Authors: ARUN GUPTA
now.’
‘Cool. You do know who made that right?’
‘Yes, you and Vroom. But I don’t think you should make a big deal out of
it. The website has cost Connexions a lot of business.’
‘But the website helps the customers a lost, right?’ I said.
‘Shh. Don’t talk about the website here. Some agents are very upset.
Someone said they would cut people.’
‘Really?’
‘I don’t know. Listen, why are you so unromantic? Is this how Eddy
Teddy should talk to his Curly Wurly/’
I wanted to know more about what was going on at Connexions. Bakshi
was super-secretive—all the said was there were some confidential
management priorities. I thought of asking Vroom to spy some more.
‘Eddy Teddy?’ Shefali repeated. I looked at her. If she stopped wearing
Hello Kitty hairpins, she could be passably cute.
‘Huh?’
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Did you like my gift/’
‘What gift?’
‘The ring tones. I gave you six rings tones. See, you don’t even
remember,’ she said and her face turned sad.
‘I do. See I put
Last Christmas
as my tone,’ I said and picked up my
phone to play it. Vroom would probably kill me if he heard it, but I had to for
Shefali.
‘So cute,’ Shefali said and pinched my cheeks. ‘So cute it sounds, my
Eddy teddy.’
‘Shefali…’
‘What?’
‘Can you stop calling me that/’
‘Why/ you don’t like it?’
‘Just call me Shyam.’
‘You don’t like the name I gave you?’ she said, her voice transcending
from sad to tragic.
I kept quiet. You never tell women you don’t like something they have
done. However, they pick up on the silence.
‘That means you don’t like the ring tones either,’ she said and her voice
started to break.
‘I do,’ I said, fearing a round of crying. ‘I love the ring tones.’
‘And what about the name? You can choose another name if you want. I
am not like your other girlfriends,’ she said and tiny tears appeared in her
eyes. I looked at my watch. There more minutes and time will heal
everything. I thought. I took a deep breath. A hundred and eighty seconds and
she would have to leave for sure. Sometimes counting seconds is a great way
to kill time through woman’s tantrums.
‘What kind of girlfriends/’ I said.
‘Like,’ she sniffed, ‘bossy girls who impose their way on you. Like you-
know-who.’
‘Who?’ What are you implying,’ I said, my voice getting firmer. It was
true; Priyanka could be bossy, but only if you didn’t listen to her.
‘Forget it. But will you give me a name if I stop crying?’ her sobs were at
a serious risk of transforming into a full-fledged bawl.
‘yes,’ I said and became normal. ‘Give me a name,’
I though hard. Nothing came to mind.
‘Sheffy? How about Sheffy?’ I said finally.
‘Nooo. I want something cuteeer,’ she said. Shefali loves to drag out
words.
‘I can’t of anything cute right now. I have to work. Isn’t your Qualis
leaving soon too?’ I said.
She looked at her watch and stood up.
‘Yes, I better leave now. Will you think of a name by tomorrow?’ she
said.
‘I will, bye now.’
‘Give me a kissie,’ she said and tapped a finger on her cheek.
‘What?’
‘Kissie.’
‘You mean a kiss? Yeah sure.’ I gave her a peck on the check and turned
around to return to my bay.
‘Bye bye. Eddy Teddy,’ her voice followed me.
#4
The others were already at the desk when I returned from Shefali’s bay.
Our bay’s name is the ‘Western Appliances Strategic Group’ or WASG.
Unlike the other bay that troubleshoots for computer customers, we deal with
customers of home appliances such as refrigerators, ovens and vacuum
cleaners. Management calls us the strategic bay because we specialize in
troublesome and painful customers. These ‘strategic’ customers call a lot and
are too dumb to figure out things (actually the latter applies to a lot of
callers).
We fell special, as we are not part of the main computers bay. The main
bay has over a thousand agents and handles the huge ‘Western Computers’
account. While the calls are less weird there, they miss the privacy we enjoy
in the WASG.
I came and took my seat at the long rectangular table. We have a fixed
seating arrangement: I sit next to Vroom, while Priyanka is right opposite me;
Esha is adjacent to Priyanka and Radhika sits next to Esha. The bay is an open
plan, so we can all see each others. Military Uncle’s chat station is at the
corner of the room. At each of the other three corners, there are,
respectively, the restroom, a conference room and a stationery supplies
room.
However, no one apart from Uncle was at their seat when I sat down.
Everyone had gathered around Priyanka.
‘What’s the news? Tell us now,’ Esha was saying.
‘Okay, okay. But on one condition. It doesn’t leave the WASG,’ Priyanka
said, sitting down. She pulled out a large plastic bag from under her seat.
‘Guys,’ I said, interrupting their banter.
Everyone turned to look at me.
I pointed at the desk and the unmanned phones. I looked at my watch.
It was 10:29 p.m. The call system routine backup was about to finish, and our
calls would begin in a minute.
Everyone returned to their chairs and put on their headsets.
‘Good evening, everyone. Please pay attention to this announcement,’ a
loud voice filled our bay. I looked up. The voice came from the fire drill
speaker.
‘I hate this irritating announcement,’ Priyanka said.
‘This is the control room,’ the speaker continued. ‘This is to inform all
agents of a fire drill next Friday at midnight. Please follow instructions during
the fire drill to leave the call center safely. Thank you. Have a nice shift.’
‘Why do they keep doing this? Nobody is going to burn this place down,’
Esha said.
‘Government rules,’ Vroom said.
Conversations stopped mid-way as two begs on the computer screens
signaled the start of our shift.
Calls began at 10”31 p.m. Numbers started flashing on our common
switchboard as we picked up calls one after the other.
‘Good afternoon, Western Appliances, Victor speaking, how may I help
you?’ Vroom said as he took one of his first calls.
‘Yes, according to my records I am speaking to Ms Smith, and you have
the WAF-200 dishwasher. Is that right?’ Esha said.
Esha’s ‘memory’ impressed the caller. It was not a big deal, given that
our automated system had every caller’s records. We knew their name,
address, credit card details and past purchases from Western Appliances. We
also had details on when they last called us. In fact, the reason why her call
had come to our desk—the Western Appliances Strategic desk—was because
she was a persistent caller. This way the main bay could continue to run
smoothly.
Sometimes we had customers that were oddballs even by WASG
standards. I will not go into all of them, but Vroom’s 10:37 p.m. call went
something like this:
‘Yes s Paulson, of course we remember you. Happy Thanksgiving, I hope
you are making a big turkey in our WA100 model oven,’ Vroom said, reading
from a script that reminded us about the American festival of the day.
I could not hear the customer’s side of the conversation, but Ms Paulson
was obviously explaining her problem with the oven.
‘No Ms Paulson, you shouldn’t have unscrewed the cover,’ Vroom said,
as politely as possible.
‘No, really madam. An electrical appliance like the WA100 should only
he serviced by trained professionals,’ Vroom said, reading verbatim from the
WA100 service manual.
Ms Paulson spoke for another minute. Our strategic bay hardly had a
reputation for efficiency, but long calls like these could screw up Vroom’s
response times.
‘See madam, you need to explain to me why you opened the top cover.
Then perhaps we’ll understand why you got an electric shock… so tell me…
yes… oh really? Vroom continued, taking deep breaths. Patience, key to
becoming a star agent, did not come naturally to him.
I looked around; people were busy with calls. Radhika helped someone
defrost her fridge; Esha assisted a customer in unpacking a dishwasher.
Everyone was speaking with an American accent and sounded different from
how they had in the Qualis. I took a break from the calls to compile the call
statistic of thee previous day. I did not particularly like doing this, but Bakshi
had left me with little choice.
‘See madam,’ Vroom was still with Ms Paulson, ‘I understand your
turkey did not fit and you did not want to cut it, but you should not have
opened up the equipment…. But see that is not the equipment’s fault… I can’t
really tell you what to do… I understand your son is coming, madam…. Now If
you had the WA150, that is a bigger size… ‘Vroom said, beginning to breathe
faster.
Ms Paulson ranted on for a while longer.
‘Ms Paulson, I suggest you take the oven to your dealer as soon as
possible’ Vroom said firmly. ‘And next time, get a smaller turkey... and yes, a
readymade turkey will be a good idea for tonight… No, I don’t have a dial-a-
turkey number. Thank you for calling Ms Paulson, bye.’ Vroom ended the call.
Vroom nagged his fist on the table.
‘Everything okay?’ I said, not looking up from my papers.
‘Yeah. Just a psycho customer,’ he mumbled as another number started
flashing on his screen.
I worked on my computer for the next ten minutes, compiling the call
statistics of the previous day. Bakshi had also assigned me the responsibility
of checking the other agent’s etiquette. Every now and then, I would listen in
on somebody’s call. At 10:47 p.m., I connected to Esha’s line.
‘Yes sir. I sound like your daughter? Oh, thank you. So what is wrong
with the vacuum cleaner/’ she was saying.
‘Your voice is so soothing,’ the caller said.
‘Thanks you sir. So, the vacuum cleaner…?’
Esha’s tone was perfect—just the right mix of politeness and firmness.
Management monitored us on average call handling times, or AHTs. As WASG
got the more painful customers, our AHT Benchmarks were higher at two-and-
a-half minutes per call. I checked my files for everyone’s AHT—all of us were
within targets.
‘Beep! The sound of the fax machine made me look up from my papers.
I wondered who could be faxing us at this time. I went to the machine and
checked the incoming fax. It was from Bakshi.
The fax machine took three minutes to churn out the seven pages he
had sent. I tore the message sheet off the machine and held the first sheet
up.
From: Subhash Bakshi
Subject: Training Initiatives
Dear Shyam,
Just FYI, I have recommended your name to assist in accent
training as they are short of teachers. I am sure you can
spare some time for this. As always, I am trying to get you
more relevant and strategic exposure.
Yours,
Subhash Bakshi
Manager, Connexions
I gasped as I read the rest of the fax. Bakshi was sucking me into several
hours outside my shift to reach new recruits. Apart from the extra work, I
hate accent is so confusing. You might think the Americans and their language
are straightforward. Far from it—with them, each letter can be pronounced
several different ways.
I will give you just one example— T. With this letter Americans have
four different sounds. T can be silent so ‘internet’ becomes ‘
innernet
’ and
‘
advantage
’ becomes ‘
advannage
’. The second way is when T and N merge