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Indian phone call of the day
For the past three years, [Bhumika] Chaturvedi has been a top collection agent at her call center, phoning hundreds of Americans a day and politely asking them to pay up. As the U.S. financial crisis plunges Americans into debt, her business is one of the fastest-growing sectors in Indian outsourcing. It is also one of the few sectors of outsourcing in India that is still hiring aggressively.
By the way:
India handles an estimated $16 billion -- or about 5 percent -- of delinquent U.S. accounts
The responses are numerous:
"My mortgage payments are just too high, honey. I just can't make the payment this month," a weeping woman with a Southern accent recently told her in response to a call for a $200 credit card payment. "I'm sure y'all heard about the credit crunch and gas prices. I'm flat broke."
I wonder what the Indian bill collector thinks in these moments. Has anyone tried saying: "Pay up. My aunt earns $1300 a year and pays 80 percent interest on her microcredit loans"? Probably not. In fact the strategy is the opposite:
Aparup Sengupta, global chief executive officer and managing director of Aegis, encourages his debt collectors to use a "hospitable Indian touch," meaning less arm-twisting and more emotional therapy.
"This business is a performing art," Sengupta said. "We are part therapists because the core of the issue is that every human being wants to be honorable in life. We don't just push someone into a bad situation. We try to create a real solution."
Decorating the office are dozens of yellow smiley faces with the words, "Happy People. Happy Customers. Happy Investors," along with other posters that read: "Connect and Collect."
If I owed money I would simply stop answering the phone.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 15, 2008 at 05:28 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
Tyler writes: "If I owed money I would simply stop answering the phone."
In fact, this the best behavioral response to telemarketers in general.
Putting yourself on a do not call list, which will be stolen and sold, simply identifies you as chump.
Buy an answering machine instead.
Posted by: michael webster at Oct 15, 2008 8:00:57 AM
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/13/AR2008101302701.html
Posted by: John B. Chilton at Oct 15, 2008 8:18:31 AM
In fact, this the best behavioral response to telemarketers in general.
I disagree. The best response to telemarketers is to tell them you are extremely interested in their product/service, but you just need them to hold on one second while you check the stove/take care of your infant/etc. Place the handset down without hanging up. If you really want to mess with them, call out every 30 seconds or so that you are sorry, and will be right with them.
Posted by: Malaclypse at Oct 15, 2008 8:48:23 AM
Makes me yearn for the days of, "Moose, Rocco, help the Judge find his checkbook"!
Posted by: Dave Richardson at Oct 15, 2008 10:55:52 AM
re: the best behavioral response to telemarketers in general.
Several years ago a TV-guide here in the Netherlands published a counter-script for telemarketing. You'd answer their first question agreeing to all their demands if they can only first tell you .... and off you go into the script, with wonderfull loops build into it that could keep the offending marketeer trapped for hours. Only I could never keep my cool long enough, it was just too funny.
Posted by: Gerhard Kleinhans at Oct 15, 2008 12:05:14 PM
If you have the time and inclination to offend telemarketers, using the smug schemes described above, I'd suggest to either
( a ) use the time to answer the telemarketer honestly, who is after all providing a service to society by collecting debts or information about products people want
( b ) to hang up and use the time to call a shrink, because your elitism masks a disturbing need to inflict pain on others
I too get annoyed by telemarketers. But I follow a much more civil policy of not picking up and wasting their time.
Posted by: Intrigued at Oct 15, 2008 12:40:10 PM
Tyler writes: "If I owed money I would simply stop answering the phone."
Yep, caller-ID is great. But what I want (and maybe the service exists) is to be able to program in the numbers that ring through. Everything else goes to voice-mail. Except there's a blacklist of numbers that don't even get to voice mail.
Posted by: Slocum at Oct 15, 2008 1:03:09 PM
Tyler,
You wrote, "If I owed money I would simply stop answering the phone."
That's one of the most shocking statements I've ever seen you make. If I owed money, I'd pay it.
David
Posted by: David R. Henderson at Oct 15, 2008 1:04:01 PM
If you have the time and inclination to offend telemarketers, using the smug schemes described above, I'd suggest to either ( a ) use the time to answer the telemarketer honestly, who is after all providing a service to society by collecting debts or information about products people want ( b ) to hang up and use the time to call a shrink, because your elitism masks a disturbing need to inflict pain on othersI too get annoyed by telemarketers. But I follow a much more civil policy of not picking up and wasting their time.
You shouldn't be so smug! Leading the telemarketer on isn't an activity design to annoy or punish the telemarketers, it is a very effective method to get telemarketers to *STOP CALLING*. Time is money, so when you waste 20 minutes of a telemarketers time leaving them on hold after saying you are interested, they take that very seriously and they remove you from their list. You make it uneconomical for them to call you.
On the other hand, if you don't answer it is very economical for them (computers are automatically doing the dialing from an automated queue, and only connected to a live human being if you answer), and if you politely tell them you are not interested in a minimal amount of time, it is still economical (only 15 seconds wasted).
This technique really does work. Ask a telemarketer to stop calling you, and they will not stop. Do this, and they do stop. The fact that it annoys the telemarketers and possibly gets them in trouble/fired for not making their time/sales quota is just collateral damage (or icing on the cake, depending on your outlook).
Collections agencies are another issue altogether. If you really do owe money, I don't think that avoiding a phone call is going to help you, the real problem is the debt you can't pay. However, after getting a couple calls from collection agencies who had the wrong number, but who continued to call me after I explained to them they had the wrong number (assuming that it was the right number and telling them it was the wrong number was just a trick to get them to stop calling), I don't have much sympathy for collection agencies either.
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Oct 15, 2008 1:54:24 PM
That's one of the most shocking statements I've ever seen you make. If I owed money, I'd pay it.
I think the trouble is that people owe money that that can't pay.
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Oct 15, 2008 1:57:39 PM
There’s another response to telemarketers – when I moved to USA decade and a change ago I used them to buff up my rudimentary spoken English. Boy, oh boy, did I have fun for a good academic hour grilling them about each an every minute detail of the product or service offered. A great deal more fruitful than ESL-courses. I used to call 800-numbers as well…
Admittedly, it was before call centers shifted to the third world.
Posted by: Ozornik at Oct 15, 2008 2:16:11 PM
There’s another response to telemarketers – when I moved to USA decade and a change ago I used them to buff up my rudimentary spoken English.
If you do it today your English will deteriorate rather quickly.
Posted by: mik at Oct 15, 2008 2:25:37 PM
There’s another response to telemarketers – when I moved to USA decade and a change ago I used them to buff up my rudimentary spoken English.
If you do it today your English will deteriorate rather quickly.
Posted by: mik at Oct 15, 2008 2:25:49 PM
Caller-ID is great for avoiding telemarketers. Unless it's a name or number I know I don't answer. If what the person has to say is important enough they can leave a message. Also, I don't know about where you live, but the telemarketers in other countries speak better english than the people in my home town.
Posted by: kirby at Oct 15, 2008 3:40:01 PM
I agree with Kirby that Caller-ID is a great way to avoid telemarketers. I have an answering machine and telemarketers rarely leave a message so I can just avoid them all together. I do believe that picking up the phone just to say you are not interested, really doesn't stop them from calling you at a later time. However on the other hand I do believe that if you owe someone money you should pay them as quickly as possible and avoid nagging phone calls.
Posted by: David Morgan at Oct 15, 2008 4:01:12 PM
@Tyler. If you owed money, you should pick up the phone and tell them flat out you can't pay, then they wont have to waste their time calling you anymore and you wont have to waste your time answering their calls.
Posted by: Sune at Oct 15, 2008 6:02:34 PM
I use the direct approach on telemarketers that have called more than about twice. I keep them going to the point where a human has to get on to supposedly take my order, and I ask them for some contact information, and then I tell them "listen and listen well. California has a law that allows me to sue and win a $500 judgment against a telemarketer who has been told unambiguously that they are not to call me again. Please call me again; I could use the money."
It's worked the two times I've used it, the most recent time being that annoying company who used to call two or three times a week to try to sell me an extended warrantee for my car. They haven't called since August. They warned me that it might take thirty days to scrub me from their list and I said "OK, 30 days is four weeks, which is 12 calls, which is $6000, and I can take each individual case to court to maximize inconvenience to your company and more importantly to not have to worry about small claims court limits." They somehow managed to scrub me from the list immediately.
My record with collection agencies isn't quite as good. There's one agency that doesn't think I'm the debtor but that incorrectly thinks that I'm a friend of the debtor and that I know how to contact him. They keep telling me that the laws that allow the debtor to tell the collection agency to never call them again don't apply to me or to the person they think I am. I'm not happy. [However, I don't actually know whether they're correct.]
-dk
Posted by: Dick King at Oct 15, 2008 7:24:03 PM
"There’s another response to telemarketers – when I moved to USA decade and a change ago I used them to buff up my rudimentary spoken English."
"If you do it today your English will deteriorate rather quickly."
Except that many of the telemarketers from developing countries speak better English than most Americans.
Posted by: Annoyed at Oct 16, 2008 11:06:10 AM
"Except that many of the telemarketers from developing countries speak better English than most Americans."
Just because you have issues with your father and hate US, it is not a good reason to lie about thirld worlders with generally bad English.
Posted by: mik at Oct 16, 2008 5:40:09 PM
Some of these callers from India give obviously phony names, if you can understand what they are saying, and then babble on in some kind of language you can barely understand. These people are taking jobs away from Americans and that concerns me. At least I can spend less time asking them what they said and that I cannot understand them. I deal with illegals from Mexico all the time and I can understand them better that "Betty" from New Delhi.
Posted by: David Parsons at Oct 29, 2008 10:15:10 AM
