[Jobs] A call centre with a difference

Sun Jun 3 00:17:44 CDT 2007

nice article.
wish it was here in the USA.
don't get me started on out sourceing!

Corey Cook
corey_cook at bellsouth.net

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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Altschul" <paltschul at centurytel.net>
To: <employment at acb.org>; "'Jobs for the Blind'" <jobs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: "'Henderson Michael'" <Michael.Henderson at irs.gov>; "'Carter,Stephen'" 
<Stephen.Carter at dss.mo.gov>
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2007 2:25 PM
Subject: [Jobs] A call centre with a difference

A call centre with a difference

By Monica Chadha BBC News, Mumbai

Nikita Patil says she's enjoying her work

Nikita Patil, 23, works in a call centre, just like thousands of other
Indian youngsters who have found jobs thanks to a booming outsourcing
industry. Everyday, she calls at least 100 people and tries to sell them
various products and services offered by a domestic telephone company. She
makes roughly $220 (£112) a month. What customers will not guess while
talking to her is that she is blind.

The call centre she works for is meant for "visually challenged only" and
she is enjoying the experience.

"It gets a bit difficult because every time it is a different customer while
we are the same. We have to handle different types of customers - some are
rude and I often don't know how to talk to them, but some are friendly," she
told the BBC news website. "Sometimes we get bored but we are really
enjoying it."

An experiment The outsourcing industry has played a major role in boosting
India's economy. Many of the country's youth have more options in their
hands and more money in their pockets than ever before. The blind do not
want to be left behind and have now opened a call centre just for themselves
in India's financial capital, Mumbai (Bombay).

Pallavi Kadam, Employment Director at NAB Ms Kadam says the
visually-impaired have very good memories The centre, Drishti (Hindi for
Vision), is an initiative of the National Association for the Blind (NAB).

The association first tried out the experiment in the southern city of
Bangalore. After a successful run there, it opened the small centre in
Mumbai. At present 10 blind people - six men and four women in their 20s -
have been hired by the centre run by a telephone company. They are paid
three rupees (about seven US cents) per call, on a par with market rates,
and each one makes at least 100 calls a day.

'Marketable' The director of the employment department at the NAB, Pallavi
Kadam, says the outsourcing boom has opened up numerous options for the
blind.

"I would say visually impaired candidates have very good memory, they have
good listening and speaking skills, so that is marketable. The blind are
already doing jobs such as medical transcription, and legal and business
transcription," she says. Ms Kadam says the association trains the staff in
communication skills to equip them for these jobs.

Call centre The call centre employs 10 people "Normally when the candidates
come to us we have volunteers who give them a lot of counselling and
training.

"Most of these candidates have been educated in the vernacular medium so we
have to help them with personality development and speaking good English
that is required in the market."

The Drishti call centre is in a large room in the NAB offices. A
normally-sighted person would communicate with the customer by reading out
information about a service or facility from a computer screen. However, the
Drishti staff rely on software developed by a Bangalore-based company which
converts text data into voice format.

Staff access information on customers from a common server that holds the
data in voice. Each person has two phones, one that is connected to the
server and the other is used to contact customers.

'Right roles' All information received during the conversation is updated by
punching numeric codes on the phone connected to the server. The software
developers say the software could be used in a regular call centre.

Vrinda Walavalkar Walavalkar says the visually challenged may be able to fit
into other call centres However, the big challenge for the blind would be to
fit into the demanding atmosphere of a regular call centre where there is a
lot more pressure on the staff to make as many calls as possible and they
are monitored very closely - or for regular call centres to be prepared to
adapt their working practices to accommodate blind staff. Vrinda Walavalkar,
a spokeswoman for First Source Solutions, a global business process
outsourcing company, says it may be possible for the blind to make this
transition.

"I think the answer would be to look at the disability they have and
therefore fit them into the right roles. So maybe they would not do
computer-based customer service or management or transformation.

"What they would do maybe is more of the things that go into say data
verification or outbound calling or product selling. There's no reason why
one cannot fit people to the capabilities that they have."

India's economy is growing fast, and many companies are facing a severe
talent shortage. This could be good news for the blind if it means that
employers are prepared to be more imaginative in their recruitment policies.

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