Representative image showing American flags.
Credit: iStock Photo
We were a team of 12 working in the customer care centre of America Online, an Internet service provider in America. My team belonged to that era when a lot of jobs from other countries were ‘Bangalored.’ We put in our best work to keep our US management happy.
We were fortunate to have a team of highly dedicated trainers who guided us with patience, ensuring that each of us could communicate effortlessly with the American clients in a neutralised accent. In the initial days of our training, we focused on mastering the technique of rolling R sounds. We discovered an easy and practical method to refine our pronunciation: “biting” the V sounds by gently pressing the bottom lip against the top teeth and “kissing” the W sounds by rounding and pushing the lips forward. The “tt” sounds were softened to “D,” turning “better” into “bederrr.” These Americanisms gradually became part of our speech. To refine our skills further, we watched countless American movies, making our training sessions seem like movies and fun times with friends in air-conditioned rooms and shared laughter. I now wonder if we focused on mastering the accent or simply enjoyed the movies.
After three months of training, we graduated and stepped onto the work floor, ready to apply our newly acquired skills. Some of us changed our names while on call with the American clients. This made it easier for clients to converse without struggling with pronouncing unfamiliar names. I vividly remember how I began the conversation: “This is Jane at America Online...” Now, my colleague Vinu, who didn’t want to change his name, went through an ordeal with every new call: ‘I am Vinu. V as in Victor, I as in India, N as in November, U as in Uniform’. This affected his call handling time—a key performance indicator (KPI) metric. We didn’t want to lose our otherwise capable teammate, so a debriefing session was planned to help Vinu up his KPIs.
Vinu eventually gave in to the idea of using a pseudonym. This was followed by another team huddle to suggest the name, with each of us eagerly suggesting names, as if we were asked to name a newborn. Tom, Tim, John, Jack… The list went on, but none won Vinu’s approval. Finally, he proposed ‘Mac’ and argued that it suited him the best.
Soon, he opened the call with, ‘This is Mac at America Online,’ and
the customer on the other end queried, ‘Wha…at? Did I reach Bank of America? I thought this number belonged to America Online’. It was déjà vu as we heard Vinu engaged in his usual battle of pronunciation: ‘I am Mac—M as in Michael, A as in Alfa, C as in Charlie. You have reached America Online...’ Some clients even hung up thinking they had reached the wrong company. It now took longer for Vinu to convince customers that they dialled the right place.