HR Issues at Futuristech
Jenifer Randall, a senior human resources manager for Sims Mobile, drank a cup of tea before
going to bed at eight o’clock in the morning in her hotel room. She had just completed her third day of a
five day trip to India. The Sims Mobile executive team had sent her to investigate quality problems that
had arisen at Futuristech, the call center to which her firm outsourced work.
Randall came back to her hotel after a long night at work but felt pretty upbeat. Even though she
was not a night person, she felt pretty good working the last three nights. But then, she thought, it was
probably because she was operating in US daytime as she was accustomed. She attributed the lingering
tiredness to jetlag caused by her eighteen hour flight. Even though Jenifer considered herself to be an avid
world traveler, she always felt uncomfortable the first few days getting her body clock tuned to the local
times. She sat on the bed and wondered how it must be for the employees here who have their body
clocks adjusted to US times even when living in India.
She recalled talking to Kevin, one of the first call center agents she met during her visit. She asked
him if the night work bothered him. He said.
“Once you work the US shift – you are used to not sleeping at night. I can go for one
whole week with 2-3 hours of sleep every night. See, once I get out of work, I just have
breakfast and shower and then I’m in college. Then I get back home around noon – and I
nap for a few hours. Then in the evening, I eat and chat with my mom when she gets
back home from work and then I come here. I don’t mind the times, but I don’t like
falling sick. This routine gets all of us sick sometime or the other.”
Jenifer did not want to linger on these interviews she had. She heard all these stories about the
work and lives of the agents, and she was not sure about what could be done. She decided to think about
it later and sleep for a little before she met with Rajiv Deshpande, the HR director for an early dinner at
six o’clock (Jenifer had learned that dinner in India typically took place at eight or nine o’clock).
From the minute Jennifer landed in Kolkata, she had been trying to get to speak to Rajiv.
Futuristech had been failing in the new quality ratings imposed by Sims Mobile, even though they had
been reaching their overall sales targets. Rajiv tried to explain that operating call centers in India can be
quite complicated. With a booming Indian economy, all the people who have good English speaking
abilities have flocked to the big companies. For smaller, especially telemarketing jobs, there is a serious
shortage of workers. Also, those who come in, increasingly face a hostile set of customers in the US, who
are mad at call center workers if they get any sense that they are from India.
Jennifer did not want to entertain the option that the customers were the problem. She told Rajiv
very clearly that they had a point – they are upset with the loss of jobs especially under such bad
economic conditions.
She believed strongly that the customer was always right; therefore, it was
important to get the employees to have the right accent and the right responses to deal with such
incidents; however, Jenifer needed a plan, and hence she decided that she needed to find out from the
agents what the real problems were. She asked Rajiv to organize a few meetings with the agents. Through
these interviews she wanted to identify the ‘real’ issues and then work out a plan of action with Rajiv.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2011 Diya Das and Michael Roberto, professors at Bryant University, wrote this case study for educational purposes.
Futuristech
Futuristech was a third party call center to which Sims Mobile had outsourced its telemarketing
function. It was a five year old company that had experienced huge growth, and specialized in
telemarketing products as diverse as phone plans to mortgage refinancing. When Sims Mobile was doing
their due diligence, they found Futuristech as an able partner. They were especially impressed by the
credentials and charisma of their owner – a 35 year old entrepreneur Ashok Agarwal. He studied at
Purdue University and worked in the US for a few years before returning to India and starting his own
call center. Ashok was an engineer and MBA and had a keen sense for business and customer service.
The directors were very impressed with him and Futuristech; however, even after several months
of starting out the relationship, their department was still concerned about the level of quality of the calls.
They continued to receive complains and the sales figures were not coming back up. Of course, the
economy was going down and sales were down everywhere, yet the quality could be driving down the
sales too. Jenifer was sent to check the ground realities and advice on what can be done to improve
quality. She knew that the top management had spent a lot of money in closing the call centers in the US
and setting up this contract with Futuristic and so they would want her to work out something that
would really improve quality.
She thought for a moment about why they picked her for the assignment since she was never
involved in the quality aspects of the call center. She was in the HR department – which albeit – did
consider quality but also a lot more. Her suspicion was that they felt that she would be able to deliver
best when it comes to cross-cultural negotiations. She was a little hesitant because while she did have
experience in that area in her previous jobs – they were mostly in South American countries where she
had an advantage of spending several years as a child. But India is not South America and while she did
realize it – she wanted this assignment as a challenge. She felt that this would be her way of getting top
management attention and a push towards better things in the company.
Industry Facts
The call center industry in India started with a wave of off-shoring of service work in the late 90s
and continues to be one of the key drivers of growth and employment in India. This industry primarily
serves clients and customers in the US, UK and Australia. The key resource this industry is based on is
the availability of large numbers of cheap English speaking graduates.
What is interesting is that there was no call center industry that existed in India before, and hence
in some sense this is an example of globalization of work in pure form. Many of the companies off
shoring contact center work would have their own captive call centers, i.e., call centers run by that
organization and caters only to their customers. However, that requires huge investments in India, and a
lot of the smaller companies prefer to do what Sims Mobile did – go with a third party vendor like
Futuristech who have different teams catering to different clients and their customers.
The call center industry in India is one of the fastest growing sectors. After continuous double
digit growth every year, in 2009 the industry recorded its lowest growth rate of 6% due to the global
financial crisis. It’s contributions towards India’s exports have increased from 4% of total exports in 1998
to 26% of total exports in 2010. The overall IT-BPO industry reported revenues of $73 billion in 2010,
within which $63.7 billion came from the IT software and services industry.
The key factor that led to the growth and expansion of this industry was the labor arbitrage. For
example, the wage differential for the US/UK vs. India is around 70 to 80%. However, with the cost of
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operating from remote locations, companies usually have net savings of up to 60% by deciding to
offshore.
This industry consists of about 400 companies that employ about 545,000 young workers between
the ages of 18 and 25. In general, the turnover rate in Indian call centers is much higher (reported
anything between 40 to 80%) than the global call center turnover rates (between 20 and 30%). Some
studies have shown that Indian call centers have the lowest tenure, with more than 60% of the workforce
having less than one year of service.
The Hiring Process
After a long nap and a quick lunch, Jenifer sat with her interview notes. She went over each one
of them carefully. One of the things that struck her was that the agents were really putting in a lot of
effort. She decided to identify some issues and talk to Rajiv about each of them. As she went over her
interviews, she spent some more time on the HR processes. Jenifer always considered herself as the
process expert, and she looked over the details of her meeting with Radhika – the HR executive who
walked her through the recruitment process. According to Radhika, “Several times a year, the firm has a
walk-interview advertisement, and on those day applicants come in with their resumes. When these
interviewees come in, they first meet with an HR executive who screens them for basic English speaking
ability. “And trust me;” said Radhika, “we have to reject 50% of the people at this stage! Many people
who actually need these jobs cannot speak good English. We take anyone who can even say few lines in
correct English without a huge MTI.” “MTI?” asked Jenifer. “MTI is mother tongue influence,” replied
Radhika. “You see some people have a very strong MTI while some others don’t.”
Radhika explained what happens if a candidate performs well during the initial interview. At
that point, one of the HR managers and a team leader interviews them. Radhika explained:
“Usually we are looking for motivations and constraints here. We always have a lot of
girls who come and say that they are willing to do any shift and then after training, they
say they cannot do US shift. They have family problems etc, you know, doing night
shifts. They all want to do UK – so then where do I get people for US shift?”
At the final stage, the training manager and Rajiv meets to check their accent propensities –
whether they can be trained for British or US shifts. Of course, that happens more at the training phase
too. Radhika explained, “Rajiv likes to meet the final round of applicants and tell them a little bit about
the company, check their motivation to work and then take the final call on hiring.” Jenifer was surprised
to hear the number of interview rounds they carried out. She thought the process could be more efficient
but did not say it. Radhika continued, “While the walk-in days are designated for hiring, we consider
applicants all round the year. With a turnover rate as high as 60%, and new processes coming in
regularly, hiring is a full time activity for the HR department!”
The Training Process
Jenifer then met with Sharmila – a very pleasant woman in her mid-40s who was the voice and
accent trainer for the company. She told her about the training process that each agent had to undergo for
the job. She explained that once the employees join they are put through a three-week intensive voice,
accent and product training process. Some bigger call centers, according to Sharmila, have longer training
programs, but that becomes hugely expensive for small and mid-size firms. The training starts with a
short orientation to the company, and then the employees are asked to pick a western name or ‘alias’ that
they use on their calls. Jenifer gave a surprised look and Sharmila went on to explain how this has
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become a defining aspect of call center jobs in India. Due to customer resistance and also to make
customers feel comfortable, employees in this industry need to pick a name for themselves which they
use for work. They are referred to by their aliases all the time, and in fact, most people do not know the
real names of their colleagues!
Jenifer was curious about the naming ceremony and wondered if there was any resistance by any
of the individuals about taking up different names. Sharmila responded that only a few individuals resist
taking on an alias. She speculated that this could be because by now everyone knows that this is
something you have to do here. If they are absolutely opposed to it, they don’t apply to work at
Futuristech. “However,” Sharmila continued, “we actually see a lot of people who love their new names.
You know, no one gets a chance to name themselves so for most people that’s a decision taken by parents
– so this is fun. Plus, it helps them deal with customer abuse.” “How is that?” asked Jenifer. “Well, during
the training,” explained Sharmila, “we tell them ‘If you get abused then don’t worry, just think who is
this person abusing? The customer has reacted to some poor guy named James who lives in Arizona, not
you Shashi in Kolkata… so don’t take it personally.’ That advice really helps them deal with customer
abuse.”
Sharmila continued to describe the training process, where, after the initial ‘naming ceremony’
the trainees are required to use those names to make sure they are comfortable with it. They then go on to
get accent training and cultural training for two weeks. The accent and cultural trainings differed,
depending on the country that the group would serve – US, UK or Australia. The initial part of the accent
training is focused on accent neutralization, so that employees are able to get rid of their MTI and
Indianisms. “Indianisms?” inquired Jenifer. Sharmila laughed and said,
“Actually there is no real word like that – but it is a training session that has become
fairly popular in Indian call centers. In this session we point out the peculiarities of the
Indian way of speaking English and how that does not travel internationally. We tell
them that these expressions absolutely cannot be used in call centers. For example,
Indians often translate a vernacular grammatical construction into English – so you hear
phrases like ‘take tea’ instead of ‘drink tea’, or use a negative confirmation in questions,
like ‘We are going, no?’ And so on.”
The last week is a product training week. Here they are divided into smaller groups depending
on the product they would sell. The last couple of days in the product training are on the job, and they
shadow a senior caller to learn the intricacies of calling. Finally, they are ready to go on the floor. Jenifer
asked Sharmila how they actually trained them to be like their customers. Sharmila smiled and
explained:
“Look, it’s pretty impossible to ask so many people to become like something they don’t
know about. So the first thing we do is that we introduce to the agents, the customer’s
way of life. We show them American movies and television shows, tell them about
American history and politics, and overall culture. Then we tell them what the place
they are supposed to be located in look like, weather, sports, people, cuisines
everything. Even then, what we find is that some of them are able to imagine their
customers, but not everyone. So to them, we just say be the opposite of what you are
right now.”
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Jenifer raised eyebrows, “And that advice works?” Sharmila responded saying, “Usually yes – I
mean they are on the phone, so if they can be trained to pitch the scripts, have some ready rebuttals for
customer questions, and have no MTI, they should mostly be fine.”
Employee Turnover
Jenifer met Rajiv at the lobby of her hotel shortly before six o’clock in the evening. Rajiv said that
they were going to a very nice local Chinese restaurant to taste the ‘Calcutta Chinese’ food. “This Chinese
food in Kolkata is very different from anywhere else”, explained Rajiv, “since there has been a Chinatown
established by Chinese immigrants to Kolkata from the 1780s and this specific cuisine is a blend of the
original Chinese food and Indian food.” It was a very nice restaurant, and when they settled down at
their tale, Rajiv ordered a beer. That decision surprised Jenifer, but she did not question Rajiv. She did
not want to drink alcohol given that it was the beginning of her work ‘day’. They carried on a polite
conversation on the different ethnic communities in Kolkata, the US recession, and her hotel until the
food arrived.
When the food arrived, Jenifer opened up a discussion of the causes of the quality problems at
the call center. She told Rajiv that she had identified some important issues facing the employees that
both Futuristech and Sims Mobile should collectively address. “The first concern it seems,” she said, “is
the high employee turnover. According to Gaurav, the team leader for Sims Mobile, all the best agents are
leaving the company within a few months of working.” She paused to check Rajiv’s reaction. But he
simply asked her, “So what is the reason according to Gaurav?” Jenifer said, “It could be a number of
factors. However, Gaurav thought that there were no growth opportunities for star callers, and hence
they were moving out to other new companies as Team Leaders.” Rajiv agreed with Gaurav’s
explanation. However, he felt that this problem did not have a clear solution:
“What can we do? It’s not like I don’t want to promote the real ‘star’ callers. It’s just that
it takes time. You see, these agents are only 20-21 years of age. They do well one month
and think they are star callers and then that often gets to their head and then they do
badly the next month. And even if they are consistently good across several months, it
can take many months before we can do a meaningful promotion. I mean it’s the nature
of work in this industry. We have to have more callers than team leaders. But these kids
often don’t get that. Also, there is a huge growth in this industry, and so when someone
has spent 4 months in the industry, they are considered experienced callers and join
another new call center with a raise. It’s just a hard reality that we have to deal with.”
Stress and Motivation
Jenifer decided to continue with the other issues she had identified before she continued
discussing the employee turnover problem. She focused next on the stress experienced by many agents:
“A second issue is stress. It seems that the agents are under severe pressure from work
and this makes them de-motivated, which affects their performance. They have to ensure
they get sales, so sometimes they mislead the employees about the product, resulting in
some dis-satisfied customers for us. Sometimes the team leaders shout and scream at the
agents in public to create a high pressure environment.”
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She did not want to mention names of the agents who complained about the stress to her, but she
recalled how each agent mentioned the fearful ‘huddle’ sessions where the team meets to review the
performance that day. Often, supervisors shouted at agents and singled them out in front of the team for
non-performance. Rajiv defended the supervisors’ actions:
“You see Jenifer, you are contradicting yourself here. You set a certain sales target for this
company and we have to find ways and means to achieve that. Sometime its true some
team leaders do ‘huddles’ sessions, but we also do positive incentive to increase sales.
We often put in incentives like any sales in the next one hour would get a cash award to
Rs. 250 or so. It’s not like we are horrible task masters – we have different ways in which
we try to achieve the targets set in our contracts. Also, you have to realize that we are
dealing with a bunch of 20-21 year olds who are not necessarily always motivated to
work hard for this job, so we have to use all kinds of tactics to make them want to work.
And honestly, what is your problem with that? I mean, this does not affect your quality
since each of the sales calls have to vetted by the Quality team who have your directions
to decide whether a sale can be finalized or not.”
Jenifer realized that her conversation was really not going anywhere since Rajiv was getting
touchy about HR issues in his call center. She decided to concentrate on the food that she really liked
anyways for the rest of the dinner. She did say that she would want to continue with the conversation
once they reached the office. Instead, she talked about some other interesting issues that came up during
her interviews which seemed to be more about the customers as opposed to the employer.
Service Quality
Thinking about dealing with customers on calls, Jenifer recalled how several agents told her how
they are often asked questions about their nationality. For example, Janet, an agent, told her about an
experience: “I have come across many customers actually who are interested in the products – and then
they ask, ‘are you calling from India? Then I’m not going to buy.’ Because they are very loyal to their
country –they think that the job which you are doing it could be given to an American person – another
American is out of job because of you.”
She had tried to explain to Janet how this is a problem, but it’s also true that Americans
understand that they are getting a lot of products cheap because of outsourcing, even though there is a
backlash at times. When Jenifer asked these agents how they handle these calls, she was surprised at the
varied responses. She had first heard it from Sal about her experience: “If a customer asks me if this call is
from India, I tell them I’m not Indian and have never been there! Why do you think I am Indian? You
might find some difference in my accent because my mom’s Irish and I grew up in Ireland – but my dad’s
American – so I am still American really.”
On the other hand, Shane explained a very different strategy: “I used to watch a lot of American
movies – so I know exactly how people speak and the differences between a White accent, a Black accent,
a southern accent, a mid-western accent and so on. Also, I do a lot of homework on the location we are in.
I know about the games, the local news, and the weather. So no one thinks I am Indian! In fact, I can go
on talking to some of my customers about basketball and those calls are great! I love doing all this – I feel
like I am living there you know – when I come to work.” As Jenifer thought about these agents, she was
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struck by the differences and how off the script they were. She also had to admit it was pretty creative
thinking.
When she told Rajiv some of these stories, he smiled knowingly. He said that they are aware of
some of these rebuttals and the agents are often very proud of the stories. “You know,” he continued,
“we let them do this stuff on the calls. I mean otherwise the job is pretty mundane – calling about 800
people every night, most calls ending in voice messages and so on. So this part is fun for them. I don’t
know if anyone told you this, but there is also a lot of flirtation that happens with the customers.” Jenifer
said that no one told her about that. “They probably won’t share that!” continued Rajiv, “but they do.
And sometimes they work as great sales strategies!”
Jenifer was not sure about this even though there are some of these issues that come up in the US
call centers too. However, there are much stricter quality issues on calls there, so she knew this was
something that they should discuss in the quality issues. However, Rajiv went on to explain, “We of
course do not permit any sexual talk on the phone. It’s some casual flirtation like – you have a lovely
voice kind of stuff that we permit.” Jenifer wondered how it might be possible to draw a line between
building rapport, being friendly and casual flirtation when it comes to customer interaction. She
wondered then if it might be contradictory as the parent company to keep insisting on building rapport,
and then saying no casual flirtation.
They finished their dinner and reached back when it was time to start the first round of the US
shift at 7.30 pm Indian standard time, that would be about 9am EST. Jenifer went into Rajiv’s office and
explained to him that she needs a long meeting with Rajiv first and then she will meet with Rajiv and
Ashok (the CEO). She said, “Look Rajiv, I understand that there are some real issues that you have to deal
with in these call centers, but I am here to get a solution and we have to work together on reaching one. I
will listen in on some of the calls tonight and meet with some more agents, and then tomorrow we need
to work this out.” Rajiv said that he will set aside several hours for the meeting the next day and that
Radhika and Gaurav would help her out with the calls tonight. As she was getting ready to leave, the
phone rang and Rajiv took the call and listened for a minute. He then asked the caller to come in. He
turned to Jenifer and explained that there was a problem in the Sims Mobile team with a particular agent
and that he would have to sort it. He said that she could stay if she wanted to.
Gaurav – the team leader walked in with Harry Richards (Haresh Ramani – the real name Jenifer
found out). Jenifer recognized Harry instantly. He was one of the team members who left an impression
as a smart and friendly person from their first meeting. But right then, Harry was fuming and said that he
wanted to quit right ‘now’. Gaurav explained to Rajiv – Harry had a problem customer, and he reacted on
the phone!
Rajiv asked him what happened – and Harry said that he was almost closing on a sale on a call
with a Mrs. Smith, and then her husband came in and wanted to talk. He immediately went on to
question Harry about where he got his accent from. Harry explained that he was an Indian student
studying in the US. On hearing this Mr. Smith went on an abusive rant. He said that this was no Indian
student and the call was coming from India – and he went on to say how he would never buy anything
from an Indian ‘rat’ that steals a job and lives happily. Harry said he tried to calm him down and explain
– but the man grew worse with his abuses. At the end of the call, he became so abusive that Harry
explained he could no longer ‘take it.’ He shouted at him saying, “Yes you are right – I am in India and
Harry is not my real name. This is happening because of globalization – did you not teach us about
globalization first? Now live with the effect of your own medicine!” With that he hung up on the call.
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Rajiv looked at Harry’s face – it was all red with anger as he narrated the incident. He asked him
to calm down and then said, “Harry – you are a seasoned caller. Why did you react? This was surely not
the first time for you. You know customers are upset and you also have rebuttals for them! Why would
you go down this way? And also, why would you ever reveal that you are in India? You know that this is
not right and seriously threatens our quality of service!” Harry looked down and said, “Yes – there have
been many such calls and I have never lost my temper before. And I don’t know why I lost it this time –
but I think I’ve had enough. I don’t think I like lying every night about my name and country – I am not a
liar or a thief – why can I not say who I am and get respect for that! If I did not need the money, I would
never do this work.”
Rajiv asked Harry to calm down and go and have a tea at the café. He said he will talk to him
later. After he left, Gaurav told Rajiv that he should not fire Harry for this. “After all, he is one of my best
agents and is damn good on the calls, even if he messed up this one. He is also going through a lot of
pressure – trying to balance his college studies, exams, CAT preparations and the job.” Rajiv asked
Gaurav to go and have a good conversation with Harry but he needs to be back on the floor soon. Gaurav
showed thumbs-up and left.
Rajiv looked at Jenifer and raised his eyebrows. “So,” he said, “what do you think?” Jenifer did
not know what to say. She smiled and said, “This is definitely something new for me, in terms of issues
we face in HR. And I have been doing this for more than 15 years now.” Rajiv went on to explain that this
was a problem in this industry too. “This name game and location game we play cannot last. I want to
focus on real call quality issues and not deal with this kind of stuff.” Again, Jenifer was really not
prepared to comment on that. Instead she asked what was CAT and Rajiv explained that it was like the
GMAT for Indian business schools – but it’s conducted nationally once a year and is extremely
competitive.
The problem, Rajiv went on, was more than the customers abusing: He said, “As you have
already discovered in some for, these agents are under a lot of stress. They go to college in the morning
and then sleep in the afternoon and work all night. They barely sleep 5 hours each day.” Rajiv explained
that how the work affected the lives of the workers:
“They work such strange hours that they often don’t meet their friends and family
members for days. The monotony of the work also does not help. On the other hand, these
young people make so much money (for Indian standards) that they don’t know what to
do about it. You see they don’t have any responsibility usually – they live with their
parents - so no paying for rent or food. Education is also pretty cheap in India, especially
if you compare that with the US, so they spend most of their salary on expensive clothes,
cell phones and other electronic gadgets, take to smoking and drinking and partying like
crazy. I have seen perfectly innocent kids coming in and then becoming monsters by the
end of this.”
Jenifer asked him what firms do to take care of the unique needs of the workers here. Rajiv said,
“Not much really. Actually we try – but honestly we are always fire fighting. We have
such high turnover and also such high growth that most of the times we are really always
hiring and training! We barely ever have the time to sit down and decide how we can
address some of the central problems of our employees. Some of the bigger call centers
have yoga sessions for stress relief, or have community hours and open houses for
greater employee involvement. But even then, they have major issues of hours. If you
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add the commute times, our agents are working for such long hours that if we ask them
to do something more they would get mad. We try to make work fun – you know all this
music you heard on the floors – it’s the stuff they love. We do special days like ‘ethnic
wear’ or ‘wild west wear,’ and have raffles for fun. We try to do something special for
Indian holidays when they have to come to work – like Diwali or Holi. We try to give
them leaves around exams if they are in college. But I don’t think that really does address
the real problems our employees face.”
Moving Forward
When Jenifer went back to sleep the next morning, she was restless. Her assignment was more
than what she could handle in 5 days – but she could not say that to the top management of Sims. She
tried to sip her cup of tea and think clearly about all the issues she understood were standing the way of
high quality of calls. As she did that, she realized that some of these issues were beyond her control. It’s
true customers are upset about outsourcing, and it’s also true that it’s hard for the employees here have
difficulty in doing all the identity work they are required to. She also had to think what parameters of
quality would really need to change and if overall quality can be achieved without addressing some of
the basic HR issues on the ground. She felt Rajiv was also getting defensive with her feedback, yet she
knew that she could not actually achieve anything without his help. She started noting down points for
her meeting with Rajiv and Ashok the next day.
Discussion Questions:
1.
What solutions can Jenifer Randall come up with for Sims Mobile process in Futuristech?
2.
What should be some of the proactive HR strategies that firms should employ in order to prevent
such problems from arising during off-shoring business processes?
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