For one week, I I stayed in India to research the major call centers. I learned many things while I was there, and I am here now to tell you about them.
India is the second most populated country in the entire world, with about 1.3 billion people. India's urban population has sky-rocketed over the years, with 31.16% of their country being urban; but it is this way for a reason. There are a lot more jobs / opportunities in urban populations. Lots of families that move to urban areas are trying to get out of the slums, and make a better life for themselves and their families. But, somebody needs to support the family.
12% of India's child population (5-14) participate in child labor. That's almost 27 million children! Clearly, not only adults are working in this country. This means that in the future, children could take over the family and better it, or child labor would be stopped completely, causing only adults to support the family.
Schooling in India is great, when you are fortunate enough to have it. People that can't afford an education will simply not get one. Kind of sad, isn't it? However, people that work in these call centers do not need an education, but they do, in fact, need lots of training. The call center I visited was called "SAG India", in New Delhi.
At this call center, people have to be very quick. It's almost like a test; if you answer quick you pass, and if you don't, you fail. Training isn't much different than this. But this work pays off, because this call center earns a little bit more money than many other call centers like it, with and hourly rate of $4.
On my first day at this call center, I was placed in a small, crammed room. The teachers here speak in English, because most of the callers are American. These teachers are very scrict. Many trainees do not understand English, but teachers will still force them to answer in English. The teachers here will also rapidly ask questions, and the trainee will on,y have a few seconds to answer. This training is very difficult, but also very underrated.
Before my week was over, I interviewed a man, who informed me about what call centers were really like. He said that his name was "Bryan", but his real name was Sangive. He said that many people are quick to anger, and many times hang up. He says that "people do not understand how much training it takes to get here. They just don't realize it. We even change our identies to fit them, but they don't care. Americans can be unappreciative when it comes to that kind of stuff, and we realize that. We're humans too."
Even if you don't think about it, India has an advantage over the U.S. Although we provide the jobs for these people, they know much more than we do about technology. Next time you complain about an ethnicity, remember how hard that job really is.