A call centre with a difference

By Monica Chadha
BBC News, Mumbai

Nikita Patil says she's enjoying her work

Nikita Patil, 23, works in a call centre, just like thousands of other Indian youngsters who have found jobs thanks to a booming outsourcing industry.

Everyday, she calls at least 100 people and tries to sell them various products and services offered by a domestic telephone company. She makes roughly $220 (£112) a month.

What customers will not guess while talking to her is that she is blind.

The call centre she works for is meant for "visually challenged only" and she is enjoying the experience.

"It gets a bit difficult because every time it is a different customer while we are the same. We have to handle different types of customers - some are rude and I often don't know how to talk to them, but some are friendly," she told the BBC news website.

"Sometimes we get bored but we are really enjoying it."

An experiment

The outsourcing industry has played a major role in boosting India's economy.

Many of the country's youth have more options in their hands and more money in their pockets than ever before.

The blind do not want to be left behind and have now opened a call centre just for themselves in India's financial capital, Mumbai (Bombay).

Ms Kadam says the visually-impaired have very good memories

The centre, Drishti (Hindi for Vision), is an initiative of the National Association for the Blind (NAB).

The association first tried out the experiment in the southern city of Bangalore. After a successful run there, it opened the small centre in Mumbai.

At present 10 blind people - six men and four women in their 20s - have been hired by the centre run by a telephone company.

They are paid three rupees (about seven US cents) per call, on a par with market rates, and each one makes at least 100 calls a day.

'Marketable'

The director of the employment department at the NAB, Pallavi Kadam, says the outsourcing boom has opened up numerous options for the blind.

"I would say visually impaired candidates have very good memory, they have good listening and speaking skills, so that is marketable. The blind are already doing jobs such as medical transcription, and legal and business transcription," she says.

Ms Kadam says the association trains the staff in communication skills to equip them for these jobs.

The call centre employs 10 people

"Normally when the candidates come to us we have volunteers who give them a lot of counselling and training.

"Most of these candidates have been educated in the vernacular medium so we have to help them with personality development and speaking good English that is required in the market."

The Drishti call centre is in a large room in the NAB offices. A normally-sighted person would communicate with the customer by reading out information about a service or facility from a computer screen.

However, the Drishti staff rely on software developed by a Bangalore-based company which converts text data into voice format.

Staff access information on customers from a common server that holds the data in voice.

Each person has two phones, one that is connected to the server and the other is used to contact customers.

'Right roles'

All information received during the conversation is updated by punching numeric codes on the phone connected to the server.

The software developers say the software could be used in a regular call centre.

Walavalkar says the visually challenged may be able to fit into other call centres

However, the big challenge for the blind would be to fit into the demanding atmosphere of a regular call centre where there is a lot more pressure on the staff to make as many calls as possible and they are monitored very closely - or for regular call centres to be prepared to adapt their working practices to accommodate blind staff.

Vrinda Walavalkar, a spokeswoman for First Source Solutions, a global business process outsourcing company, says it may be possible for the blind to make this transition.

"I think the answer would be to look at the disability they have and therefore fit them into the right roles. So maybe they would not do computer-based customer service or management or transformation.

"What they would do maybe is more of the things that go into say data verification or outbound calling or product selling. There's no reason why one cannot fit people to the capabilities that they have."

India's economy is growing fast, and many companies are facing a severe talent shortage.

This could be good news for the blind if it means that employers are prepared to be more imaginative in their recruitment policies.