Remisson Aniceto

The alarm rings loudly, it’s midnight. My sweet dreams were so young, yet my impulses push me to wake up. Confused whether or not to brush my teeth, as I just slept for four hours and brushed my teeth then, I freshen up and dress within five minutes. The horn of the van shouts alarmingly outside my home. So I grab my identity card and diary, which used to be the data base containing the owner’s name, the phone number of the business, and phone numbers to be followed. Then I run out to the van, where all the other agents are sleeping and snoring.

My work begins: “May I speak to the owner there, it’s me Jenny calling you from a website designing and hosting company. We are offering you a sample website design for your business.” The person on the phone might reply, “Yes, this is the owner, what do you want?” or “No owner, call later,” or “Yes, I know you are calling from a website designing and hosting company…please take me off your list. If you can again, I will sue you, do you understand?” Or perhaps: “I’m not interested in your business,” or “Are you selling something, if so I’m not interested in your business,” or “It’s Saturday, I’m busy with my customers, could you call later,” or “It’s a subway, a corporate business, our head office has its own website, we appreciate your call,” or “Don’t call me, our business doesn’t need a website.”

We call nearly 400 – 500 numbers in eight hours, from 2:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., but customers interested in buying a domain of the website or redesigning the website are few—perhaps only one or two. Every call is of equal importance, for missing one call might cause you to miss the sale. Missing the sale means staying there for two more hours!

This is an example of outsourcing, i.e., the practice in which companies move or contract out some or all of their manufacturing or service operations to other companies that specialize in those operations or to companies in other countries. In both cases the practice is usually done to take advantage of lower-cost labor or other efficiencies.

In Nepal we name them call centers. Business is done in one country, especially in developed or developing countries where employees need not be paid as highly as in the owner company. It cannot be denied that call centers are flourishing in third world countries, India being one of the pioneers in South Asia. India earns an increasing amount of foreign exchange from call-center services that are out-sourced from businesses in the United States and other countries. Nepal is following India’s example.

Call centers usually look to hire younger people eighteen and older since the work is demanding and requires energetic people to talk to and pursue the listeners. In Nepal, especially students who can communicate in English after their inter of bachelor’s level join them. We also can find many students who are trying for study abroad. Their motive is to become good and fluent speakers of English.

Call centers demand strong discipline. Everyone is focused on their work. Yet there is freedom if you are able to maintain your scores. In break times and after office hours most of the employees can be found smoking. The reason is unclear, maybe it’s the demanding culture of call centers; however, most were habitual smokers before joining. Very few take up the habit after joining.

Everyone is very frank and you cannot forget friends made at call centers as it is the meeting place of people who have similar interests, are quite motivated, and of course are very enthusiastic and full of energy. It teaches a lot of things about the way of life of foreign countries, their culture, their way of thinking, and their way of tackling things. You can learn how to deal with people and how to convince them to listen to you.

Regarding salary, it is quite appreciable because an intermediate student earning more than Rs. 6,000 to Rs. 25,000 in the context of Nepal is a great thing. The salary depends on your qualifications and the post you are handling. In India salaries are a bit higher in comparison to Nepal because the business is competitive and of course there are higher sales.

Link tree, serving minds, and many more are good examples of outsourcing in Nepal. These companies are leading in business and have helped our country to earn foreign exchange and aided hundreds of students to obtain jobs. The drop out ratio is very high as the students are not stable at work, since they usually leave work for their higher studies. The policies and strategies of the companies are made in a similar manner. It’s the reason why we can find vacancy announcements every Wednesday in The Himalayan Times.

Specialized outsourced services are popular in the USA, UK, Australia, etc. There are different working shifts. Since the times of Asian, European, or American countries differ from eight to ten hours, when we are working nights here, those countries have day time. So to do business in the USA at day time we have to work afternoons, evenings, or early mornings.

There are two types of outsourcing businesses. The first is customers making calls to order purchases in the call centre, e.g., DELL computers have such a facility in India. Customers from the USA or other countries call them to purchase computers, etc. The second is agents from outsourcing companies making calls to sell their products, as mentioned above. In the former case, it is an easy means of doing business, but the latter one is more difficult because the agents have to push them to buy their products. Also nowadays, fake outsourcing centers are also developing. They might say that they are offering insurance service or credits to their business. Instead they just take the credit card numbers with their pin codes and charge them on their credit cards without any benefits for the customers. These types of “outsourcing companies” are also a hurdle for a fair market and blackmail the customers by hacking their credit cards.

The means of payment in outsourcing companies are Pay Pal (online paying service), credit cards, and of course, cheques. In terms of outsourcing, their companies are registered in their own countries, they are licensed to do business inside or outside the owner country. They have bank accounts in the owner country and all the transactions are done in the country itself, but the selling business is carried out from another country. For example, the head office of Serving Minds is in Pembroke Pines, Florida, and its working places are in Nepal and India.

There is a two-way benefit, for example, for the employee and the employer. Employees are happy in getting well paid jobs and the companies profit having lower costs. The employee earns more than 10 dollars per hour in the USA, so the employee earns more than 80 dollars a day. The same 80 dollars in Nepal can pay an employee for a month.