Call Waiting

The blossoming of the Indian call centre

Call Waiting Indian call centres are a booming business - but why do they not like admitting they are calling from India when on the phone to a potential client?
In the west they are seen as sweatshops for the underpaid, underskilled and overworked, but in India call centre jobs are highly sought after by well-educated middle class professionals. They get to watch reruns of The Bill and learn about English football in comfortable air-conditioned offices. They are taught to joke about the rainy weather and modulate their accents - never letting on to customers where they're calling from. "They don't ask and we don't tell them." says Raman Roy, who runs a Delhi-based company employing 500 staff. And that's just the start of it. Corporate heavy hitters like American Express are already doing much of their accounting and administration there. One company even hires out a team of PhD scientists for an American research company working on genomes - showing that with the new technology, intellectual capital can also be easily outsourced. An amusing and illuminating take on globalisation.

Produced by ABC Australia
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