Call centers have become such an integral part of modern Indian cities that most of us youngsters seem to know someone – either directly or indirectly – associated with some call center or the other.
They have also become so ‘mainstream’ that there are novels, movies and jokes galore about the call centers. However, most of the stories are either about humour, harassment or sexual escapades during night shifts.
Of course, like most stories in this world, that is just one part of the story. The big picture sees millions of youngsters, like you, wanting to take up a job with any of the top-notch call centers or BPOs (which also include tasks where you don’t have to speak up on phone with clients). And thousands from amongst us are already doing very well at call centers.
Unfortunately, because of the herd mentality of all industries, the IT boom had seen a boom of call-centers with poor training methods, even poorer talent and totally inadequate infrastructure. All of that led to widespread opinion of it being a ‘Dead-end job’, a ‘McJob’, ‘SlaveJob’ and many other adjectives of the poor kind.
But can that be true? For all those who cannot become an Amitabh or Kapil Dev; who cannot get PhDs, MCAs, MBAs; who are not engineers or doctors, why can’t the job at call center be good? Just because some people don’t find it very intellectual or glamorous? Are they the ones who are going to burn the ‘chulha’ at your home?
While at any given point of time, a job is a job is a job, presently, a job at a good call center / BPO can actually just be the foundation that you require to kick-start greater things in your later life!
It offers good training, good money and most of all, great confidence. It prepares you well to deal with various kind of people, in various kind of situations and teaches you the art of dealing all of that in a composed manner. It just prepares you to take life head-on.
And then, who is asking you to make a job at the call center your final destination. Serve your Company well, earn well for yourself, learn about many things and move on. Everyone does that, in every field.
The key here is to identify the good call centers from the fly-by-the-night operators. And one of the best way to separate the good from the average (or worse) is to find out the parent Company or the list of clients that it caters too. So, a Hutch call center is good one for anyone but so is a (for example) Ram Bharose Hindu Call Center that caters to Nike, IBM, Nirma etc. Go ahead, get started with a career. Get started with earning.
