Jamshedpur, Jan. 14: ?Namaskar Jusco Sahyog,? greeted a soft feminine voice with the first ring of the phone. At the other end, the caller replied: ?Aag lagi, aag lagi (fire has broken out).? The call centre agent at the help centre politely asked, ?Kahan? (Where)? and pat came the reply ?Dil mein. Aake bujhaiye na (In my heart. Come and put it off).? The agent, without giving away anything, replied: ?Kripya fire brigade mein 101 par dial karen (Please ring up at the fire brigade at 101).?

A month ago perhaps, the agent would have been searching for words, nervous and angry. But with crank calls becoming a regular feature at the two-month-old Jusco Sahyog Kendra, a helpline dealing with civic amenities, the staff have devised their own little methods to tackle such callers.

?In the initial stages, these crank calls used to pour in but now things are under control. Earlier the agents did get a bit nervous, but now they know exactly how to handle such callers,? said Shipra Jha, manager, billing and customer relations, Jusco Sahyog Kendra.

From attending to crank callers to handling annoyed clients, the agents have learnt it all. ?There are times when the caller is really annoyed. Some are angry because their complaints haven?t been dealt with while some parents accuse the agents of taking away the jobs of their wards. But the agents have their own ways of handling them,? said Jha.

Technology too comes in handy. ?Whenever the client starts using abusive language and our agents feel like releasing their anger, they usually press the mute button and switch it on only when they are through with their ?de-stressing? situation.?

?The concept of call centres is fairly new to the city and the fact that most of the agents here were girls did trigger off a series of crank calls. The agents even received queries regarding job opportunities in Jusco. But when suitable answers for such crank calls were devised, they came down drastically,? said A.P. Singh, chief, billing and customer relations, Jusco.

Apart from the crank calls, the agents had to tackle with the language problem also. ?We realised we had to train the agents with not just good English and Hindi, but they needed to have some idea of Bhojpuri and Bengali as well,? said Jha, giving the example of a client who almost left the agent bewildered when he said ?Mera aera ghera mein kachra pada hai (A cordoned area near my house has become a garbage dump)?.

Jha said though use of expletives by the callers is rare, there are cases in which the callers threatened that they would sack them. ?They don?t hesitate in dropping names of corporate bigwigs.?