Last Friday I got a call on our home land line at around lunchtime.  Unusually I was at home and downstairs.  Friday is the day I have the boys (1 and 3 yrs) all day and we usually go on somewhere after playgroup for lunch. However, for some reason we were at home.

I answered the call and someone said they were from HSBC and asked me for my ID.  Now I don't know what you are like but someone strange calling me and immediately asking for bank ID makes me a bit nervous. Anyway, I figured that they were genuine and gave them my details to find out what it was about.

It turned out that something had been returned unpaid from my account. I explained that this was an oversight and it would be sorted asap but not now as I was feeding my toddlers (which I was).

But the woman on the phone just proceeded, ignoring what I had said completely and started asking for my bank card details. I told her I was very busy, feeding my kids and that I would sort it out later or tomorrow. She persevered, ignoring me again and I got a bit angry. I asked her if she had heard what I said and understood it. She said she had, which threw me (surprised me a bit) as I couldn't get my head around (understand) how someone could hear and understand but not respond to such a reasonable request. I told her again that I had no time to deal with her there and then and she just kept going...like a machine.

I lost my temper then, causing my oldest son to look at me a bit worriedly, she said, 'but you have time to talk, you are talking to me, this won't take very long'...then I lost it, asked what her name was, etc. and made a note and confirmed that the call was being recorded. I then put the phone down as she again proceeded on her previous course of communication.  I was furious and my blood pressure had no doubt shot up and the kids were a bit scared (not to say still hungry).

Next morning around 9am (Saturday) the phone rang.  I ignored it.

Later in the morning I called them to sort it out (funds juggling and being busy caused my account to run a bit dry and I moved some money in there), which I did. However, I found out that the woman who called me the day before had summarily (without warning) cancelled my credit card.  This made me angry again and I told the person on the phone that I wanted to make a complaint and have the whole thing put right. A complaint was lodged and I even had to have a word with this person whom I'd called because they tried to get me to do something else I didn't want to do and they didn't listen to me when I said I'd finished my business. I even had to ask their name and tell them that they were being added to my complaint.

Later on Saturday I was with the family walking along the seafront and watching my 3 yr old on his new bike (he falls off sometimes when the pavement isn't level) I got another call from HSBC. Someone from a call centre asking for my ID. I refused on the basis that a) it had been sorted and b) I was busy. Like the first woman this one pressed on (continued). I lost it again...blood pressure off the scale this time, no doubt. I asked her name and cut her off.

Monday morning. I call HSBC to make sure my complaint has been registered, it has, I ask if I can speak to someone about it because I was told by the person on Saturday that someone would call me in 24 working hours and I wanted to do it now as it was more convenient for me. She told me I couldn't speak to anyone because a letter had been sent out to me. I asked what was in the letter she said she didn't know but that I had to receive the letter before I could speak to anyone. I asked to speak to her manager. He said 'yes' that was true.  I said I wanted copies of the audio files from my conversations under the Freedom of Information Act as they were my data and he said I couldn't have them but could listen to them at an HSBC branch. After me ridiculing this and pointing out the absurdity of the letter situation he found the letter on the system and read it to me...a form (standard pre-written) apology and refund of £17. No mention of cancelling the credit card.

My complaint still stands and I want the audio files. If I get them I will share... :-)

The things that come out of this and what I said to the call centre employee I spoke to on Saturday morning are:

1. The call centre employees are obviously so tightly managed and have scripts that they have to sue for each situation they work on that they either fear not getting to the end of the script or collecting the money or both.
2. They need to listen to their customers (even acknowledge that their customer is a person with a life outside of the call centre and task at hand at that moment)...listen properly, sympathetically and talk to them normally, not just follow the script.
3. They need to get to know some of their customers as friends and not 'foe' (enemies). i.e. they need to be able to listen and interpret the signs and intonation coming down the phone and be flexible in the way they communicate. If someone wants to be brisk (fast) ok, if someone wants a chat about the weather (ok), if they can't talk at that exact moment (ok) ask when they would like to have a call back.

When I spoke at the British Council's 'Dialogue 2' conference in Kolkata last November there were lots of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) agents and recruiters there.  The ones I spoke to all said that they were running out of job candidates whose English skills were good enough for the job.  They all decried (complained about) the way that Indian educators and teachers 'teach to the test' and mentioned the rote learning (word for word memorisation) educational culture of India. So, there was/is a crisis in English teaching in India and the methods used are not getting the desired results.  There is great concern but they keep buying the same old English programmes from the same old English providers at, no doubt, some considerable cost. For example, cascade training Indian English teachers to teach English when they themselves often suffer a lack of confidence using the language and teach to the test using their first language in class.

It is obvious to me that this culture and methodology is used in call centres or BPO operations by multinational organisations.

There are two very deep ironies in all of this. Firstly, if there are not enough candidates with English skills adequate for BPO jobs in India the whole industry will cave in (collapse) as the thing it was set up to do, provide capacity at small cost, will be lost. Secondly, if those that do get jobs have poor listening skills and are trained rote fashion to bang out (race through) a script, come what may, with no thought or concern for the 'customer' on the other end of the phone they will continue to irreparably damage the reputation and business of the organisations that employ them.

So either way, unless someone finds a new way to teach English with soft skills that facilitates natural, empathetic yet businesslike, productive and professional phone calls. In other words general English for social interaction. They are truly fucked.

An analogy that may or may not be unkind is of a battery hen (egg factory chicken) being rescued from a battery farm and being introduced to other free range chickens. It is well documented that they actually need to have a period of time where they re-learn how to speak and behave like a normal chicken, i.e. become a socialised chicken in tune  with other chickens.  It doesn't take long, but it does require that they get some unpressurised, relaxed and amiable clucking and pecking in the company of other normal chickens without having to push an egg out or share a tight box with ten others who can't move properly.

If anyone reading this is involved with a BPO operation, bank or any other company that feels its outsourced business services are failing to create the right impression do please get in touch with.  I think I can help and the price of success will be considerably less than the price of failure.