Life Insurance advertises ‘A
UK-based human voice’ as its first advantage. ‘If you make a
claim, speak to our friendly UK-based
advisers and feel you’re being looked after.’ It headlines ‘Award-winning UK-based customer service’ having won Best Customer Service Provider,
Health Insurance Awards, every year from 2001-2007. A survey in 2007 found
‘98% of Standard Life customers said they would recommend the company to
a friend.’
§
Hastings Insurance 2007-08 led a TV advert
with: ‘How’s your car
insurance? Talk to us in
§
Insure home and contents insurers:
‘24/7 claims helpline.
§
§
The Co-operative Bank advertises as its first and main selling point ‘
§
The
§
Barclays Bank has been a major user of
Indian call centres. But in 2009, its advertisements for its Home Contents and Buildings Insurance, began highlighting this
bullet-point: ‘A dedicated claims manager from UK-based call centres will be there to handle your claim 24/7,
all year round’
§
Lloyds TSB headlines its national
advertisements “A bank where you can speak to people to 24 hours a day,
who are all based in the UK” (Lloyds has more branches than any bank
in UK; it is ‘Britain’s most popular current account
provider’; voted ‘UK’s most trusted bank’ every year
from 2000 - 2008 in independent Readers Digest surveys.)
§
ING Direct (savings bank with 1
million
§
Leeds Building Society
Savings Bank headlines its national newspaper advertisements: ‘Leeds-based call centre, with real people at the end of the
phone!’
§
Brittania Building Society advertises ‘When you become a member of Brittania it’s only right you should expect to be treated
differently. We offer award-winning service. Our
§
Nectar, the rewards company,
announced in 2007: “Calls to
§
Head of British
Telecom Ben Verwaayen in a financial press
interview in 2007: ’ “My first priority
has been to improve customer service. This is key in
moving from a technology era to a marketing era. Customer satisfaction is
increasingly vital if BT is to leverage its brand effectively.” In 2004
BT moved its Broadband help-lines to
However, it seems it may not be that
simple. In 2008, BT advertised its Broadband service (featuring celebrity chef
Gordon Ramsay on LBC radio, and Peter Jones of Dragon’s Den in newspapers) ‘If you need help, our UK-based team of experts are on
hand.’ In 2009 publicity for
BT’s Directory Enquiries began: ‘As soon as you dial our directory
enquiries you get put straight through to
our
§
O2, a Broadband competitor to BT, states
in the windows of its
§
§
WebFusion highlights that it
gives customers ‘24/7 UK-based
support’
§
Fasthosts (offering domain hosting services) highlights ‘24/7
§
The Post Office offers countrywide telephone services, under the brand
name HomePhone.
This is advertised with the words “Our
UK-based Customer Care Line is available 24 hours a day.”
§
The Post Office also competes as a
Broadband provider. Its publicity states: ‘We have UK-based call centres to deal with queries’ and
‘Our technical support line is
based in the
§
Dell offers
§
Castle Cover (according to Financial Times, the fastest-growing
household insurer in
§
Nationwide (
§
AA Home Insurance’s national publicity in 2008
highlighted that it uses ‘
§
British Gas
advertises Boiler Insurance cover by specifying ‘24/7 365 manned
§
E-on energy, British Gas competitors,
advertises its ‘Track and Save’ service with the words ‘
§
SAGA Motor, Home and Travel
Insurance
for over-50s: ‘Phone us. No
press button menus. Just UK-based advisers’. Its Royal Mail home delivered leaflets
begin: ‘With UK-based advisers
we are the people to talk to about insurance.’
§
The Prudential
leaflets homes in
§
‘Are You Covered?’ is a leaflet hand-delivered by Royal Mail throughout
§
Onetel, the IT company taken over by Carphone Warehouse, “has seen its reputation slide on the back of poor
customer service from
§
EDF, the major energy
supplier, specifies on all accounts statements under the heading ‘Contacting
Us’: ‘Calls are to our
§
Pace Retail provides new businesses
with eCommerce web shops. Its first bulleted selling
point (before setting out its product range) is: ’Choose Pace Retail for
Excellent
§
Kaupthing Bank headed its 2007-08
§
A survey by Sheffield
Hallam University and Blue Prism
showed 60% of customers “had problems with offshore operatives’
lack of understanding of their issues and culture”; 30% saw off-shoring
as adversely affecting an organisation’s brand or image; 54% stated their
buying preference would be affected by where a company is located.
§
In British Insurance
Press, the Director of Marketing at brokers Swinton commented “Our
customers tell us they want a close professional approach providing empathy and
a high level of service. Having voices from different parts of the world, from
India and elsewhere, stops it being a customer experience and makes it a mere
transaction.”
§
Research findings reported by Ian Hughes of Consumer Intelligence showed that
“Consumers’ trust and confidence in a company falls dramatically if
they feel ‘handled’ by an offshore centre. They feel there is lack
of empathy, and they worry about whether they are being understood. In fact
most told us overseas call centres stink and they won’t call them again.
It’s not a xenophobic thing, it’s a confidence thing. The question
has to be asked: if there is so little empathy between consumer and
front-of-house representative, a financial services company would actually have
great difficulty proving it has treated its customers fairly as required by the
FSA.”
Those
media items from over 50
What’s immediately noticeable is that so many of those
banking, insurance, IT, telecoms and utility brands are not small firms. They include the
The
sad but stark reality is that for UK consumers, each gratuitous advertising reference
to ‘UK-only’ carries but
one message: ‘Rest assured, we will not
put you through to a call centre in India’. While of course easy,
straightforward queries falling within a ‘call flow’ can be handled
as well in India as in UK, there are few dinner parties in Britain over the
last few years which haven’t included disparaging of brand names - as guests
exchange bitter complaints about their customer service calls to India when the
dialogue moved ‘off-script’. BBC
TV scored a ratings hit in 2007 with a ‘Grumpy Old Men’
programme made up of anecdotes of aggravating interactions with Indian call
centres. This replicated the popular success of the ‘Grumpy Old
Men’ book, with its chapter on Customer Service Call Centres (quoting
calls from Mumbai). It is a fact of British life that the mention of Indian
call centres customarily produces an automatic negative response; and of
course, while the press and TV adverts continue drawing attention to ‘UK-only call centres’,
they are constantly reinforcing a
strongly negative image of Indian providers.
Those 50+ publicity items show
a market trend that must concern managers of the Indian IT/BPO industry as well
as managers of companies thinking of outsourcing offshore in
So there’s widespread consumer
alienation. But what’s its cause?
Why are customers so dissatisfied with contact services from
It’s a good question (which is
analysed in detail in Modules 1 and 5 of the AICC
Training Handbook). After all, both Indian and Western call centres
encounter similar technical difficulties; both are presented with the same
queries and problems by customers; both deal with customers anxious and
stressed about their query, or frustrated about delay in getting through on the
phone line, or aggravated and impatient at steps of procedure they find
over-complicated or confusing. The factual or procedural content of the answers
Western and Indian CSRs give to customers’
queries is exactly the same.
Furthermore,
in their manner, Indian CSRs generally have a strong
reputation for patience and courteous politeness (indeed, sometimes over-doing
this, for some tastes in the West). And by comparison with the average
qualification level of call centre staff in the West, Indian CSRs as university computer engineering graduates bring
high levels of IT expertise to the job, as well as ability to grasp the
complexities (and constant changes) of their client companies’ systems
and procedures. There is evidence that most queries are dealt with equally efficiently in
The source of the ‘C Sat
deficit’ patently lies in how the content of the queries and answers is handled by
Indian CSRs in their way of talking interactively with Western customers. That is why
the AICC course is designed to ensure that Indian CSRs
do not, because of their style of communicating in English on the phone, fail
to win and maintain the confidence of Western consumers - or worse, drive
Western customers away.
Research published in the
We have all experienced misunderstandings with people who can speak
English but who come from a cultural background different from our own. As
tourists on holiday, or in social situations, this hardly matters – we
don’t need to meet again. But when misunderstandings happen in the workplace,
whether between managements, or between CSRs and customers, the consequences can be disastrous.
Many projects in
In 2007, with funding support by British Telecommunications,
research into hundreds of call recordings was carried out, based on analysis from
the field of applied socio-linguistics. Unfortunately few senior managers,
trainers, or even ‘language and culture’ consultants, have studied
this, or indeed are even aware of it. As a result, as shown in the news items above,
many UK companies faced with ‘C Sat deficit’ have pulled out of
India rather than invested in training to equip Indian CSRs
with the appropriate cross-cultural skills needed to meet UK customer service
expectations.
This happens
partly because in many companies in India and in the West, a wrong assumption prevails that the
communication ‘soft skills’ CSRs need for
achieving high C Sats in the West can be developed
simply through enhanced language-based training (as offered in Teaching English as a Foreign Language
(TEFL) courses, in Business English, by Berlitz, or
via British Council). Such courses typically provide up-skilling in grammar and
intonation, together with review of Western ’colloquialisms’ and
idiomatic expressions. They are often supplemented with social anthropological
information about
Such training is certainly helpful for
any CSRs who need ‘language-based’
support – which is why it is comprehensively
supplied in the exercises and handouts of AICC Modules 2 - 4, setting out the
relevant grammatical, intonational and idiomatic
expertise they need. But language-based
training alone brings Indian Agents/CSRs only to level
4 of the 10 levels of AICC Certification. It cannot equip Indian Agents/CSRs with the
skills needed to match C Sat levels of Western call centres. For this they need
linguistics-based training, ie, the precisely relevant skills of intercultural communication, introduced
via AICC Modules 5 -12 (see Contents list below). Until the 20 skills are built
into the Indian training agenda, Western companies will continue to be
disappointed by C Sat deficiency – even, as we’ve seen, to the
extent of pulling out of
Communicating with Western customers
(1): Language issues
between ‘Indian-English’ (I-E) and ‘British-English’
(B-E)
§ Kiran Karnik, then President of Nassscom announced in Nov 2007:
“In the ITES industry only 25% of technical graduates, and 10-15% of
general college graduates, are suitable for immediate employment.”
§
Research conducted in 2006 by MeritTrac, an Indian company
specializing in skills assessment, concluded that ‘only 15% of applicants
to BPO jobs have the requisite level of English skill’ [ie, competence for dealing with Western consumers].
§
Also in 2006,
§
Pavan K.Varma (ex-Press Secretary to the President of India and
Indian Foreign Office spokesman) observes in Being Indian – inside the real India (2006) ‘Indian
enthusiasts of English have argued that its perpetuation is in the national
interest in a global economy – but how could this be so when less than 2%
of the population speaks English at all adequately?’ [ie, in the ‘B-E’ speaking style of Nehru
or Mrs Gandhi.]
Of course, some I-E speaking Agents/CSRs have a ‘good ear’ for languages and bring a natural flair to
adapting their communication style across cultures, simply through constant exposure
to B-E in exchanges with Western customers (a process known in linguistics as
‘convergence’). Unfortunately, few CSRs
have the capacity to develop communication skills in this way unaided; and it
only happens via unproblematic calls. (In any case, of course, however
naturally adaptable some CSRs may be, communication
competences should be developed in good preparatory training and coaching, not
from trial and error at the expense of customers - and least of all via
screen-only ‘dummy’ systems still used by some Indian contact
centres.)
Understandably
perhaps (but wrongly) Indian CSRs who encounter
communication difficulties assume these occur because Western customers find
their accent difficult to understand. They believe that by
‘neutralising’ their I-E accent, or by practising ‘Received
Pronunciation’ they will overcome their problems. It’s true that a very strong I-E accent may create
problems for some Western customers, but linguistic analysis shows that in the
great majority of calls, accent is not the main source of difficulty.
By
and large, people in US,
Communicating with Western customers (2): Linguistics issues
between ‘Indian-English’ and ‘British-English’: the
need for skills of Intercultural Communication
Indian
CSRs who lack competence in the basic grammar of
‘English-as-language-of-commerce’ may of course thereby encounter
communication difficulties with some Western customers. This is why leading
Indian companies test CSR job candidates to assess their English language
capacity at recruitment stage; they also provide English language support as
part of initial training – and AICC Modules 2 - 4 supply detailed
materials for that purpose. But as noted above, language support alone, however
good, is far from enough to meet the problem of lower average customer
satisfaction levels: it is the intercultural aspects of Indian and
Western styles of spoken English that produce most difficulties for Indian CSRs and their customers. It bears repeating that the
‘C Sat deficit’ derives less from language-based differences (like Indian accents or grammar or B-E
idioms) than from linguistics-based
differences – namely, the effects of cultural assumptions underlying the ‘Indian-English’
and ‘British-English’ speaking styles brought to their ‘tele-talk’ exchange by CSRs
and Western customers.
The
research project commissioned by British Telecommunications plc in 2006-07
showed how Indian CSRs’ communication
difficulties with UK consumers arise not just from the obvious ‘failed’/
‘difficult’/‘low-scoring’ calls (where exasperated
customers get angry or abusive) but from the much more frequent un-obvious ways that Indian CSRs damage UK customer satisfaction, without CSRs or their Quality Analysts/Coaches even realising it.
Essentially, it is (wholly unintended) misunderstandings
across cultures, and the odd-sounding
effects of ‘Indian-English’
to the ‘British-English’ ear of Western customers that creates unsettling misgivings and
confusion (or worse, fans frustrations into anger), so undermining those
Western customers’ confidence in Indian call centres in general, and in
the brand image of the Western company that uses them, in particular.
It’s a difficulty for providers of outsourced
‘tele-talk’ customer services that the
way we speak is largely an unconscious process. That is why training is needed - to help Indian CSRs
and Quality staff to realise when things are going wrong in their
interactions with Western customers; to understand
why this happens; and then of course,
to develop the due communication skills for what
to do to repair – or better, prevent – the confusions and misunderstandings that create irritation
and customer dissatisfaction.
We all accept that the culture we are brought up in
powerfully influences the way we think, behave and talk as adults. We all know
that cultures vary around the world. When someone can’t speak another
person’s language, problems of
communication are obvious and expected. But when two people from different cultures are
both speaking in the same language, English, then without the tools of linguistics
it is hard to bring into conscious focus how differing cultural backgrounds and
differing ‘mother-tongue’ first languages influence the way each
speaks English - so producing cross-cultural breakdowns and consequent
misperceptions of intentions, which are all the more difficult and
damaging because unobvious and unexpected.
There’s
an example of what this means in an account by Mark Kobayashi-Hillary (author
of Outsourcing to
“In the early days there was a
trend of offshore agents seeking to communicate to
I
was talking recently to a call centre boss who has agents in
Analysis
of hundreds of Indian customer service recordings in 2007 confirmed how that
call centre boss was quite right. The research pinpointed the specific problems
that arise for Indian call centres (which are using English cross-culturally with customers), which do
not arise for Western call centres (which are using English mono-culturally with customers). It
demonstrated how in
difficulties of content (arising from complexity of product/system, or lay
people’s confusion with technical/jargon terms, or needs beyond those
covered in the procedural ‘script’
of the call)
are commonly confused and aggravated by
difficulties of communication (arising less from language differences than from
culturally different speaking styles between CSRs’
‘Indian-English’ (I-E) and customers’
‘British-English’ (B-E), in the linguistic
‘script’ of the call).
In essence, Western customers want a quick and
straightforward answer to their query, from a company representative they sense
cares about them and their problem – ie, who
comes across as keen to help them sort it out and able to champion their case
effectively if practical problems arise. They don’t want to feel uncertain whether they are being fully
understood while stating their query. Nor do they want to have to infer what the CSR means, or strain to make out what a CSR is
intending to convey in reply.
Unfortunately, that is just what happens with Indian contact
centres, however well-intentioned the CSRs’
efforts to help, and however well motivated to care about the customer. Native-English-speaking
consumers in the West become unsettled by misgivings
of confidence when an Indian CSR speaks English in a way that sounds odd or
unfamiliar to the native ‘British-English’ (B-E) ear – ie, when a CSR uses (1) the grammatical and
‘Mother-Tongue Influences’ (MTI) of ‘Indian-English’
(I-E), or (2) a speaking style which because of intonational
MTI or other cultural differences comes across (unwittingly) to the B-E ear as
‘ritualised / formulaic / mechanical’ or ‘detached /
indifferent / insincere/ impersonal’. And when communication difficulties
are not picked up by the I-E speaking CSR (whether the customer expresses these
overtly, or more indirectly ‘between the lines’ in their B-E
speaking style), this can trigger or fuel customer exasperation. When confusions
or misperceptions of meanings or intentions are not spotted as they arise, they
cannot be repaired and resolved by the CSR – so that customer irritation
starts to spiral into impotent frustration. Such feelings of aggravation are
often initially suppressed by UK customers, or expressed in B-E style via light
sarcasm - which unfortunately is often entirely missed by Indian CSRs. Time and again in ‘difficult’ calls we
hear customers making such light sarcastic asides, then starting to repeat
themselves, then speaking louder and more colloquially, sometimes escalating to
threatening to take their account elsewhere, or in extreme cases to slamming
down the phone in ‘telephone rage’. Whether obviously or un-obviously
expressed, the damage to customer loyalty and brand image is done.
In the chapter on call centres in her famous book ‘Good to Talk?’, linguistics
academic Deborah Cameron reports from her research that UK consumers have a
fundamental, overwhelming desire, namely “to engage with a person –
not an automatic machine, nor someone who talks like an automaton, in a
detached mechanical way”. But of course, ‘engaging as a
person’ can only be communicated in dialogue on the telephone through the way words are used interactively. And
this happens differently in Indian-English style from British-English or
American-English style. Unfortunately many trainers (whether Indian or Western)
don’t realise this. They advise or instruct Indian CSRs
to ‘engage responsively as a person’ or to ‘build
rapport’ or to ‘empathise’ (usually defined as ‘putting
yourself in the other’s shoes’) with Western customers. CSRs understand these verbs and emotions conceptually well enough, but the advice
is of little help if trainers don’t explain how, in terms of practical meanings, they are heavily
culturally determined. Indian CSRs empathise or build
rapport in an Indian way, expressed in Indian-English speaking style. In fact, this is often just what makes many CSRs sound
to the ear of British- or American- English-speaking consumers as
‘over-rigid’ or ‘detached’. ‘Putting yourself in
the shoes of another’ is an imaginative exercise difficult enough within one’s
own culture; understanding how to apply it convincingly in the communicative
style of another, different, culture is much more difficult. Expert training and
practice is needed if CSRs are to become adept at conducting
customer services across cultural
differences. Tragically, even when this is well done, lack of co-ordination
between Training and Operational Departments too often puts Indian CSRs into a chronically stressful, de-motivating
‘Catch 22’: their TLs and Quality
Controllers / Analysts (all themselves I-E speakers) mark them down severely
because in seeking to ‘empathise’ or ‘build rapport’ by
exercising flexible responsiveness to a customer in B-E terms, they have
‘strayed’ from the strict terms of a given call script, or varied a
company policy that the Quality and TL staff think (often wrongly) requires conventionalised
greetings, apologies, sign-offs.
In
2006 a survey made for the
There
was a similar pattern with ‘customer anger’: research showed this
also usually develops over the whole duration of a call, rather than manifested
immediately at the start. So again, this is more an effect than a cause. (If
anything, in traditional stereotypical terms the British have usually been perceived
abroad as self-effacing people who say ‘sorry’ all the time and
tend to suppress or underplay expressions of emotion in public - of anger in
particular.) It is very clear in the survey that the Indian CSRs
had not been equipped in their merely language-based ‘soft
skills’ training (often called ‘Voice/Culture/Communication’)
to pick up Western consumers’ incipient feelings of irritation, as
signalled ‘between the lines’ in often understated sarcasm or by
indirect idiomatic usages. They recurrently completely missed the cumulative
symptoms of cross-cultural misunderstandings in their call exchanges, and lacked
the linguistics-based skills needed to repair and resolve misperceptions
of meaning and intentions before these escalated from frustration into
‘telephone rage’ (raised-voice, angry rebuffs or demands “I
don’t want apologies, they’re no good to me” “I want to
speak with a supervisor” “Give me someone in authority in this
country”).
In summary: linguistic research commissioned by BT and
National Rail Enquiries in 2006-07 showed that it is chiefly the unsettling
effects of unexpected responses and/or the unfamiliar
‘odd-sounding’ ‘Indian-English’ features in CSRs’ speaking style - far more than issues of basic
grammar, differences of accent, unfamiliar Western idioms, or irrational
xenophobic attitudes towards Indians - that undermine Western customers’
confidence in Indian call centre services. As Jill Coates, Head of Corporate
Training at the British Council, India, commented at the ‘English for Progress’ policy dialogue at
Chennai in 2007: ‘The biggest gaps in IT/BPO capability recruitment are
lack of cultural and socio-linguistic awareness, rather than accent or
grammatical accuracy’.
The AICC training scheme identifies exactly those gaps of
‘cultural and socio-linguistic awareness’ that create the Indian
‘C Sat deficit’ problem. And it supplies the practical solution: the
due communication skills, and the training scheme for developing these.
Up-skilling Indian CSRs for top quality customer service: the role of Managers
and Heads of Training in the West and in
Senior
managers of Western outsourcing companies naturally worry about damage to brand
image resulting from using Indian call centres. But more than that: they are
mystified. Attracted by the cost advantages in India and by assurances that
Indian telephone agents/CSRs are all graduates who
speak English, they (or their consultants) have often not anticipated such a
significant ‘C Sat deficit’. In deciding to relocate offshore, they
may not have appreciated that Western call centre operations can’t simply be
‘transplanted’ overseas: different
cultural values produce subtly different
assumptions and behaviours, not just in customer service
interactions, but in styles of leadership,
establishing business relationships, managing and motivating teams, designing
and conducting training, measuring performance, and perhaps most
challengingly, in change management.
Any manager who has worked abroad will have discovered how a leadership or project management style that
works well in the West can be ineffective in the different cultural context of
Asia – even in the most ‘westernised’ of Indian companies.
It’s not just a matter of management style. Western styles
of training in communication for customer
service are also likely to fail in Asia, or disappoint with less than expected
productivity or efficiency, not because people in Asia speak English in
different accents or with different grammatical inflections (or are incompetent
or stupid, or hard to motivate because they ‘couldn’t care
less’) but because of differing usage
of English in interactions across
cultures. It bears repetition that linguistic research shows this is the main
source of (mostly unwitting) misunderstandings between CSRs and Western customers, with
consequent misperceptions of intentions. Such communication breakdowns can be
repaired or prevented only through training in awareness and skills of
intercultural communication – training which is conducted in alignment
with Indian ways of learning. Effective ‘soft skills’ communication
trainers need to be expertly well-informed about where Indian CSRs are linguistically coming from - knowing exactly what makes
it difficult for I-E speakers to adapt their communicative style in their work.
As
From the Indian senior
management point of view, they are already
supplying training to ensure good quality contact services. They test
candidates at recruitment stage for competence in English grammar; they provide
training in ‘accent neutralisation’ or ‘soft skills’ of
‘voice/language and culture’ (covering grammar, intonation and
recognition of unfamiliar Western colloquialisms). They appoint teams of
Quality Analysts/Controllers to monitor Agents/CSRs’
calls and give individual feed-back; they up-load lists of meanings of Western
idioms on the company Intranet.
Furthermore, many
Training Departments furnish Agents/CSRs with
background information about ‘UK/US culture and society’, on an
assumption that to be able to communicate better, all Indian CSRs need, once they have brushed up their English language
skills (grammar, accent and meanings of idioms), is to learn some
anthropological / sociological facts about the US or UK (or make a visit to
either country) and then apply the information in their handling of calls. An academic
survey of Indian supervisors and CSRs in 2007 (available as Executive Briefing) showed what
wide range of social information they’d been told about the
There proved to
be a similar story with training lists of Western ‘colloquialisms’,
as supplied to some Indian companies by ‘cultural consultants’. On
inspection, most of these were spectacularly
irrelevant to the context of customer service phone calls. Indian CSRs are being taught meanings of idiomatic, figurative
expressions, few of which have, or would ever be, used in such calls. Two
groups of Indian Trainers, surveyed in 2007, emphasised that the ‘cultural
information’ they needed was detailed analysis of Western
customers’ behaviour patterns and service expectations when talking on the phone. They wanted practical
explanation only of idioms/colloquialisms which are actually used, or likely to
be used, by Western customers. (This is why AICC Module 4 comprises a
compilation of 250 idioms gathered from monitoring contact centre calls, together
with a fuller dictionary, for team reference purposes, of 1000 idioms also monitored
from calls.) And it’s not a matter just of credibility and relevance of meanings.
Far more important than knowing non-literal meanings of an idiomatic expression,
is being able to recognise the negative feeling
its use may signify, and knowing what to
say in reply to resolve this.
Some Indian training
departments seek to increase their CSRs’
‘empathetic understanding’ of British consumers by screening BBC
News Bulletins, or popular entertainment films like ‘Bridget Jones
Diary’ and/or TV soap operas like ‘East Enders’. Such
viewings certainly provide morale-boosting breaks from tedious work on the
floor, but they are quite misleading in training terms. ‘Bridget Jones
Diary’ features an American actress, and a caricatured stockbroker and a
leading barrister using terms like ‘Crikey!’.
And few, if any UK customers actually speak in the ‘East Enders’
manner - a conventionalised ‘faux-cockney’ style known as ‘Mockney’ or ‘Euston Films Cockney’ - any
more than Indians in real life talk in the stylised manner, constantly breaking
into song, of traditional Bollywood films.
Some Indian companies go further,
importing cohorts of British call centre agents/CSRs
to work in a mentoring role on the floor. The hope seems to be that by sharing
their experience/approach they will inspire Indian CSRs
through role-modelling example to develop the communication competences they
need for establishing rapport in the West. The CSR survey findings show that
such imported Western staff usually score highly in popularity, but because they have no linguistic or training skills,
and because they bring mono-cultural
assumptions to the CSRs’ need for intercultural skills, they produce only
piecemeal benefits in skills development and customer satisfaction.
It all leaves many
Indian senior managers perplexed. Their various training initiatives never seem
to be enough. If at all, C Sat results show only marginal and short-term change,
well short of achieving what the Western client companies want: sustained C Sat
outcomes at least matching, and preferably improving upon, average satisfaction
levels of Western call centres.
The problem is aggravated
when companies fail to develop any accurate
metrics, whether quantitative or qualitative, for training impact / effectiveness
either on skills improvement, or on levels of customer satisfaction. ‘Hope
for the best’ or ‘hit-or-miss’ seems to be a prevailing
managerial philosophy both in
An observation
on front-line training for offshore contact centres
in India
Progressive
companies both in
Executives
of Indian IT/BPO companies keep themselves extremely well informed on new technological
developments; Western executives are accustomed to seek consultants’ specialist advice when setting up a major new
offshore project – to access their expertise in market research,
or in estimating financials/costs or due diligence, or in skills of leadership of
joint project/change management. But in both the West and in
While quantitative demand for existing IT/BPO services continues, Indian
companies will be tempted to regard investment in enhanced communication
training, to improve their qualitative
supply of high C Sat levels in contact services, as a luxury extra rather
than an essential priority. From 2007-08 Western companies have been cutting
back on numbers of seats in offshore call centres in
India, but there has been expanding BPO demand (especially DPO ‘Document
Processing Outsourcing’) from USA, UK, and other parts of Europe, as
Western companies newly desperate to cut costs because of the ‘credit
crunch’, have taken up slack left by companies that have pulled out of
India.
However, any such short-termist view in
And second, if the
large-scale Indian providers do not constructively tackle the customer service
quality problems which have already led so many
Western companies to withdraw from
With AICC built into its training agenda,
equipping CSRs to achieve measurably demonstrable
high Customer
Satisfaction rates in the West, an Indian company will gain competitive advantage at the pioneering forefront of
à for
a 2-page Executive Summary ‘What is
AICC for and about?’ (the Preface of the AICC Training
Handbook, describing linguistic research conducted in 2007-08 into causes of
Western consumer alienation)
à to see the
topics/needs covered by the 12 Modules of AICC training, see Contents page of AICC
Handbook
à to
access the
à back to CI-CD Customer Service
Training in India
à to see CI-CD workshop for
managers: ‘Doing Business in India’