It is funny to see how politicians change their fundamental political beliefs to get political mileage.

In 1970-80, the Community Party of India and their allies ruled the state of West Bengal with a strong leftist policy. Strikes were a common scene and industrialists were considered to be aliens and leeches! This was enough to result in an exodus of industrial houses and businesses from the state. 

In 1991, Indian National Congress brought opened up Indian market to the world. The signal was clear. It was the end of license raj and begining of a new era of rapid industrialization for India.

This all looks so "normal".

However the Singur issue (the small car factory of TATA Motors) shows something totally different! It looks like there are no guiding philosophy for these political parties. It keeps changing with the situation. Shall we call it "opportunity based principles"?

They have swapped their stands. they have swapped their idealogies.

We can see the ruling Communist Party of India working hard to get investments and industries to the state for overall economic growth. It is a welcome change. It seems (and if I remember, also quoted by our Chief Minister – Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya) that they are inspired by China, which has successfully embraced industrialization and has taken the middle path between communisim and capitalism, which seems to be working quite nicely.

However the opposition party – Trinamool Congress is stands against it! The same guys who stood for economic growth and reforms just fifteen years back. And see at the way they are putting up the protest – four forced strikes in one month. This is crazy. I fail to understand how will these strikes support their cause.

To me, it would have been more sensible that they should have demanded more transparency in the process and make sure that everyone gets proper compensation for their land that has been taken up for the factory. They should have negotiated about a solid rehabiliation program.

But what we saw was a sheer misuse of power and trust. The residents of Singur were misguided, the issue was given a sensitive turn and unreasonable demands were put up.

It seems that the issue was simply hyped up and used for political mileage. It is unfortunate that most political parties (in fact all of them) today equates "opposition party" as "a party which should oppose each and everything that the ruling party does". I really hope this definition changes soon to turn India into a powerful democracy.

 

In this age of information overload, it is nice to see some "read it – implement it" kind of quick start guides at http://www.faststartkits.com/

These guides are easy-to-read and are only 2-3 pages long. Most of them do not need you to have any background knowledge of the subject it covers as they are targeted towards newbie.

I personally used the Press Release Fast Start Kit and was able to come up with a professional press release within few hours on our "dedicated hiring model".

And yes, they are all free to download without any registration.

Keep it up – Arun!

 

I am a big fan of Gmail because of its speed and simplicity. However Gmail makes life hell lot of difficult in some cases -

1. The Threading Bug
While threading, Gmail creates threads based on the "Subject" of the email. It should be "Subject" & "Sender/Reciepient". It is very cumbersome to sort out and read mails in reference when you are dealing with two or more people with the same subject.

It all gets jumbled up.

2.  Keyboard shortcuts
Some of the keyboard shortcuts are so "short" that they get pressed accidentally. This results in a terrible anxiety.

3. Stupid web clips
It is very common to see stupid web clips like "Spam potato salad". They do not make any sense and causes unwanted distraction.

I look forward to see these corrected very soon

Abhishek

A lot has been talked about call center outsourcing.

We have heard and seen how it is changing the lifestyle statement for the young Indians who are now earning a handsome salary and (many of them) living a bohemian lifestyle!

On the other hand there have been voices against it for reasons ranging from cultural differences, inappropriate implementation and job losses.

It is nothing less than a "boom", similar to that we have seen in the dot-com era. And yes, a "bust" is inevitable. I am not drawing an analogy between sunrise-sunset and boom-bust. But, the reason is more deep rooted.

The model of call center outsourcing needs unprecedented changes in socio cultural changes which cannot take place at a pace businesses expect. This is a fact – even if it brings a sigh of relief or sounds very depressing.

Let us consider the situation at both the ends:-

Hundreds of companies from USA and Europe are outsourcing inbound and outbound call center operations to operators in India. Most of these operators hire young graduates (and sometimes even undergraduates) at attractive pay scale and train them. They are trained in western culture, accent and lifestyle (by showing them TV serials).

Let us see their priorities in brief:-

• Money (live life king size)
• Entertainment
• Friends
• Career!

Yes, the last one was "career". I have spoken to many call center executives and very few of them consider the current job to be their goal. They understand that their current job does not have enough scope to add value and they need to move up the value chain to make an alternate successful career.

They care about the satisfaction of the person at the other end of the phone line because their job depends on that. It is not a passion! Besides in many cases, even if they want to solve a problem or answer a question, they are unable to do so, since they do not know what should be their reaction in the given situation. The cultural difference is clearly visible when they communicate with the person at the other end.

Now, let us examine what happens at the other end -

A normal call center employee in USA/ Europe will be middle-aged (around 35 or so). He is a graduate (even if he is not a graduate, he is knowledgeable about the subject or have received enough training) and working in a call center for a career. His priorities in life are very different -

• Family
• Career (A stable, safe job)
• Money (House, Car, Mortgage, if any)
• A decent lifestyle

So the priorities are very different here. Therefore the attitude towards work has to be different and much more serious.

This clearly makes a cause of better quality call handling by a person who is from the same cultural background (as much as possible).

So what are we going to see in days to come? 

1. Call center outsourcing will go down over the next decade. It may not dip immediately, because the problems are not surfacing and even if it is surfacing the cost difference is making the manager turn a blind eye towards the same.

This cost difference will thin down as the Indian economy picks up and per capita spending increases, resulting in further surge of salaries.

2. Call center outsourcing will be selective! People will realize that only "certain type" of communications can be outsourced and managed.

3. Several call centers will find it impossible to meet up to the quality expectation of their clients and may go out of business.

4. Selected call centers will retain their hold by focusing on those selective areas which are feasible for outsourcing. They will have excellent quality process in place and will offer call center jobs as a definite career option. We might even see hiring of middle aged professionals in call centers at that time to bring in further stability.

This consolidation is inevitable. It has happened in the "medical transcription" industry and the generic call centers seem to follow the same route in long run.

5. US/European countries may bring up a special "Do not call" list for people who do not want to be called by overseas call centers to stop the menace of unwanted sales calls. We may even see a blanket ban on outbound call center (making sales call)!

6. Company owned call centers will continue to operate in selective areas.

Conclusion 

We know that the bubble will burst. It is just a matter of time. And I really hope that this time it does not take the industry in the state of despair that the dot-com bust did. It is unlikely because now we have much more business than staring at the hoardings with some silly dot-com imprinted on it.

Disclaimer

My comments and analysis of the industry, people profile and their goals are a generalist view I have gathered during my interaction with several people. They are entirely based on my experience and I totally understand that they may be incorrect or wrong or may not apply to a certain segment of people.

.

I recently came across Google Answers (http://answers.google.com/answers/) and found that they are no longer accepting questions.

So Google closes down its Google Answers service. Though I did not sense this coming, but once I saw it, I felt this is a logical step Google has taken. I anticipate the following reasons:

1. Google does not want to concentrate its energy in "people intensive" business models as they are not very scalable. They are "technology focused" and backed with solid processing infrastructure.  They will like machines to do the work!

2. Google Answers is a pay-and-use model. This makes it "less popular" compared to free services available. Again the money Google makes out of it is so small that it does not make good business sense to continue with this.

Yahoo on the other hand has a free service which has gained much more popularity than Google Answers, putting up a tough competition.

3. I saw few answers which were very well researched and were done for only $10-$20. I doubt that they were done with an intention to make money. The fees was kind of a reward or a way to say "thank you". It was not purely business driven.

4. Google in itself is a "Answering machine" and therefore it does not need Google Answers! (as suggested by my colleague, Mukul)

Overall, I feel that Google Answers was not fitting into the long term strategy of Google and a stiff competition in the same market by Yahoo (which is a very successful in leading people backed systems dating back from its famous directory) made them retract from this business.

Links to few discussions:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum35/3728.htm

http://www.webmasterworld.com/goog/3171877.htm