Call centres to open new vistas for employments

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Maswood Alam Khan
Noman sir, my most respected teacher, often emerges in my mind in a vivid picture when I clearly hear his low-pitched voice giving us an advice in one of our English classes in Dhaka College ages back: "Young boys! If you are really serious to learn English, write in English, speak in English, think in English and, if possible, dream in English." Noman sir has passed away, but his advice still inspires many of his students to learn and teach English through immersion into English environment---a technique known as "Immersion Language Program" which is nowadays employed in modern language laboratories.
Among the knowledge-based skills 'ability to communicate in a foreign language, especially in English' has now become the most lucrative asset for young people seeking employments.
A young girl or a boy in India who has graduated from a university with a degree on accounting or business administration and who can speak and follow instructions in English is earning in a call centre US$ 400 every month i.e. US$ 4,800 per annum, whereas per capita income (average yearly income of an individual) in India is not more than US$ 500. In the Philippines, a boy or a girl, having some knowledge on computer science and accounting, can start his/her career in a call centre with an initial pay of US$ 275 per month if she can speak in and follow American English and allied dialects.
These youngsters work in call centres answering calls from different corners of the world, instantly giving guidance or taking notes to call back as immediately as possible with appropriate info and assistance to the callers. In cases where intervention from technical or higher authorities is essential they instantly forward those calls to relevant departments. Call centres are churning out employments and business worth billions of dollars in many developing countries except in Bangladesh.
At last, however, our government has realized that our young people, like in India, the Philippines and other countries in South Asia, may also earn substantial amount of wages by answering calls and doing chores over telephones and internet from call centres to be set up in Bangladesh that will undoubtedly open new business windows for the country to earn hard currency in millions, or maybe in billions.
Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) through its website (www.btrc.gov.bd) has recently sought opinions from the general public on their draft policy for setting up local and international call centres. Employed with handsome salary in those call centres, if set up in near future, our young people on behalf of corporations and business houses at home or abroad will handle volumes of calls from clients and customers over telephone and internet. The business houses that will engage such call centres would be mainly mail-order catalogue organizations, telemarketing companies, cell phone companies, computer manufacturers or any large organization that has to use telephone and internet to sell or service products.
American manufacturers of everything from blue jeans to semiconductors comb the entire world in their search for the cheapest labour they can find with a view to making their products more affordable though such outsourcings have been costing hundreds of thousands of American jobs.
They have found out that not only the assembly line jobs like stitching a jeans trouser, but a job--like saying "Hallow, this is Dell. How can I help you, sir?"--that involves a computer or a telephone can also be transferred from the desk of an office in New York to a small workstation of an office in Manila---or in Comilla---saving money on account of wage expense. Inspired by low cost of producing Nike shoes in Indonesia and Pierre Cardin polo shirts in Bangladesh western companies are now increasingly outsourcing their desk jobs in developing countries where labour is as low as a few pennies per hour compared to US$ 12 in USA.
From USA, whether you know it or not, when you call IBM or Hewlett Packard's technical support toll-free telephone number, chances are you will be talking to an Indian or a Philippine. If the agent working in such a calling centre, for instance, in Comilla pronounces English in perfect American accent the caller from Washington will perhaps never know that the girl who so courteously guided him over telephone on how to fix a simple problem of the operating system of his newly bought Toshiba laptop was a young girl named "Kulsum" from Bangladesh, not really an Elizabeth from Indiana, nor a Cathy from New Jersey. Kulsum, to win such clients, will have to parrot American accent during her training and she must be a regular viewer of American movies and an avid reader of American comic books.
Thanks to extremely low cost of telephony through internet, forwarding calls from New York to Comilla or any part of the world has become unprecedentedly clearer, swifter, easier and cheaper. The reason for American firms to outsource some desk jobs to countries like India or Bangladesh is not only to save cost but also to save prestige. Let's face it, to an American young man customer service jobs suck; most western boys and girls would rather be doing anything else other than answering "stupid questions" from funny customers or making cold sales calls.
For about a decade our next door neighbours in India are making money from hundreds of such calling centres catering to back office jobs that mostly come from big American and European companies making the BPO (Business Processing Outsourcing) business in India presently an $11 billion dollar industry, which is poised to grow to $30 billion by 2012. Employers from the west are happy with a stable democracy in India, their enormous English-speaking population, and a solid education system that each year churns out more than a million college graduates who are happy to work for a small fraction of the salary of their American counterparts.
The Philippines, thanks to her long association with Americans during colonial era, is perhaps the only country in the world where 95 per cent population can speak in English though their mother tongue is not English. This advantage coupled with the Philippine government's aggressive policy on foreign direct investment has enabled the country in capturing more than 30 per cent world market share of BPO in contact/call centre services which is now poised to earn at least US$ 12 billion in revenues in this sector by the year 2010.
At present, the US has more than three million call centre seats inside USAthat support large companies with millions of customers. The US firms are under pressure to cut costs and increase returns, and because of these they may outsource in English speaking countries up to 1.5 million US-based call centre jobs that are currently being staffed by Americans. The Philippines and India are prime candidates to receive those jobs in the next few years. Bangladesh may also join hands if we can train our boys and girls to handle calls from American callers.
India is not sitting idle with BPO operations for stereotyped functions alone; their IT industries have already upscaled their domains to BTO (Business Transformation Outsourcing) providing comprehensive management services to their clients by sharing risks and gains with their outsource business partners ensuring higher gains in value chains and reducing the overhead costs through managing priorities, people and processes of organizations. MBPO (Medical Business Process Outsourcing), RPO (Research Process Outsourcing), EPO (Engineering Process Outsourcing), ESO (Education Service Outsourcing) are a few of many such outsourcing domains where billions of dollars worth of business are already being handled by qualified specialists in medicine, education and engineering disciplines in India.
Economists believe that the whole outsourcing revolution will be one of the key factors in moving Third World countries like India, Pakistan and the Philippines towards developed economy status.
While call centres actually began in the Philippines and India as simple providers of e-mail response and handling services, these have developed capabilities for almost all types of customer interactions, ranging from travel services, financial services, technical support, education, customer care, and online business to customer support and online business to business support.
The calls handled by call centres can be classified into inbound and outbound calls. For outbound calls, the services cover telemarketing, advisories, sales, verification of credit cards, bill collection, reactivation/reinstatement of accounts, loyalty program benefits, customer services and order entry. Inbound calls cover a broad range of services, from all types of inquiries, technical help, transcription, complaints, customer service, support, sales, marketing, and billing. Some of the call centre services also include medical and legal answering services for doctors and lawyers, order taking answering service for catalogue & retail companies, seminar registration, Internet answering service and so on and so forth.
Indian cities are about 12 hours ahead of New York, so operators, who are known as calling agents, man the calling centres largely at nighttimes. By day, they are truly Indian sons and daughters by their names of Arjun or Sangita. By night, they take on names such as Ricardo or Nancy so they can sound like the boy or the girl staying in Ohio or California.
Bangladesh has similar advantage to see the sun 12 hours ahead of New York and our boys and girls can also forgo a part of their night sleeps working as calling agents in graveyard shifts if only local entrepreneurs in joint ventures with American partners come up with companies first to train them how to master the art of writing, speaking, thinking, and dreaming in English in perfect American style and accent and then employ one of them to greet an American from Arkansas: "Hallow! Good morning, sir! This is Susan from Texas Instruments.", ---when it is stark night under a dark sky at her workplace in Dhaka.
Training a graduate to pick up English in American style should not be deemed a rocket science. I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears during my three and a half a year stay in Kuala Lumpur how Bangladeshis, who didn't even complete their SSC, picked up Malay within a week of their arrival in Malaysia. Our youngsters are very intelligent and dexterous. Given a little scope, guidance and training they can do wonders in any profession---call it cricket, software engineering, chartered accountancy, or handling a call over telephone from an ill-tempered American client.
Eldest son of a very poor father from Madaripur, Jewel came to my house when he was only nine years old to help us in household chores. He calls me Mama (maternal uncle). Sensing his aptitude and thirst for knowledge I got him admitted in a nearby school from where he got his SSC last year with a grade 'A-minus' and now he is attending Tajgaon College towards his HSC. Though he is extremely poor in English grammar he is very enthusiastic to learn English. Believe me, Jewel has already picked up English and he can easily follow dialogues from any American movie. The secret behind his picking up English was a chance and an idea I gave him only a few months back.
Paraphrasing what my Noman sir advised me years back I told Jewel: "If you want to learn English you must dream in English." "How?" he retorted. I told: "Okay! Insert the DVD disc titled 'Alice in the wonderland' into the DVD player, choose from the menu the option 'display sub-title in English' and follow conversations carefully tallying those with the running English sub-title on the TV screen…pause and rewind the movie sequences as many times as you like till you fully grasp and mimic those dialogues yourself." Jewel religiously followed my advice.
A taxi driver from Dhaka who speaks in fluent Hindi did not earn an Honours degree in Hindi literature from an Indian University. Nolok who secured the highest score in the Close-up toothpaste-sponsored music competition, aired by NTV, did not receive a degree on folk songs from Shanti Niketan either. They found Hindi movies and folk songs interesting and their genes---the most intrinsic learning device in any living being---were activated to prod their cerebrums to learn reflexively the arts of mimicking dialogues and parroting songs.
Fluent speaking in English alone would not qualify an agent to perform efficiently in a call centre. Expertise in fields like accounting, IT, basic knowledge of English grammar, sentence construction and vocabulary, typing speed, good communication skill--- pronunciation and ability to articulate expression, the art of convincing other people to make a successful deal or business etc. are also essential.
Thanks to our connectivity through submarine cable and other infrastructural facilities like IPLC (International Private Leased Circuit) for point to point connection already in place Bangladesh should initially allow companies to jumpstart with non-voice segment of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) business to take care of back office operations like preparing payrolls, data entry, billing, debt collection, building data bases of human resources, cash and investment management, tax compliance, internal audit etc., before embarking on more sophisticated and cost-intensive voice-based calling services. It has been estimated that if a bank shifts business processing work done in back office by 1000 people from the USA to a developing country it can save about $18 million a year due to lower costs.
Our country earned the brand name "Nuisance Number One" in the US market when heavy nails stuffed into shrimps were discovered in some Bangladeshi export consignments at a US port of entry a few years back. Therefore, while giving license to a Bangladeshi company to open call centres BTRC must be extra cautious as our country is embarking upon a maiden venture on a sensitive business with live and direct exposures to the western clients. The first license should go to a company with a major share of a highly reputed US partner firm with relevant experience and which must have a track record of world class professionalism in export and IT business.
Success or failure of our maiden venture in BPO will determine its future potential that subsequently will affect the future fates of millions of our children who would be scouting for employment for their survival. It is not the company's financial future alone, it is our prime national interest for ensuring secure employments for our posterity.
If we carry on devouring natural gas and exhaust our gas reserves within a few years without introducing an alternative source of energy for our posterity, if BTRC fails to find a suitable BPO company which should project an excellent image to the west that may guarantee more and more jobs for our grandchildren, if we fail to provide our next generations with better tomorrows---our great-grandchildren will spit on our graves.
The writer is Maswood Alam Khan, General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank. He may be reached over Email: maswoodalamkhan@gmail.com)