Cultural Intelligence
a) Compare and contrast the critical factors in doing business in India, Thailand, and Vietnam. Considering issues such as conflict resolved in these countries and culture.
India has not invested almost as much in its domestic transportation as China has.
As a result, it is much harder transporting goods around the country. In addition, Power blackouts are a major problem (Tuzuner, 2010). There is a water shortage in most areas. The poor class of India’s physical transportation is one of the country’s main problems Thailand, until the current political turmoil, Thailand had been doing a fine job of developing its physical transportation (Dalal, 2010).
The political turmoil has dragged new transportation investment as well as diverting resources away from what ought to be a priority. However, areas for political controlling areas like the military, which might mean bigger troubles further down. Although the quality of the country’s recent domestic transportation is still good compared to most of the other rising countries covered here.
Vietnam has not invested almost enough in physical transportation. There are deficiencies plus delays in the development of interprovincial bridges, roads, intra-city public transportation as well as power projects (United States, 2014). The transport communications system in Vietnam had come down far behind trade and industry growth and was a barrier to those who desire to expand their businesses in the country (Earley, & Ang, 2003). Rail service is poor, four-lane highways are an exemption rather than a rule, plus airports are simply just starting to modernize.
The main difference with the World Bank with respect to India is that as high as the World Bank’s achievement was for dealing with labor matters, the situation is, in fact, more difficult. It is mostly difficult firing employees, and labor militancy is another trouble (Bidgoli, 2010). Moreover, foreign investors do not have the degree of security that the World Bank survey in directed. The local court system is slow plus can be hard to work with, even though, the essential laws are on the books. State and city authorities might cause problems for investors besides which national level authorities might offer little protection.
However, the taxing state in India is not quite as terrible as the World Bank’s survey pointed out. The majority investors know where they locate tax-wise (Earley, & Ang, 2003). Lastly, trading across borders ought to be graded more importantly. India is excellent when it comes to international flows of data, although there are a lot of obstacles to merchandise exports as well as imports (Tuzuner, 2010). That is why the nation has not engrossed more export-oriented foreign investment as it has and why the majority foreign corporations are looking at domestic market openings, not using India as an export base.
Conditions in Thailand are alike to those in Malaysia only that Thailand is more open to a wider range of foreign investment. In addition, the most remarkable case is automotive manufacturing that Malaysia has attempted to shelter from foreign rivalry in order to groom local champion businesses (Earley, & Ang, 2003). While Thailand has pursued just the opposite approach and has opened the door to overseas investment –with massive success.
The World Bank position does not sufficiently reflect the level of bureaucracy that is in Thailand, especially when it comes to companies that equally sell to the local market as well as export goods that they produce. Foreign investors like a fairly high level of security, although the situation varies from industry to industry (Bidgoli, 2010). Investors in transportation and other projects in which the nation sector figures highly are much more helpless than investors in fields like export-oriented manufacturing that are the safeguard of the private sector (Earley, & Ang, 2003). Since one of Asia’s latest markets plus production sites, Vietnam like the level of investor enthusiasm that is somewhat inflated.
Those foreign companies that have made the plunge are pioneers and tend to agree to the difficulties of lately emerging markets as a given (Earley, & Ang, 2003). For instance, Vietnam’s judicial system is weak, and the nation does not tender the level of contract enforcement that the Doing Business survey pointed.It is also harder dealing with the bureaucracy than is indicated by such scores as registering possessions.Plus the financial system is still quite underdeveloped, that means getting credit is a lot difficult than the World Bank indicated.
b) Identify differences in India, Thailand and Vietnam countries concerning the use of time, gift giving, touching, space, and nonverbal gestures. How different are these to normal expectations in North America or the European Union?
Personal space plus distance when speaking to somebody are a lot smaller in India as compared to Canada. Indians normally stand closer with those they already recognize, or they have built a relationship (Dalal, 2010). About one and a half to two meters is the standard. Eye contact applies as a means of states respect for those who are in a place of higher authority (United States, 2014). For instance, it is common for workers not to look straight at their manager’s eyes nevertheless to look at the ground or straight ahead once having conversations with them.
It is usual to touch someone’s arm or hand while speaking to them as long as they are from the similar sex (Bidgoli, 2010). Verbal as well as nonverbal communication with the opposite sex leads to be more conservative than it is in Canada. Nevertheless, varies greatly, depending on the level of culture and occupation of those concerned. Conversations with friends plus professional associates direct to be alike to those in Canada (Tuzuner, 2010). There tend to be better levels of self-disclosure with discussions on personal matters the closer the relationship or, the longer somebody known and trusted.
With the very dense population of India, it is regular to see domestic conflicts being verbalized outside of the home. Indians are extremely expressive with family members plus those they recognize well and so it is common to see arguments take place in communal places (United States, 2014). Women tend not to be as expressive in circumstances of the conflict in public as men are.
Monetary reward and recognition predominately would encourage local colleagues to do well on the job. Families in India are big as extended members of a family live together (Bidgoli, 2010). As such, those laboring face tremendous pressure to offer for their family. Monetary reward is an immense incentive to toil well on the job.
Status and recognition are vital cultural factors in India. In addition, recognition for good work and the promotion to a higher level seen as great motivators for workers to perform well on the job. Special detection would be viewed upon favorably by the workers as a means of recognition among peers in the workplace and as well outside of the workplace among family members plus the community at large.
c) If you were responsible for training a person to work in a call center in India that provided service to North America (help lines for computers or lost baggage services for airlines), what would be some of the components of the training?
A call center is a federal office used for receiving or transmitting a big volume of requests by telephone. An inbound call center is managed by a company to run incoming product support or information inquiries from clients (Bidgoli, 2010). Outbound call centers runs by debt collection, telemarketing, solicitation of charitable or political donations and market research.
A call center has an open workstation for, call centers agents and call.Moreover, workstations that comprise a computer for every agent, a telephone set/headset linked to, switch, a telecom and one or more controller stations (Dalal, 2010). It might be separately operated or networked with additional centers, regularly linked to a company computer network counting microcomputers, mainframes, and LANs.
Increasingly, the voice and data way into the center are connected through a set of new technologies called computer telephony amalgamation (United States, 2014). The contact center is a vital point from which all customer contacts administered. Through contact centers, important information regarding company are routed to right people, contacts to follow and data collected. It is usually a part of company’s customer’s rapport management.
Technology-Call center technologies comprise speech recognition software to let computers handle first level of text mining, customer support, as well as natural language processing to let better customer treatment (Tuzuner, 2010). Agent training by automatic mining of top practices from past interactions, support automation plus many other technologies to improve agent efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Automatic lead selection or lead steering is too intended to advance efficiencies, both for inbound, as well as outbound campaigns (Bidgoli, 2010). That permits inbound calls to route directly to the suitable agent for the job while minimizing wait times plus long lists of irrelevant choices for people calling in. For outbound calls, direct selection permits management to assign what kind of leads go to which agent (Dalal, 2010). Found on factors counting skill, socioeconomic factors as well as past performance and percentage probability of closing a sale per lead.
The universal queue regulates the processing of communications across numerous technologies like phone, fax, and email (Earley, & Ang, 2003). The virtual queue offers callers with an option to waiting on hold once there are no agents accessible to handle inbound call demand.
References
Bidgoli, H. (2010). The handbook of technology management. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons.
Dalal, R. (2010). The religions of India: A concise guide to nine major faiths. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Earley, P. C., & Ang, S. (2003). Cultural intelligence: Individual interactions across cultures. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Business Books.
Tuzuner, M. (2010). Intelligence cooperation practices in the 21st century: Towards a culture of sharing. Washington, D.C: IOS Press.
United States. (2014). The CIA World Factbook 2015. New York: Skyhorse Publishing.