Call from ICICI

Some days ago I received a call from ICICI. It was about some Cash loans schemes. the usual telemarketing stuff… I really enjoy talking to these call center and Tele Marketing people and troubling them with a lot of questions.

The same thing I did here to :-) for about 20-25 minutes, I was asking questions about
Everything... from the amount... interest rate then.. The documents and all...
In short it was something which one of my colleagues termed as ragging on phone after it was over.

After this episode we went to canteen. After some time, to my surprise….the phone rang again... it was same number... same gal...

She had called me back to say thanks... apparently what all I did was a welcome change for her from the routine job wherein most of the people don't even listen to fully and just put the phone down. I took the opportunity to ask a few more questions to find out the nature of job and other info about the way these services operate.

Next day...she called again. This time it was for chatting only ;-) we talked for about 10-15 minutes. Again in the evening also she called. I managed to gather a good deal of info about her profession and it clearly gave the idea of the cut throat competition these companies face.

She was working in an environment where salary was highly dependent on the performance. A very small base salary and everything above the basic salary was dependent on how many customers they bring in for the bank through telemarketing. You bring in 10 customers and you get a salary of about 4000. Here too control and monitoring was very strict. I got the glimpse of it very next day.

On the third day I received a call from the same service. This time someone else was on phone. As usual they started telling the usual stuff about the scheme and all and the direct questions about my employment. It was clear that they were expecting a customer interested in loans. But in response I asked, "What is a flat interest rate?”. Then without a single word, phone was slammed down.

Then I suddenly realized, the four calls made to same number had brought the number under scanner and they were checking it out. This must have put the poor gal in trouble.

For me this entire episode highlights the fierce competition the Indian banks are facing as well as the new service industry that is thriving on of this competition because they provide cheap services like this one.

And most importantly a new Indian business culture where your progress is mainly dependent on your performance...a major shift from the concept of "sarkari noukari..."