Some Indian call centres resorting to trickery

As the Philippine call centre industry plays catch up with India, the latter is doing all it can to diversify — and put customers at ease

Monday, May 10, 2010

NOIDA, INDIA–It’s a few minutes before midnight on a recent evening and Warren Rungsung can smell a sale.

Sitting in a crowded call centre in Noida, a fast-growing suburb on the outskirts of New Delhi, Rungsung has spent 10 minutes chatting up Dave, a man in his 30s who lives in Chicago. Rungsung has been trying to convince Dave to buy erectile dysfunction medication.

A handsome 21-year-old from Manipur, a state in northeast India, Rungsung rubs his hands together. He’s drawn Dave into a surprisingly intimate conversation about bedroom anxieties and Dave seems ready to place an order.

But first a seemingly innocuous question: “Where you calling from?” Dave asks over a crackly phone connection.

Rungsung doesn’t miss a beat as he answers, “Calgary, Canada.”

His fingers fly over his keyboard as he types “Calgary forecast.”

“It’s nice today,” he says as a five-day forecast for the Canadian city pops up on his screen. “But we may get rain tomorrow.”

Rungsung’s trickery speaks to the uncertain times India’s call centre industry is facing.

India’s call centres — a key cog in the country’s championed services industry — have been going through hard times as anger has simmered in North America over jobs being outsourced overseas. The issue is a political minefield and in some call centres, including this one in Noida, employees are convinced it’s easier to say they’re calling from Canada.

“It’s believable,” Rungsung’s boss Sandip Mehra says with a shrug and a grin.

Perhaps a laid off General Motors worker in Michigan would be less likely to snap at a caller from Calgary rather than one from India, the thinking goes. It’s also easier to coax a U.S. customer to provide credit-card information for a purchase if they think they’re dealing with someone “next door” in Canada.

“Many scams are happening right now and Canada is close to the U.S.,” Mehra says. “With everything going on, people think it’s less risky to send your information to Canada.”

That kind of deception isn’t isolated, industry officials say.

More: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/india/article/807129--some-indian-call-centres-resorting-to-trickery?bn=1

this is how the PATRIOT ACT allowed everyday, average U.S. citizens to have their calls monitored by the Government ... make a call for technical assistance, get the call routed to a foreign country, boom ...

maybe they'll do something about this, and getting a bad rap...
God knows the USA doesn't have the balls to step in and stop this fraud.

they were in England, etc.

Try to activate a copy of Quickbooks. In most cases, you have to call an 800 number that routes you to an Indian sweatshop where they're told to tell you they are in "Rochester, New York" or some other US location if you ask. Of course, while they are "generating your activation code," you are bombarded with personal questions and a constant upsell.

I now tell all my clients to use Peachtree.

then you deserve whatever fantasy Bangalore will sell you.

If the individual makes a decent competitive wage.
But alas they are not.
Of course I am not referring to the lying and con jobs going on, just the out sourcing itself.