Sudhindra Mokhasi chronicles tales elicited from youngsters who fight their circadian clocks and brave the outsourcing backlash to work nocturnal shifts in the BPO industry

From being described as fun places to sweat shops, call centers are stuck with many kinds of labels. Is your book an attempt to set the record straight?

What an idea, sirji! Mokhasi's book is an interesting read because it is a compilation of over 150 short stories covering calls, work, cab travel, home, parties, scams in the BPO world Pics/ Satish Badiger

I was struck by the difference in perception of IT companies and BPOs. IT companies had carefully built iconic images around their Indian founders like Narayana Murthy and Azim Premji. BPOs, on the other hand, were typically set up between 1998 and 2000 as cost centres not profit centres, and headed by middle-management people of Indian origin in the US, who had no mandate to build such images. They had to recruit large numbers of people to a new kind of organisation process driven, measured and monitored, and on the graveyard shift.

So, the easiest way to do that was to portray BPO jobs as "fun jobs". This became a huge problem because employees began acting out the perception and trivalising the job.u00a0

Then in 2001, after the dotcom bust and the downturn, IT companies began looking for new streams of revenue generation. They realised the potential of BPOs as outsourcing services and entered the business, bringing with them a great deal of professionalism.

How do you react to the 'sweatshop' tag and to the fact that a call centre job takes a toll on the psyche of executives handling calls?
Between 2001-2005 people perceived BPOs as sweatshops because never before had there been jobs that were so process-driven. Then, there was the emotional backlash from countries like the US because certain kinds of jobs were shifting to India. There was huge pressure on BPO employees. Customers wouldn't understand that being asked 7-8 routine questions by a call centre executive was part of a standard process. Most assumed that BPO employees were inefficient because they asked so many questions! It's hard to break such perceptions but we're trying.

Having worked in both IT and BPO streams, in senior management positions, I have come to understand that IT is highly over-rated and BPOs are under-rated. Not all BPOs are low-end work.