BPO-Sutra : True Stories from India's BPO & Call Centres edited by Sudhindra Mokhasi (Rupa & Co.)
BPO-Sutra is a book best described by its sub-title, “True stories from India’s BPO & Call Centres”. The book is a compilation of stories told by ordinary people who work in the BPO and call center industry. Editor Sudhindra Mokhasi highly recommends reading the glossary first to acquaint the reader with all the jargon associated with BPOs. What’s a BPO? BPO stands for Business Process Outsourcing. It is a method of subcontracting various business-related operations such as tech support and payroll to third-party vendors.
Aside from BPO, in order to truly appreciate the stories, the reader should familiarize themselves with the meanings of the acronyms ISP, AHT, COPC certified, SME, NCNS as well as some other terms used in the industry such as cold calling, call escalation, call monitoring, captive center, offshoring, etc.
The meanings of the acronyms are as follows: ISP (Internet Service Provider), AHT (Average Handling Time), COPC certified (Customer Operations Performance Center) which is an organization the evaluates and certifies BPO companies that meet and maintain certain standards), SME (Subject Matter Expert), NCNS (No Call No Show) - a term used for employees who don’t call or show up for work.
Cold calling refers to the practice of making random calls to people to promote a product or service. Perhaps one of the most hated aspects of the business as cold calling refers to telemarketers.
Call escalation is when the call exceeds the amount of time allotted to the agent to deal with the customer to resolve issues. If the call goes beyond the allotted time, the call is then transferred to a supervisor or manager.
Call monitoring is a practice where calls made or received by agents are monitored by quality analysts and managers to assess the quality of their call agents.
A captive center is not a prison, it is a company-owned offshore operation where the work is also done offshore by the people hired by the company. The practice of offshoring is when one country has their work done in another country where labor costs are usually cheaper, saving the parent company hundreds, thousands or millions of dollars.
In the early years of the 2000s, many U.S. companies were offshoring to India. Major corporations such as General Electric and British Airways proved that offshoring office work to India was a viable option. “More importantly, the world had suddenly discovered that there were millions of English speaking smart Indians. It couldn’t have been a better time.”
The stories are separated into six self-explanatory categories related to BPO life - Calls, Work, Travel, Home, Scams, and Parties and Weekends. The book invites the reader to “join us as we party One Night in Every Call Center.”
It’s almost a given that most Americans hate telemarketers and do not like dealing with call centers, however, this book gives the reader an insight to how the call centers work and by whom they are run. It is a highly informative introduction to the common practice of Business Process Outsourcing.
One of earliest BPOs to be established were the call centers and this book gives the reader an indepth look as to what goes on inside such a place. The editor reiterates how call centers are numbers obsessed. “Everything in operations is converted to a metric, metric and monitored. Take Average Holding Time (AHT) for example. AHT is used as a measure for effectiveness of an agent. Tough luck if you get a dim customer.”
The stories range from the hilarious to the absurd. There are some pieces that are moving and some pieces that will just make you shake your head. You will laugh, you will cry and you definitely will not be bored. Remember, the next time you receive a call from a telemarketer saying his name is Sean, chances are he’s an Indian speaking with an American accent to try to sell you products or services for a multi-national corporation. ~Ernie Hoyt