Shamelessly stolen from alt.tasteless:

(a real laugh riot! Great ways on how 2 insult foreign tech support monkeys
!!)

"Auto" wrote in message
oups.com...
Indian call staff quit over abuse on the line

Abuse from British and American customers is driving increasing numbers
of Indian call centre workers from their jobs, defeated by the strain
of handling persistent rudeness.

Irate customers was cited as one of the main industry stress factors in
a recent survey of call centre staff and some organisations have begun
employing psychiatrists and counsellors to help employees to cope.

'I've had people tell me, "Back off, Paki, and don't call me again",
said Eugene, 27, whose former employer, Spectrumind, provided an
accounts services for BT. 'There was a lot of racist abuse once people
detected from our accents that we weren't English. I saw girls reduced
to tears by it.'

Pooja Chopra, 29, from Delhi, who spent two years fielding calls for BT
Cellnet and America Online, faced similar abuse. 'People would say,
"You're a Paki, I don't want to talk to you, pass me to someone who can
speak my language".

Workers face a spectrum of rudeness - from sexual harassment to fury at
unsolicited sales calls, to open racism. Industry analysts have seen
the phenomenon of racist clients grow in recent years, as customers in
the UK and the US become increasingly sensitive to the political issue
of jobs outsourced to India.

Shyamanuja Das, editor of Global Outsourcing magazine, which published
a study on the stress factors triggering call centre resignations, said
that hostility from clients was one of the factors which caused workers
to quit - 25 per cent of those questioned said client vitriol was a
major cause of stress.

'The anger in the West over job losses and fear about offshoring has
made this a growing problem. Some people call up with deliberately
difficult questions. Most just say things like: "You're from India. You
don't know anything. I don't want to speak to you", he said.

Vijay Mukhi, a call centre analyst, said websites have sprung up in the
US giving phone numbers of companies which use call centres in India,
and listing Hindi swear words to be used to abuse staff. 'When you move
jobs away from a country, there's going to be a lot of pent-up
frustration which gets let out on Indian workers,' he said.

As staff turnover is a major problem, with some companies battling an
annual departure rate of 60-70 per cent, organisations are taking
radical steps to help staff to deal with abuse. In recent months some
firms have decided to provide psychological support to their workers.
Sanjay Salooja's Delhi-based firm, Empower, has 20 trained counsellors
who tour the city's largest call centres, providing support to harassed
employees.

'Most employees are very young and don't have the skills to allow them
to cope with this kind of abuse,' he said. Workers are already feeling
the stress of having to work through the night and are under extreme
pressure to meet productivity targets. 'They are vulnerable anyway, and
an abusive call really knocks confidence. They don't want to take
another call for an hour or two, and their performance is impacted.'

The idea of consulting therapists remains taboo in much of Indian
society, but the stigma is waning. 'Our research shows that about 50
per cent of workers would like the chance to receive counselling,'
Deepal Raheja, one of the programme's psychiatrists, said.

The therapists try to help staff realise that the abuse is not personal
and to put things in perspective, he said. 'Somebody I counselled was
very upset after a British customer had asked for an address near
Trafalgar Square and he had to admit he didn't know where Trafalgar
Square was. His customer became very abusive, and the incident really
dented his self-esteem,' he said.

Some companies still specify staff must anglicise their names, adopting
forenames such as Mary and John, to try to stave off resentment.

There are no unions yet to represent the 350,000 workers in the Indian
call centre business, but unionist Gautam Mody, who is trying to launch
the first call centre workers' collective, said this was a problem that
needed to be addressed urgently abroad. 'Some workers are deeply hurt
by this abuse. The issue of xenophobia cannot be resolved from this
end; there must be a battle against it in the countries responsible.'

More organisations have started to let staff hang up on persistently
rude customers (formerly a sackable offence), after warning them three
times to mind their language. Trainers try to help new staff understand
the different cultural forms of rudeness they are likely to encounter.

'British customers can be very rude but in a polite way,' Anita
Bhuttar, training vice-president of GTL, a Mumbai-based company, said.
'Usually they won't use abusive language but you can tell from the tone
of their voice they're angry.'

'I found it difficult to work for British clients,' Pooja Chopra said.
'They wouldn't call you names, but you could hear the hostility in
their voices. The US customers were generally much more easy-going.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/inter...494871,00.html