It was in 1999 that I was standing next to a nice, smart, well to do girl in a call center, when a client called her a bimbo. Sadly she was educated enough to understand what it meant. It took a lot of effort to counsel her from 10am to noon saying…the client did not mean it.

I am extremely polite to kids in the CC (forget my posting on the I bank experience – even there I was never impolite). Being polite to these kids helps things get done. Many of them come from good families, like the work, hate the over-work, get pathetic training and take the brunt for all that goes wrong.

Life insurance agents who promise the moon, credit card salesmen who promise that there will be no late charges, mutual fund agents who say redemption can be done on the phone, systems that do not work, letters that generate as “Mr.” immaterial of the gender of the customer…all the nonsense falls on these poor kids.

I have played tricks on them but never been cruel. When they ask for leads I normally give them either the CEO or a Sr. VP of their own organization – nobody has got back to me, so I do not know what happened.

All the -ve feedback about a product I tell the top management. Including telling them that if the kids are not trained properly you will lose not only an employee but also customers who have to deal with them. Frankly I do not think to most Indian manufacturers it matters too much. Recently I heard from an adviser how he shifted Rs. 40 lakhs of assets from a well performing fund to another well performing fund (client did not lose) because ANOTHER client was treated badly by the earlier fund. In a market which is not growing Rs. 40 L in equity funds is not a small amount :).

Hello, you think he fund house is listening? No.