Critical Understanding of the Inbound BPO

First, you have to understand how ‘Money’ came into existence. I am sure if you go ahead and study a little bit of early civilization definitely you will get to know what ‘Money’ is and how it came into existence.

I will tell you one small story. In the early time of civilization, when human did not know how to build a house or how to sew clothes they knew how to hunt animals. It was a struggle of sustenance to hunt and eat. One group of hunters were still using already known methods to hunt down animals by using wooden sticks, throwing stones and bare hands but another group of hunters they somehow discovered that the edge of a broken stone is sharp enough to cut through the hard flesh of the animal. Human intellect is always at the state of friction and keeps on evolving. It is the result of this human intellect they improvised their method of hunting by tying sharpened pieces of broken stones to the top of sticks and using that as an spear to hunt animals. Now this tool is obviously having an advantage hence the later group of hunter were able to manage more number of kills each day and thus having enough food to satiate the hunger of their community. On the other hand the prior group, only with the greatest difficulty, could manage a kill every odd day. Thus they were struggling and suffering a lot. They somehow came to know that the other group had some better tools and they could manage more number of kills each day. These struggling hunters approached the other group for borrowing their tools. They had a big smile on their face when the other group agreed to let them borrow their tools but it was also decided that the borrowing group has to give the lending group 2/3rd of their kill each day as a policy of exchange of food for tools.

It is understood that in the earlier days of civilization it was just a policy of exchange. In that policy laid the seed of exploitation. The group A of the hunters started making progress with the newly received tool; they were making more number of kills everyday and thus were able to satiate their hunger. The other group B was also happy with the fact that without putting much effort they were actually having 2/3rd portion of the food from group A. Over the years the greed of group B increased to such extent that they started to exploit on the hard work and effort of the other group for the food.

In brief; this is the timeline from where people started to exchange something in return for something. We can learn that initially; cattle and herd were exchanged in favor of food crops. Then metals were exchanged for other valuables and crops. When people learned that exchange is the way of life and therefore to implement fair trade they needed to have a generalized method of exchange; then came the existence of precious metal coins and eventually came paper currency which we call ‘Money’ today.

In the history of timeline, if we study closely we will find that one group kept on getting exploited for their food then came ‘Imperialism’ then came ‘Slavism’ then came ‘Zamindari Pratha’ and finally it evolved to ‘Colonization’ . Now days the modern face of exploitation is ‘Capitalization and Globalization’. I will not get more into those topics. You can surely read ‘Carl Marx’, ‘Che Guevara’, ‘Vladimir lenin’ and other such revolutionists to understand the concept of socialism which aims to obliterate the exploitative difference in a capitalist economy and bring about equality. The modern day Chinese economy is an example of progressive socialism but not an absolute Socialist nation; they are yet to reach the peak.

Now why did I explain all the above facts? It is just for you to understand how the capitalistic economy works. It has only one particular aim, more and more productivity and fewer wages for the labors. This is how the capitalist is gaining more; and accumulation of wealth and power is happening for the capitalist segment of the society.

Working in call centre is one of the worst places where you will be exploited in every way possible. Everything you do will be measured against what everyone else is doing. They can make metrics and run reports, analyze your keystrokes. How long no one was speaking, how often that person calls back, how long the hold was, how you resolved the issue, what resources you used, how exactly you were able to follow your breaks, how long in ready, ACW, having system issues, calling for assistance and on and on.

What they expect from customer service (Inbound) is that you become the punching bag for the customers. Believe me; it’s not always you but it’s just because of the overall failure of the company as a whole that they look up to you as a salvation to their misery; inflicted by the customer satisfaction rating. You are expected to wipe customers’ ass literally; eat the shit and probably look up to them with puppy eyes so that you are adorned with a positive rating. How hypocrite these people are that they expect the customers’ to rate; just based on a single interaction you had with the customer. They are just completely overlooking the contributing factors towards the experience of the customers; which are comprised of so many ingredients on which you literally do not have any control. Not just this, working in an inbound call centre becomes a nightmare when they expect you to promote their products. It means that they want you to up sell their products. They would call it value addition. Now I have a question! How do they think that we are not adding any value? We are giving our time; we are giving our honest effort. We are not even paid at par for the service we are already extending; rather they even expect you to sell their products and that’s an important part of the KPI, why is that?. It’s just to churn our more and more revenue at the cost of anything and everything. When we are giving our time it’s not just time only; rather its talent, effort, intellect and goodwill which we are contributing; but these people are so much money minded that they only care about more. They would not pay you a single penny extra if you don’t meet all the performance metrics. They make those metrics in such a way that it becomes a humongous task for someone to accomplish. For an example, let’s say an agent is hired in a voice bases customer service. Probably client is paying 50K per month for individual head counts. Now the contractor or the 3rd party company wants to have maximum amount of profit that can be churned out from every individual. So just giving customer service is not enough, rather they will also count for your up sell. How does that rationalize? Why are sales or up sells is a parameter in the contract centre. It should be an option, where an agent is proactively selling a products or service to the customer he should be entitled to a variable pay percentage depending on the amount of sale done. Why is this that it’s a part of the performance metrics? They will give you end number of bullshit reason for that, but understand that you are just being exploited to churn out more and more for the capitalist. How money is generated? Money is generated by labor, if the capitalist thinks that he is just entitled to enjoy the surplus income which is just created because of the labor put forth, that is merely and exploitation of the ‘Proletariat’.

Revolutionary Humanism and Marxism (Che Guevara)

Perhaps the most intriguing component of Guevara’s socialist philosophy was his revolutionary humanism. Guevara believed a true revolutionary was someone who felt the problems of mankind as deeply as his own. If a man was killed somewhere else in the world, that death should matter to every human being.

That said, his revolutionary humanism never strayed far from his Marxist ideals. In September 1960, when Guevara was asked about Cuba’s ideology, he said, “If I were asked whether our revolution is communist, I would define it as Marxist. Our revolution has discovered by its methods the paths that Marx pointed out.”

Essentially, Marxism is a socialist philosophy that is the antithesis of capitalism. While capitalism focuses on private ownership and a free, competitive market motivated by profit, Marxism takes a more communal approach. It focuses on public ownership as the means to production, distribution, and exchange.

You can see how substituting private ownership for public ownership lines up with Guevara’s revolutionary humanism. Again, to simplify things, it takes on the approach of “we’re all in this together” as opposed to sole survival.

Why working in a BPO Sucks:

The basic thing that I want you to point out is that your employer has not employed you for your interest. Whatever theories of HR and employee wellbeing have been put forth is just a myth to keep you going to fulfill the purpose of the revenue accumulation of the employer at the cost of anything and everything. Why there are parameters and metrics in play? It’s just to keep you in check, to keep you controlled and to give you a vague sense of accomplishment to keep you productive and keep you going. The principle of management is just to churn out or extract everything you have for the benefit of themselves. Every human being is different with different talents to add to the organization but it seems they are hypocrite to realize the bigger picture and putting everyone through the same grading system. Every terminology that has been invented in this industry is just to keep you under control, like AHT, NPS, DSAT, CSAT, and HOLD. What is the actual implication of these terminologies and how badly it affects the individual employee?

Income = Time * Rate, it means if a person has an income of 30000, it means the person has a rate of 1000 per day. Now 30000 = 30 (Days) * 1000. In more critical terms, 8 hours a day is giving an output of 30000 rupees in a month. Now this is not enough, because the organization cannot make you work for more than 8 hours a day, hence their primary motivation is to extract the maximum value out of this 8 hours, this is the only reason they put such sort of parameters as if you need a constant improvement no matter how better you are in every aspect.

Why is there a customer service in place? It’s just because the capitalist class know that because of its several means of exploitation of the customer, there will be discontent. Now they need someone at the forefront to pacify, bluff, manipulate and everything that could be done to deescalate the situation, to maintain a vague sense of satisfaction for the customers and again in turn they need to know from the (NPS/CSAT/DSAT) scores that things are going good. How vague and hypocrite thought process this is!

I will tell you why you are being graded according to the metrics? There is an organizational power hierarchy, these people play puppet for the capitalist to keep the labor class in check and control. They want you to always feel that you are not sufficient and still there is a scope of improvement on the surface. They don’t want you to question them, why is that they are not directly involved in any sort of production still they have the potential to earn more. Though the productivity has a directly influence because of the effort you are putting forth, still how does it count that their work is considered more valuable and superior to yours. This is just a policy of the capitalist to create class difference among the labor class itself to enable it to divide, rule and have total control on the workforce.

NPS- This is known as Net Promoter Score. It is being judged by the company that customers who come up with a score of 9 or above are likely to use the power of recommendation to promote the business, How silly is to think this way. The affinity to choose a brand by a customer depends on lots of personalized factors like, Competitive Price, Service Reliability, Transparent disclosures of terms and conditions, hassle free after sales self service to manage things easily and smartly, personal value generation by being associated with a brand, Societal rank or dominance when getting associated with a particular brand, additional services and promotions etc. But now just because you had an interaction with the customer once about some issue for which you are in no way responsible, the employer makes you responsible for a bad promoter score. It has nevertheless to do anything with you, rather it’s a reflection of the customers mindset. They expect as if pampering and ass-wiping the customer is going to fetch a net promoter score. Just keep this in mind, it’s not about you, it’s about them, it has always been and it will always be.

CSAT- Customer is really in a good mood and probably is exuberant when he called the customer service. You happen to be at the receiving end. The customer might have some issue which could be just resolved over the call, because that was what the nature of the issue. Resolution is what matters to the customer, you gave it and additionally customer might have had a history of good service experience with the brand (I am not talking customer service) hence had a historical mind-set of happy feeling about the brand and just punched in 9 or 10. Believe me it has nothing to do about you, yes of course you need to be rational in providing resolution but the rating factor is just how the customer feels about the service provider, it’s not a reflection on your ability.

DSAT- Customer was not probably in a good mood and pissed off with something happened or an ongoing issue. It seems that no credible resolution can be provided on the call right away. You tried the tools and available resources but either there is a knowledge gap or else a process gap which is not your fault anyway. Customer was having ambivalent attitude and hence rated poorly on the survey. Again it’s not a reflection on your abilities or your talents. You are not responsible, only if you are not idiotic to the highest level, apart from that you are good. Just keep this in mind, it’s not about you, it’s about them, it has always been and it will always be.

AHT- Average handling time is the count in seconds the average time you have spend on calls with the customer. The only implication of this parameter as I understood is something to do with the profitability factor of the company. The way they see it is the number of customers you are able to serve, more number of customer you serve is equal to more profitability from you, maximum output by spending less average wage. Now when the ulterior goal of the customer service is to resolve the issues of the customer, how does it matter how much time you are spending on the call. If you are rational and just not keeping the customer waiting on the call unnecessarily and you are not keeping on watching Netflix, then I don’t think it has got any problem. Of course someone is not idiotic to establish a personal conversation over the call with a customer; neither is he an acquaintance or an enemy that he’d intend to engage in unnecessary conversation. It’s just a conversation about the problem; we need to really focus on the grass root problem as to understand what is driving the length of the conversation. Is it because of the tools is being sloppy, or the knowledge of the process being sloppy. We must identify the process gap and try to mend things for a long lasting improvement if my focus is only to give the best resolution in the least possible time. I have always felt; in this industry that is always the agent is at fault and it has nothing to do with the other aspect for which no one uses their brain to find a resolution to the real problem. If a person is provided with a new mobile having a new interface of android or IOS, he will become an expert in using all the available features in no time. It’s just because the interface is so user friendly that a layman will also become an expert, if he has just got an average IQ.

Now you understand the problem. It’s not about you, it has always been about them and it will always be.

Conclusion

After I have finished this draft, I just want to conclude that irrespective of all the wrong doings of the capitalist, someone would favor their principles and comply with their methodologies. This is just so that he is at a position of competitive advantage; so that he is placed in the position of a power hierarchy so that he could manage the employee segment to churn out the maximum productivity for the capitalist. He know it from his heart that probably they will implement bad practice at play, but again in a capitalistic society he can’t bring about a change in the overall dynamics of the operation, hence it is crucial for him to use the existing dynamics for his advantage so that he has a luxurious life ahead.