BUSINESS COMMUNICATION CASE STUDY SOLUTION PROVIDED

 Caselet 1

Mr. and Mrs. Sharma went to Woodlands Apparel to buy a shirt. Mr. Sharma did not read the

price tag on the piece selected by him. At the counter, while making the payment he asked for

the price. Rs. 950 was the answer.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Sharma, who was still shopping came back and joined her husband. She was

glad that he had selected a nice black shirt for himself. She pointed out that there was a 25%

discount on that item. The counter person nodded in agreement.

Mr. Sharma was thrilled to hear that “It means the price of this shirt is just Rs. 712. That‟s

fantastic”, said Mr. Sharma.

He decided to buy one more shirt in blue color.

In no time, he returned with the second shirt and asked them to be packed. When he received the

cash memo for payment, he was astonished to find that he had to pay Rs. 1,900 and Rs. 1,424.

Mr. Sharma could hardly reconcile himself to the fact that the counter person had quoted the

discounted price which was Rs. 950. The original price printed on the price tag was Rs. 1,266.

Questions

1. What should Mr. Sharma have done to avoid the misunderstanding?

2. Discuss the main features involved in this case.

Caselet 2

I don‟t want to speak to you. Connect me to your boss in the US,” hissed the American on the

phone. The young girl at a Bangalore call centre tried to be as polite as she could. At another call

centre, another day, another young girl had a Londoner unleashing himself on her, “Young lady,

do you know that because of you Indians we are losing jobs?”

The outsourcing backlash is getting ugly. Handling irate callers is the new brief for the young

men and women taking calls at these outsourced job centres. Supervisors tell them to be „cool‟.

Avinash Vashistha, managing partner of NEOIT, a leading US-based consultancy firm says,

“Companies involved in outsourcing both in the US and India are already getting a lot of hate

mail against outsourcing and it is hardly surprising that some people should behave like this on

the telephone.” Vashistha says Indian call centre‟s should train their operators how to handle

such calls. Indeed, the furor raised by the Western media over job losses because of outsourcing

Examination Paper of Business Communication

4

IIBM Institute of Business Management

has made ordinary citizens there sensitive to the fact that their calls are being taken not from

their midst, but in countries such as India and the Philippines.

The angry outbursts the operators face border on the racist and sexist, says the manager of a call

centre in Hyderabad. But operators and senior executives of call centres refuse to go on record

for fear of kicking up a controversy that might result in their companies‟ losing clients overseas.

“It‟s happening often enough and so let‟s face it,” says a senior executive of a Gurgaon call

centre, adding, “This doesn‟t have any impact on business.”

Questions

1. Suppose you are working as an operator in a call centre in India and receiving calls

from Americans and Londoners. How would you handle such calls?

2. Do you agree with the view such abusive happenings on the telephone do not have any

impact on business?