Having been a telemarketer for almost two years, I have heard of many a funny call, but this one beats everything. Tarun was a new hire who’d joined our team recently. Being a little slow, he was way off his target and was trying to make up by working very hard. He’d been trashed by our manager and sales coach to stop using his brains and just read the script out the minute he got someone on the phone. We were marketing the services of our call center division to small businesses. He was trying the numbers on his calling list and fi nally got through to someone on one of the phone numbers. I was sitting right beside him and was on break when he quickly looked at the name of the person who he was supposed to talk to.
‘May I speak to Mr. Svarowski, please?’ he asked. ‘Hold on, I’ll transfer you to him.’
Mr. Svarowski came on the line, ‘Mr. Svarowski here, what can I do for you?’
‘Good morning, Mr. Svarowski, my name is Tyler and I’m calling from MLK corp. How do you do?’ asked Tarun in his best American accent.
‘I’m fine thank you, what is this regarding?’ asked Mr. Svarowski.
‘I’d like to take a couple of minutes of your time to explain why I’m calling. Is this a good time to talk?’ asked Tarun. ‘Umm, yeah sure. Go ahead.’
‘Mr. Svarowski, we have studied your organisation and we believe there is a very good fi t in terms of our capabilities and your needs. An organisation quite similar to yours is saving more than thirty per cent of its expenditures by outsourcing work to us. Our services cover the range of your operations from back offi ce management to help desk, payroll and even manning the reception desk.’ Tarun paused to let it sink in.
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ began Mr. Svarowski but Tarun immediately started with the next part of his pitch. ‘I am offering an outsourced services solution where you will be free to take care of your core business without having to worry about all the backend processes. You can concentrate on your products and client acquisition while we manage all the background processes like payroll, query center, reception desk etc. We can look at your existing systems and customise our processes to match your specifi c needs. Like I mentioned earlier, we have proven expertise in this fi eld as proved by the testimonies of similar customers who are saving a signifi cant amount of money by outsourcing all the backend work to us. We will get all the backend work done here in India even while you are asleep and at a fraction of what the same it would cost you in the USA. How does this sound to you?’ he fi nished breathlessly.
There was a pause for a minute and Mr. Svarowski said, ‘I’m not sure you have the right number, son. This is the Bayview area police station and I’m Sgt. Svarowski on the line. We handle cases related to rape, murder, burglary, arson and vandalism among other things. It will be rather diffi cult to outsource the investigation of any of the above. Thank you for your time and have a safe day!’ We now call Tarun, Sgt. Outsourcer.