(Not really) A higher calling

When one thinks of customer service, one immediately imagines young graduates from the Indian population on the other end of the line with generic Indian names ready to act at your behest (or not). Satindra Sen, the author of Calling India: How India Became the Offshoring Capital of the World may not have been in the eye of the storm that was the BPO evolution in India, but has tried to build on the story by collecting anecdotes from across the board to humanise what has now become an ocean of numbers and PowerPoint presentations. The industry, currently employing a million people has been the topic of documentaries, debates and dinner-table conversations over the years and this book is an attempt at the same.

Relying heavily on anecdotes, the book introduces us to real characters with fake names that have climbed the ladder of success, as an example of many such stories that we have heard over the years about the BPO industry.

It starts off encouragingly with a story of an elephant that was produced overnight to please a couple of American bank executives. After this, the protagonist Shiv goes through the arduous task of training the first set of his employees with the processes of their first client in America. The team experiences a culture shock and they deal with the biggest problem facing the offshoring business in India – technology and pricing. As India faces a threat from other countries (such as Philippines and Mexico) in terms of pricing and better adaptability to the accent and the responsiveness, the author never fails to be in awe of the outsourcing industry. The highs and lows of the journey form a good chunk of the book and one often wonders if the movie should be sent to a Bollywood production house to be converted into what definitely has the makings of a blockbuster (and the author never fails to remind us of that).

The book, sadly, relies on not much else. Shifting back and forth with the timelines and speaking in platitudes, the book doesn’t offer much else for the entire length of 197 pages. You feel the pain of the journey along with the characters of the anecdotes, but for very different reasons. While the story would make a wonderful movie, making a wonderful book would have been possible if the book offered some more information than was already available to the public. The stories, too, have been documented by those with a stronger command over the pen and story writing over the years. As it ends on the ambiguous note (as most chapters do), one almost breathes a sigh of relief. It is almost as if the reader had lives the 16-hour days and the endless barrage of phone calls from foreign strangers with the characters. Too bad we cannot get on a conference call to discuss this, like they do.