A Call Center

My friend, who happens to be busy now trying out various types of ‘business-ventures’, after having surprisingly failed at a steady one held on to for several years, came up to ‘consult’ about the layout for a ‘brochure’ to persuade prospective students to join the proposed institute/training center for a “call center” job.
Obviously, the present tie-up is with just two modest companies, who perhaps cannot even afford the expenses of a very preliminary process of recruitment of their own! And the course-coordinator who accompanied this friend was ‘hooked’ up to stake a one-hour meet session, with me, just because he has already invested his commitment with this friend, for setting up a training center!

The discussion , for me , turned out to be a very ‘refreshing’ experience!
It lasted for an hour (very short period, by the usual sessions that I normally enjoy (!) at the expense of others(!), because they had to race against time to keep other appointments, having overshot their own allotted time-slot with me!

They produced a brief write up, defining a call centre, its uses, and then summing up with Job opportunities.
I suggested to turn it upside down in presentation to start with “Job Opportunities” to entice the reader to move further. Like….
“ MNC’s need YOU,
to make available,
a virtual help desk at the door step for their
prospective customers, clients, buyers (as an after sales service ) etc…
if, you have good,
communication skills,
proactive attitude,
‘satisfaction-assuring’ abilities,
Screening abilities (to properly channelise the calls to proper person up the ladder)
Etc… etc….

The coordinator said he had two years of experience at “training” students/candidates for manning call centers. I at once proceeded to bring out the distinction between “training” and “teaching” ! One can ‘train’ even an animal, but to teach, you need a ‘human’ being as a student! Even with animals, after training, the circus animals happen to fascinatingly impress the audience much more than the ‘content-value’ of the sniffer-dogs that are trained by police personnels! One interesting aspect about training a police dog is that the well trained dog happens to always excel the trainer himself, for obvious reasons of highly enhanced, and more importantly, un-adulterated perception abilities gifted by nature! Since the dogs are trained, not taught, they can be fooled/misled/deceived by an expert criminal !
And, the apathy of us moderners, is that, we inadvertently end up training our children at handling life’s routines, instead of teaching them, and even ‘boast’ of having groomed them, with good ‘up-bringing’ skills! Here lies one of the clues to the puzzling lack of respect for ‘elders’ when children happen to ‘stand’ on their own, facing real-life situations! The lasting effect of elderly care is relative to what we teach, empowering children to handle any situation, out of the resourcefulness that they can enrich themselves with, when we teach them the ‘learning’ skills well ! We get repaid in the response we receive as their ‘elders’ at a later stage when we ‘retire’ from active life!

Dramatic examples occurred to me during the discussions, to effectively communicate the concepts involved in acquiring communicative skills, customer-retention-skills, seamless transportation of customers to that ‘comfort-zone’ affording an assurance of personalized care response, etc… Despite intense temptations to mention those examples, the elaborate narrative involved in them bringing out , deters me here. For instance, I used real life instances where a person stands at the entrance of a garment shop shouting at the crowd, modulating the voice to barely resemble a warm welcome, where as the noise of road-traffic compels a shrill full-throated audibility-oriented scream! These persons, I explained, end up as shout-centers, as a contrast to the telephone-call-receiving call center person! A good mother, is an example of an expert call-center-jobber, when she identifies/diagnosis the correct reason for each of those instances when the baby gives the same pattern of ‘crying’ call to get the attention (whether it is hunger, sleep, nappy-wetting, insect bite, physical discomfort due to sweat, stuffy clothing, etc.. etc…). However, it is not very wise, to ‘train’ a child to use ‘crying’ as the only means of attracting a mother’s attention, because the child may remain stuck to that stupid trait, even after growing into verbal communication abilities!

I gently summed up saying that I was ‘practically’ better taught into ‘how to end up as a “shut-up-center”….’ for nearly 12 years, so , maybe, I was not very much suited to be consulted about setting up a ‘call-center’ (mentally I recalled all those ‘silence-programs’ I had attended, during the spiritual-oriented Yoga programs I had attended).
That friend in turn summed up, and doing so, he hinted at persuading me to conduct a seminar for the students when the call center becomes functional! (And, I was wondering, if they really knew what it means, to call something a “seminar” ! The origin or the ‘root’ of the word, and its choice, incidentally, happens to prove, yet once again, the ‘uniqueness’ of the priceless gift to humans, the awareness, using which, we have evolved far beyond using the reproductive organs for merely the primitive procreation or rather preservation of our species ! Oh! Mercifully enough, they did not or could not wait to hear this elaboration! The dictionary says, “ a group of advanced students working in a specific subject of study under a teacher’.. … meaning, they are ‘prepared’ to be implanted with a ‘seed’ about a deeper topic, …….. like the present marriage laws suggest, the ideal age of marriage for a girl to be atleast 18, healthy enough to contain a seed !)