Shahana Sayeed, 26, was on a night shift recently when a middle-aged man from Britain called her up after his wife had divorced him.

"He started crying," said Sayeed, who is working at ICICI Onsource, an outsourcing firm which has 20 global clients including customers from Britain and the United States.

"I didn't know what to say. I had to reassure him first.

"He said his wife had left him and he had nothing to do with her accounts. He did not want to go down as a bad customer in front of creditors ... and he started howling and crying and I did not know how to handle that.

"I finally managed to pacify him," she said.

Sayeed, who joined the firm after being laid off twice in the dotcom crash two years ago, earns 15,000 rupees (326 dollars) a month.

Graduates such as her are among the more than two million youngsters that pass out of India's universities every year and fuel the country's high outsourcing growth.

Last year the business process outsourcing sector accounted for about one-fourth of India's total software export revenues of 9.5 billion dollars.

Call centre employees like Sayeed are picked up by sports utility vehicles from their homes and dropped back after shifts.

The 45-minute break they get during their eight-10 hour shifts is either spent on coffee sessions or playing indoor games such as chess.

The call centres spread over Indian cities including Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi have "bunkers" for the employees to have a cat nap. They also have a "doctor-on-call" facility.

"Lots of things transform inside you when you listen to a customer. You sympathise and also get to be very helpful for that is what they called you for," Sayeed said.

"A day ago a lady called up from the UK. She said she suffered a major stroke and lost capacity to speak and she wanted help on her bank accounts.

"In your heart you feel like going out and helping the person and doing the best you can. She called up my boss who in turn gave me an appreciation," Sayeed said.

Others under assumed names manage to sell products through telemarketing.

Gautham Kalyan, 23, called up a pilot in the United States to sell a product and was surprised his client bought it merely because he liked his pseudonym, "Maverick."

"Abroad it is not about the product. It is all about how you establish a rapport with them. And this guy was a pilot who came home after 14 hours of flight. He repeatedly asked my name and said he was impressed with the name.

"Since he liked my name 'Maverick' he started talking about flying and after some time I sold the product to him," Kalyan said, adding however that some other customers had abused him for calling them up.

Roopa Murthy uses the pseudonym "Dana Sculley" from the popular television serial "X-Files" for her clients in the United States, and "Dana Ellingsworth" in Britain.

"When I joined a year ago I called up a customer in the US and introduced myself as Dana Sculley. She somehow thought I was the real Dana Sculley of the 'X-Files'.

"Then I told her I had a name similar to hers. I could not tell her that I was calling from India. She said her kids were big fans of mine and every Halloween they dress up like me," Murthy said.

The 26-year-old call centre professional managed to sell the product to her client.

"The best part was she did not believe I was a telemarketing agent. She thought I was calling from the FBI. She was ready to take the product but kept on saying we wanted to keep an eye on her.

"I felt strange I could not tell her it is my pseudonym."

SPACE.WIRE