Does your customer-service rep know who Barbie’s boyfriend is?

From an interesting Wall Street Journal story about locating “call centers” in other countries, but making sure the workers there are up on U.S. pop culture:

With more U.S. businesses opening call centers overseas, executives want reassurance that foreign employees will thrive under U.S. managers — and more importantly, get along with demanding U.S. customers. For these companies, cultural compatibility has become as important as labor availability and tax incentives….

A decade ago, big U.S. companies started hiring staff in low-wage countries like India to perform back-office work and clerical tasks. While India, with its highly educated, English-speaking work force, still attracts most of the call-center business, countries like the Philippines, Mexico, Canada and Ireland increasingly are destinations of choice for jobs that require customer contact, such as product support, hotel reservations and bill collection. For executives, matching a country with certain jobs has become a crucial task.

For some call-center companies, the perfect match means an in-depth knowledge of American popular culture. “I’m looking for people who already know that Barbie’s boyfriend is Ken,” [a call-center company exec] says….