70% want to talk to BPO agents of opposite sex: Study

If you dial a call centre, whose voice do you want to hear at the other end? Amitabh Bachchan’s baritone was the overwhelming answer in a recent survey on call centres.

While Bachchan was voted favourite-celebrity-to-answer-a-call by both men and women, there were gender differences when it came to the other questions. To start with, the men said they preferred talking to women and the women customers said they preferred talking to men. The survey thus confirmed what has long been an open secret.

The study was conducted by Avaya GlobalConnect and the Sydney-based research firm callcentres.net. Questionnaires were emailed to 300 respondents in India who had recently used the services of a call centre. They were from various income groups.

Exactly 70% said that they preferred talking to an agent of the opposite sex. And almost one-third were more demanding—they wanted the agents to be both of the opposite sex and younger than them.

The study comes at a time when a number of banks and telecom companies have begun diverting their customer-query traffic to their call centres rather than have people visiting their outlets.

Even government monoliths like the Indian Railways and state-owned telecom companies, which have a less-than-shining record of customer service, are setting up call centres to address queries. The customers don’t seem to mind with 58% saying that interacting with call centres made life easy.

More than gender, it was the age groups that responded in different ways. The youngsters or Generation Y (16 to 30 years) had the most complaints and said it was usually a problematic process.

They also had the lowest service expectations from the men and women at the other end of the phone. Middle-aged customers or the Baby Boomers (46 to 61 years) had the highest expectations about service quality.

The Silent Generation (62 to 82 years), surprisingly, found the least problems with call centres. They were more than happy to speak to a number of different people on the same call, as long as it helped resolve their problem.

What did customers look for in an agent? Once again there was a gender difference: for males it was being helpful, while for females, intelligence was most sought after.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/70_want_to_talk_to_BPO_agents_of_opposite_sex_Study/rssarticleshow/2850429.cms

Oral sex related cancer becoming more common: Study

The cases of oral cancer caused by a virus transmitted during oral sex appear to have increased drastically over the last 30 years, according to a study by US researchers.

The team led by Maura Gillison at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, US, studied trends in oral cancers recorded by US National Cancer Institute registries, and suggested that this increasing trend can be related to changes in people's sexual behaviour.

The team said that the incidence of tongue, mouth and throat cancers due to the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV), which can also cause cervical cancer in women, increased by about a third from 1973 to 2004.

After looking at nearly 46,000 cases, the team identified 17,625 cancer that were potentially related to HPV and 28,144 that were potentially unrelated, based on factors such as anatomical sites strongly associated with HPV, including the tonsils and base of the tongue.

"What we do know is that the prevalence of HPV is high, particularly among young people and this shouldn't be a surprise given that, since the sexual revolution, people have been having more sexual partners," New Scientist magazine quoted Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, as saying.

The increase was largest among young white males, signifying that this group is more likely to have oral sex at a younger age now than it was 20 years ago, explained Gillison's team.

Gillison called for a need to consider giving boys the HPV vaccine, to protect them from the disease.

A Merck vaccine is presently licensed for use in young women and girls to protect them against the most common cervical cancer-causing strains of HPV.

"We need to start having a discussion about those cancers other than cervical cancer that may be affected in a positive way by the vaccine," Gillison said.

The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/ani/20080229/r_t_ani_hl/thl-oral-sex-related-cancer-becoming-mor-3b18f0d.html

Men remember their first car better than their first kiss

Majority of men remember their first car more than their first kiss, a survey revealed. According to the study, 60 per cent of respondents regarded their first car as being female and a quarter gave it a name. Owning their first car ranked higher than their initial embrace, their first boyfriend or girlfriend and their 18th birthday, the survey carried out by the organisers of the British International Motor Show found. About 40 per cent of respondents even remembered their first registration plate in full. More than a third said they had sex in their first vehicle. Show organiser Kirsty Perkinson said people develop strong bonds with their first car. "First cars represent an explosion of independence and a gateway to untold adventures, which is why they are so special," the Daily Mail quoted Ms Perkinson as saying.

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1153207

16% of Indians suffer from sexual dysfunction: Study

Roughly 16 per cent of the Indian population suffers from various forms of sexual dysfunctions, according to a recent survey.

The survey, conducted by the Indian Institute of Sexual Medicine (IISM), Chennai states that men suffer from dysfunctions like premature ejaculation, ejaculatory dysfunction and impotence.

Change in life style is the main reason for this, IISM Director Dr T Kamaraj said. Working on computers and business outsourcing firms had changed the life style, which affected the daily activities of the people, he said adding that this had led to more stress, affecting sexual life.

"The attitude towards sex has undergone a change, which has resulted in value degradation and even sexual frustration," he said.

Spreading fast food culture had led to obesity, which in turn affects sexual life of a person, he said, adding blood pressure, diabetes and obesity had also affected the youth.

Youth had a lot of myth and misconceptions on sex compounded with age old superstitions, which also played a major role on the sexual life of individuals, Kamaraj said.

The two day third international conference on sexology, which begins here on Saturday would address these issues at length, he added.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/16_of_Indians_suffer_from_sexual_dysfunction_Study/rssarticleshow/2779283.cms

Wanna sell? Use sex!

A recent study conducted gives advertisers a better understanding of using sex to sell their products

People are less able to recall the brand of products advertised during programmes with a lot of sexual content, than if the advert is placed in similar programme that has no sexual content.

This was the key message that came from research carried out at the Department of Psychology at University College London by Ellie Parker and Adrian Furnham.

The implication is that advertisers do not spend their money well if they buy space during programmes with high sexual content.

A second, less surprising, finding was that men recalled the brand of products whose adverts contained sexual images, than they did if the adverts were sex-free. Women on the other hand were actively put off by sexual content in adverts.

The studies involved 60 university students (30 men and 30 women) aged 18 to 31, mean age 21, who were divided into four groups. One group saw an overtly sexual episode of “Sex and The City”, which had sexy adverts running during the programme breaks. Another saw the same episode with non-sexual adverts.

The other two groups saw an episode of “Malcolm in the Middle” which contained no sexual references, with either sexual or non-sexual adverts. “The fact that recall of adverts was hindered by sexual content in the programmes suggests that there is something particularly involving or disturbing about sexual programmes. Interestingly this is something that is also found in programmes with aggressive content,” says Furnham.

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1133034

Sexy walk could be misleading: scientists

A woman who walks with a seductive sway of her hips is unlikely to be ovulating, a finding that sheds light on the complex sexual signals that women give to men, New Scientist reports.

A team at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, dressed female volunteers in suits which had light reflectors placed on the joints and limbs and filmed them walking in order to analyse their gait, the British weekly says.

The women also gave a saliva sample to assess their hormone levels.

Women who were in the fertile period of their menstrual cycle walked with smaller hip movements and with their knees closer together, the scientists found.

Forty male volunteers were shown the footage of the women and were asked to rate those with the sexiest walk. The winners were those who turned out to be in the least fertile part of their cycle.

The study appears to run counter to recent research that found men respond more readily towards women at ovulation. A US paper published last month found that lap dancers earn more tips during their fertile period than during the non-fertile part of their cycle.

But, the Canadian researchers believe, there is no contradiction, because a fertile woman gives out "come-hither" signals at close range rather than at a distance.

These signals come through scent molecules called pheromones and facial expressions. The proximity means a woman can vet a potential mate for fitness before allowing him to come close to her.

In contrast, men can pick up the attractiveness of a woman's walk from a long distance -- and a "sexy" walk, visible from afar, could therefore act as an unwitting signal to less appealing males.

So, having a less sexy walk at the time of ovulation gives a woman an evolutionary advantage: she can hide her fertile period from an undesirable man who might want to take advantage of her at the time.

The research, by Meghan Provost, is to be published in the US journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, says the report. It appears in this Saturday's issue of New Scientist.

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1132176

38% global firms asked to pay bribes in India: Study

Despite India becoming a new destination for global investors, 38 per cent of over 5,400 companies' representatives surveyed by the global consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said they were asked to pay bribes to get licences, orders over the past two years.

Among the seven major emerging economies of the world, India is ahead of Turkey, Mexico and China, where 28, 28 and 21 per cent of firms in that order reported experience with bribery, according to the PwC 2007 Global Economic Crime Survey released here on Tuesday.

"The Indian companies and government should be concerned about the perception of global firms regarding corrupt environment in India as it would affect the flow of foreign investment and cost of raising funds by India Inc," the firm's Advisory Leader Ashwani Puri said while releasing the survey.

Russia, Indonesia and Brazil were, however, ahead of India in terms of corporate corruption, where about half of the surveyed firms reported they had been asked to pay bribes.

Of those firms which had to contend with bribery in India, 66 per cent said they lost the opportunity to their competitors because of this factor.

The survey also noted that one-third of the Indian companies surveyed have been victims of economic frauds like asset misappropriation, bribery, accounting frauds and infringement of intellectual property rights in the past two years.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/38_global_firms_asked_to_pay_bribes_in_India_Study/articleshow/2463919.cms