[Jobs] A call centre with a difference

[Corey Cook]

one thing about call centers is they are not boring

Corey Cook
corey_cook at bellsouth.net

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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Konechne" <jakon22 at gmail.com>
To: "Jobs for the Blind" <jobs at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2007 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Jobs] A call centre with a difference


Wow, that was a cool article. Anything to get blind ppl working is
fabulous to me. It might not be wour ideal job, but its a lot better
than nothing, especially in India.


On 6/2/07, Peter Altschul <paltschul at centurytel.net> wrote:
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> 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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> 11:22 AM
>
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