A couple of months ago, I had a delicious lunch (at Manhattan’s Jaiya Thai, which seems to hold a monopoly on the Thai-food-for-desis market) with a friend who had just been to Pakistan on business. He told me about a company in D.C. which had outsourced its receptionist to Pakistan via videoconferencing. Today, our mutual friend Mitra Kalita published the story in the Washington Post:
In a chic downtown lobby across the street from the Old Executive Office Building, Saadia Musa answers phones, orders sandwiches and lets in the FedEx guy. And she does it all from Karachi, Pakistan.
As receptionist for the Resource Group, Musa greets employees and visitors via a flat screen hanging on the lobby’s wall. Although they are nine hours behind and nearly 7,500 miles away, her U.S.-based bosses rely on her to keep order during the traffic of calls and meetings…She turns the camera — which is usually focused on her face — to offer a view of her surroundings in Karachi: a lounge, a cafeteria, a pool table… Just then, a phone call interrupts her. It is 1:15 a.m. where Musa sits. “Good afternoon,” Musa says brightly. “Thank you for calling the Resource Group.”
Musa went through Stepford Wife-like call center training:
“A smile can be heard,” Musa recited in an interview via her flat screen. She worked as a call-center operator before being promoted to secretary. “Posture can make a difference. A dress code makes a difference.”
The company’s Pakistani-American founder, Zia Chishti (PDF), previously cofounded the company which does Invisalign braces. He was born in the U.S. but grew up in Pakistan:
… Chishti co-founded the Resource Group three years ago after selling his shares in a California dental-imaging company he had also founded. That company, Align Technology Inc., left its operations in Lahore, Pakistan, after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and Chishti took the abandoned office filled with laid-off workers and asked them to trust his vision for a call-center empire.
The security situation for Western clients in Karachi doesn’t sound great:
… having been escorted by armed guards, Beringer acknowledged he did not feel totally safe. Being a Westerner made him feel, at times, self-conscious. “There was a bomb threat while we were there,” he said.
And Pakistan remains far behind India in outsourcing:
Pakistan remains just a blip in the offshoring industry, generating an estimated $150 million in revenue from software and related services last year, according to the Pakistan Software Houses Association. India, meanwhile, generated $12.8 billion.
But Chishti himself reports $170M of revenue in three years. Even if he made ample seed capital from Invisalign, that’s an impressive figure.
Previous post here.
Completely out of topic, but the Wikipedia says today is the anniversary of the sepoy mutiny.
I can’t imagine what the turnover is. Asking young women to work all night? Even fairly liberal Karachi families would have concerns about safety in transit and at the facility. And I sincerely hope that the receptionist doesn’t have the same latency as transatlantic cell phones when it is stormy …
For Kingsley.
🙂
(i’m a massive wiki-fan.)
Welcome to the world of call centers.
Actually, Zia pays them so much better than anyone else would, that most family members don’t care. It also helps that it’s not just one or two women working in a room filled with men; the gender distribution is fairly equitable (according to the people I know who work there).
Of course, I have issues with TRG’s ad campaigns which boldly state: “British and North American accents preferred”, but in a warped sort of way, I can see why they’d do it.
If any desi from North America/UK wants to go back to India and work there for a little while, there is plenty of money to be made as an Accent trainer.
Wow…and to think I’ve been doing this for my family for free for all these years…time for some back billing.
Doesn’t anyone else find this whole thing incredibly disturbing?
A friend of mine, who works in a call center in India, told me the security in the buildings is pretty high. Also, it’s not just one or two people sitting around – there’s a whole office full of people. Her parents are okay with it because the company car picks her up or drops her home during late hours.
Jaiya Thai.. went there a few weeks ago while in NYC.. not that great… better places in Atlanta.. namely Top Spice… Jaiya Thai–OVERRATED!
Clearly you didn’t have the spicy lemongrass soup.
IMHO, the Jaiya in Manhattan is not nearly as gastronomically fantabulous as the Jaiya on Long Island, but both are far and away the best Thai around.
that’s hot. Is this guy married?
reportedly Zia Chisti hijacked Invisialign’s team and “trade secrets” (he co-founded it @#$&*) and stared orthoclear, a new comapny after being ousted from Invisalign and forced to close his company after 9/11…
Chishti is foremostly the inventor of invisalign and founder of align. Bearing that in mind one can hardly say he ‘hijacked’ the trade secrets of the company. Moreover, i’m sure the team at align has left to join him because they saw a promising beginning in orthoclear (chishti was ousted as the ceo of align after 9/11 by the BOD..they raised concern over continued business in pakistan). Interestingly enough, when his call center company TRG (the resource group) started out in pakistan, the employees were not paid anything for the first year of operations. To me it sounds like he is an excellent team leader who can motivate his team enough for them to stick around even in hard times…