Texas Emergency Hurricane Hotline Outsourced to India

Sept. 28, 2005 — -- As Hurricane Rita roared toward them, more than 300 people called the local emergency number broadcast all around Nacogdoches County in east Texas. What they didn't know was that the operators on the other end of the phone were 7,000 miles away in India.

With power down and limited means of communication, Nacogdoches County Judge Sue Kennedy, who acts as the emergency coordinator, decided to set up a phone bank to help people out. She called a local firm that runs call centers and asked if they could help the community. Effective Teleservices, based in Nacogdoches, had a power generator big enough to keep a phone bank running but management didn't want to put employees in harm's way by making them come to work.

So the operating officer, Matthew Rocco, offered what he had proposed to his other clients: He could redirect calls to the company's offshore site in India, in a city north of Mumbai.

Kennedy didn't hesitate.

"In disasters we respond more quickly with the help of our local businesses and move much faster than by waiting for federal or state aid," she said.

She and her staff polished off a script with vital information regarding the location of ad-hoc shelters and what people needed when they left home.

"We wanted to make sure they [the operators] kind of understood and could give specific answers to questions," Kennedy said.

Across the globe, Jim Iyoob, the director of operations at the Indian call center site, gathered 15 of his customer representatives and trained them to work the emergency hotline. Iyoob had lived and worked three years in the Nacogdoches area so he was able to give additional information to his staff before Kennedy's people called to see if the "local" hotline worked.

The operators passed the test and within hours the switchboard was lighting up in sun-drenched Gandhinagar – a world away from hurricane-battered East Texas. The Indian operators offered words of encouragement to concerned Nacogdoches callers, and there were no reports of problems during the operation, Kennedy said.