Bombay Calling: Enjoyable Documentary about Outsourcing Telemarketing to India
Monday, December 11th, 2006 | by Rajan Sodhi | 
5 Comments |
I saw an excellent documentary over the weekend called Bombay Calling. It’s about the outsourcing of telemarketing by western-based companies to call centers in India. The documentary focuses on a team of young Indians working at a large call center called “Epicenter” and chronicles their successes and failures in pitching and selling telephone services to British Telecom (BT) customers in the UK. The documentary is a rare glimpse at the change that is happening in India and how truly global business has become. It also gives us a taste of the impact it is having on young Indian graduates with various professional degrees switching over to a career as a telemarketing agent where they can make much more money faster. The average Indian per capita makes the equivalent of $50/mo; a telemarketing agent averages $225/mo. The late night hours and better money also leads to some healthy partying and relationships, which has many Indian parents thinking it’s changing India… and not for the better. Great documentary that is absolutely hilarious a times. Many of the telemarketers go by western aliases while on the phone, work on managing their accents, and have funny desertions of the prospects they talk to. One telemarketer who has never been to the US, makes calls to the region daily. From his experience, he notes a dramatic difference between people from different states. He describes people from Missouri as “very nice”, while people from New York as “polished”, and people from Texas as, well “robust”. It’s available for rental. Check it out.
5 Comments
December 11th, 2006 at 7:34 pm
This documentary also illustrates one of the biggest mistakes businesses made over the past ten years with out sources their tech support or customer service. The decrease in out sourcing this very important component of business operations will continue over the next year.
December 12th, 2006 at 3:45 am
Outsourcing the helpdesk has created the big mess the economy of the USA is currently in. The big companies save money, the regular worker has to switch careers.
What does that affect? In the end it affects big companies as the workers have less money to spend on their products. Basically, the companies shot themselves in the foot, are bleeding out and don’t even realize it until they collapse under their own weight of greed.
Rex
December 15th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
After reading the 2 comments, I really recommend reading the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. It shows that nothing is wrong with outsourcing, what is wrong is how we are reacting to it.
Just my 2 cents.
February 14th, 2007 at 4:27 am
Makes you wonder what the long term effects of globalization will be. Is it an unatural system or organization? Somebody in India earning money that they will spend in India. Will the North
American standard of living drop as the Indian standard rise?
The call centre worker is under alot of stress and you can see that they don’t really like the job but have no choice. Who wants to go to school to study medicine to work at a call centre. BS!!!
March 26th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
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