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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. And as we heard just before the break, people in India are worried that President Obama's policies may put a dent in India's vibrant outsourcing industry. And when people here in the US think of outsourcing, they thend to think of call centers. You know, when you call an 800 number and you get a person someplace in Bangalore or Mumbai. Perhaps somebody like Harshit Jhaveri. He's based in Mumbai, and for five years, he handled customer calls for companies like JP Morgan Chase and America Online.

HARSHIT JHAVERI: I was doing the inbound technical support for the dial-up customers of AOL, you know, for issues such as they are not able to connect to the internet, or if their internet is too slow. So we would go step-by-step and help them troubleshoot and resolve their issue. And when I was with JP Morgan Chase, I was answering calls for the credit card department and, you know, listening to the customer complaints and trying to resolve them, if possible.

MULLINS: Harshit, I'm feeling kind of bad for you already, because there you are, trying to deal with people who, for instance, trying to get their fee waived on their credit card or who can't get online for one reason or another. I mean, you're kind of on the pointy end. Give us some of the experiences that you had.

JHAVERI: I would like to share one experience, you know, which was a bit hostile for me. I got a call from a customer while I was working for the credit card company and she asked me if I could waive the late fee for her. She was very polite, but after doing the research and I determined that I'm not able to waive the late fee for her, she was very rude to me and said I'm a terrorist and I should go back to my own country. So that was an experience that I still recall without a lot of happiness, but it was okay because I expected something curt from her, because she was going through a hard time herself. So I was empathetic to her situation.

MULLINS: It's interesting that you mention that one particular phone call, because my guess is that you have had to field thousands of phone calls from thousands of Americans. Were a lot of the calls that you got hostile?

JHAVERI: No, no, no. Very few of them. It's just that they happen – when they are hostile, they are not only a little hostile. You know, people are not very subtle when they want to be hostile. So it comes out very obviously. I'd say 5 percent of them are very hostile. To be honest with you, and I'm not sure if you want to use this for your show, but the customers in India, when they call an Indian operator on the telephone are a lot more rude compared to the customers from America. A lot of them start out being mutual on the phone, but get frustrated as they are not able to understand the accent of the person who is trying to help them.

MULLINS: Oh, that's a problem that Americans have, but you're saying that because India has so many different dialects and languages that even Indians get perturbed if they can't understand something?

JHAVERI: You're right about that. Because of which a lot of businesses outsourcing companies, most of them invest very heavily on cultural sensitization and voice and accent training that is provided to its agents so that the experience for the customer from America could be as pleasant as possible. The way an Indian speaks a word is very different the way an American speaks, especially the word which have – a very famous saying in call centers in India training or voice and accent training, is “roll your r's and pop your p's.” Because if an Indian has to say “car” he would say “cah”. And an American would say “car”. So –

MULLINS: Okay. So let's say this is the end of our call, and let's say that my computer problem was resolved very happily and very quickly. How would you end this if you were on a call right now? How would you end it?

JHAVERI: Well, thank you for calling Harshit Jhaveri. You have a beautiful day ahead.

MULLINS: I hope you do the same. Thank you very much, Harshit.

JHAVERI: Thank you so much, Lisa. Take care.

MULLINS: That was 23-year-old Harshit Jhaveri at the call center Team Leader in Mumbai, India.

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