Call Center In India - Call Center Industry in India
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Call Centers In India: A common phenomenon.
Having a Call Center in India has become a common thing for companies today. This boom has been given a helping hand by the increasing need of companies to cut costs. Many organizations worldwide are servicing their clients by setting up Call Centers In India. But the question that arises is that, what makes the Call Centers in India attractive? Some of the reasons for the popularity of the Call Centers In India are:
@ Largest English speaking Call Center executives.
@ The booming IT industry, with IT strengths acclaimed world over.
@ In a call center operation, manpower typically accounts for 55 to 60 percent of the total cost. In India, manpower is available at a fraction of the cost overseas.
@ Positive steps have been taken by the government to promote the IT enabled services industry.
One Call Center in India proposes to harness the high-quality technical support available here by hiring 300 Ph.D.'s to provide very high-end consulting through videoconferencing/telephone. Given these advantages, India could build a $17 billion industry by 2008 according to the NASSCOM, McKinsey Report.
Call Centers In India: A common phenomenon
Having a Call Center in India has become a common thing for companies today. This boom has been given a helping hand by the increasing need of companies to cut costs. Many organizations worldwide are servicing their clients by setting up Call Centers In India. But the question that arises is that, what makes the Call Centers in India attractive? Some of the reasons for the popularity of the Call Centers In India are:
@ Largest English speaking Call Center executives.
@ The booming IT industry, with IT strengths acclaimed world over.
@ In a call center operation, manpower typically accounts for 55 to 60 percent of the total cost. In India, manpower is available at a fraction of the cost overseas.
@ Positive steps have been taken by the government to promote the IT enabled services industry.
One Call Center in India proposes to harness the high-quality technical support available here by hiring 300 Ph.D.'s to provide very high-end consulting through videoconferencing/telephone. Given these advantages, India could build a $17 billion industry by 2008 according to the NASSCOM, McKinsey Report.
Sunday, January 18, 2004
Call Centers for farmers in India ready to roll
The union cabinet is now formally approved the floated plan for the Call Center meant for the farmers. This is one of its kind in India for the farmers. The Call Center will be known by the name ‘kisan’ Call Center, and will answer queries in local languages. It should be said that it’s an appreciative effort by the government.
The Call Centers will be operational by 21st of January this year. It will initially operate through toll-free telephones bearing the number 1551 from eight selected locations covering all states and regional languages. Another first time is the deployment of agricultural graduates, who will be manning the Call Center.
These Call Centers will operate at three levels; namely, the first tier would provide immediate replies to farmers' queries. Unanswered questions would be transferred to specialists at the second tier. The extension functionary would refer questions that still remained unanswered to experts at the third tier for reply through phone, post or personal visit.
Mumbai, Kanpur, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Delhi and Kolkata will be the locations in India, where these Call Centers will be situated. Moreover each Call Center will cover more than a state in India.
Friday, January 16, 2004
Call Center In India expected to blossom further
A year ago Daksh had 3,500 people on its rolls and a target of touching 5,000 by 2005, Wipro Spectramind, the country's largest independent BPO company, has hired over 3,500 people in the last eight months and it now has around 8,500 people on its rolls. These are just a few examples of a dizzy increase in the Call Centers in India.
Call Centers in India are high quality, who deal with sophisticated technology work on behalf of well-known multinationals are market leaders in their field and are expected to remain so for the foreseeable future. And that’s the reason why multinationals are queuing up to open up their Call Centers In India. After all they save a ton of money by opening their center in India.
Call Centers in India are expected to grow in huge numbers in the future, employing close to millions in different capacities. All this is good news for the Call Center industry in India.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Call Centers in India high on quality
Call Centers in India have always delivered quality and 100% customer satisfaction. Many multinational clients have given their testimonials on the quality of service delivered in the Call Centers in India.
The Reports published in UK by some cheap sources about the lack of quality in the Call Centers In India are totally rubbish. Because the politicians and union workers only make all the hoopla, but there are no clients to be seen who are complaining about the kind of work they are getting done through the Call Centers In India.
Because a fact that everyone knows is, any client would continue his association with a Call Center in India or with any Call Center for that matter, only when he is getting quality work done, because nobody is doing any charity. The following examples will emphasize India’s superior position. GE reported greater satisfaction ratings from its Call Center in India (92%) as opposed to what it got from its onshore centers in the US (85%). HSBC's facilities in India handle 20% more interactions in an hour than the ones in the UK.
We offer world-class quality, and this is thanks to the kind of employees the Call Centers In India attract. The employee profile here is quite different from those that staff Call Centers in the West. In India the employees are far younger, better educated (most are college graduates) and Call Center jobs in India are looked at as a career of choice as opposed to the west where jobs at Call Centers are something that people in large part drift into. The cost advantage has always been there, coupled with that, staff here is English speaking and computer literate, and work on a fraction of the salary then what their American counterparts work on.
In the west Call Center employees are much older, many of them are part-timers and do not receive much education. And these are the reasons why clients still come flocking to India, because of quality, because of on-time delivery, and of course cheap rates.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Brits are loosing their nerves over the jobs going to Call Centers in India
The Brits are starting to lose it, both their minds and their jobs as well. When all their other attempts failed they have now resorted to trash talking. Out of nowhere they have published the findings from a survey, which says that Call Centers in India provide below par customer service. And it is not surprising that a Call Centre consulting outfit called ContactBabel that survives by offering its services to the British Call Centre industry has conducted the survey. Obviously the survey is ought to biased, and is totally uncalled for. It can be said it is a cheap shot by the Brits to save their own Call Centre industry.
Some of the key findings of the survey are mentioned below:
·More than a third of UK customers calling Call Centres in India do not get their problems resolved in the first attempt. In contrast, UK Call Centres notch up a first-time resolution rate of over 90 per cent.
·Call Centers in India tend to spend a higher portion of their time on the phone than UK agents.
·Inbound call lengths are very high in the Call Centers in India.
·Indians don't measure customer satisfaction.
·Indian operations are just 'Call' Centres. There are very few non-telephony operations managed by the Indians and certain other complaints.
But the most surprising part of the survey is, the client is not complaining. Strange, everyone else – from trade unions to politicians – are out on the street against the BPO wave, claiming to speak for the customer. But the customer is nowhere to be heard, or seen! There is in fact no truth in the findings and the Call Centres in India are excellent and in no way less if not more competent than their UK counterparts.
Monday, January 12, 2004
Call Center India workers could have a salary hike soon
This piece of news is going to have the Call Center India workers going head over heels. Thanks to the initiative by the British Trade Union, workers at Call Center India could have an increase in their salaries. Not only that, this initiative will also try and improve the Call Center workers’ health and safety conditions. It will make sure that there is no exploitation of the Call Center India workers.
Banking union Unifi, which represents 158,000 workers in the United Kingdom, is now planning a membership drive amongst Call Center India staff employed by Britain's High Street banks in Call Centers and data-processing operations. The Indian unions cannot represent the Call Center India staff because they are not well equipped and short on resources.
Unifi is sensitive to the low salaries paid to Call Center India staff, which they say is only 10 per cent of the salary paid to their UK counterparts. Typical salaries cited for Call Center India workers are between Rs 9,000 and Rs 16,500 per month. These salaries may be according to Indian standards, but are meager compared to UK standards. This move could lessen the attrition rates amongst the Call Center India workers.
Sunday, January 11, 2004
Life takes a twist in Call Centers
India has changed, Indian youths have changed, and their outlook has changed. Indian youths working in Call Centers in India are becoming more and more Americanized day by day. After working for a while in the Call Centers, they start to think and live like the Americans as well.
They work hard the whole week, and party hard too. By working in Call Centers, they easily earn a 5-figure salary and a chunk of it is spent in shopping, partying, movies, eating out etc. Not only does their way of dressing changes, there is also a major change in their accents, the kind of programs they watch, and the kind of books they read. Call Centers change the way they live their life.
Many of these changes are due to the extensive training they receive as part of their induction in the Call Center. The training in Call Centers is such that, they are forced to adopt the American way of life, almost living a dual life.
While working in a Call Center they are given American names, so that the US clients don’t have a problem in pronouncing their names. So it is not surprising to know the Call Center executives having an American twist to their names, Ramesh could be changed to Rico, or Yamini could be changed to Mini and so on. This drastic change over the years affects their personality, and they start to get confused over their identity. But as it is often said that, it’s all in the mind, if you are strong mentally, nothing will affect you.
Life in a Call Center has both positives and negatives, and then it just becomes a matter of how you balance the two, i.e. taking the positives, and then trying to change the negatives into positives too.
Friday, January 09, 2004
UK feeling the pinch of Call Center jobs going to India
Why should the Call Center jobs, which are rightfully ours, should move to India? Is the question every unemployed youth in the UK wants an answer for. Workers in a state called Merseyside in the UK are especially bugged with this trend. They have been trying to stem the flow of Call Center jobs to India.
Merseyside is a major hub for Call Centers, employing more than 13,000 people in about 60 across the region. However, over recent years much has changed. Since thousands of jobs have been lost from Merseyside and the North West through companies switching Call Centers to India and other developing countries like China, Philippines etc. This shifting up of jobs is the main cause of worry for Merseyside, as more and more employees are being layed off.
The scheme to stem the flow of Call Center jobs overseas will consist of creating sustainable skills base so employers in the region have an easier time finding the best workforce locally and jobs are created and protected from the ever-lurking threat of Off-shoring. Although Off-shoring can’t be stopped all that easily, but at least the quality of their staff can be improved.
Merseyside is aggressively pushing for the growth of the Call Center industry and promote the state, because the pressure of Off-shoring on the UK Call Center workforce is constantly increasing, and they need to stop that pretty soon.
Thursday, January 08, 2004
Another company is shedding some flab, to Outsource Call Center functions
Nowadays shedding some flab and cutting off some dead wood has become mandatory for companies looking to save some money. EarthLink Inc has announced that it will cut 1,300 jobs and will also start to Outsource the work of some of its Call Center functions.
It has planned to shut down many of its Call Centers. The third-largest US Internet service provider will close its Call Centers Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and Roseville, San Jose and Pasadena, all California, and reduce its Call Center operations in Atlanta by the end of the first quarter of 2004.
EarthLink said that its customer support functions will be routed to its remaining Atlanta staff and to Outsourced Call Center Service providers.
Monday, January 05, 2004
Reliance all set to open a Call Center in India, Gujarat
Another Call Center is to be opened up in India, but this time, its by a domestic giant, Reliance group. Reliance Infocom, the convergence arm of the Reliance group, is set to open its first Call Center in India and that too in Gujarat, the capital of Ahemdabad, at an investment of around Rs.30 crore.
The company, which has already forayed into a wide range of businesses, has now set its sight on the booming Call Center market. But at present Reliance Infocom is adapting a model to initially use the Call Center facilities captively. Reliance has some big plans for its Call Center in India. If the Call Center business finds solid footing then, Reliance may even think of Outsourcing this facility. It will also utilise the Call Centers for its telecom and IT business.
For this Call Center in India, Reliance is considering one-lakh Call Center jobs. It is already hiring talents for its Call Center, which will mainly handle services like phone banking, customer billings, e-commerce management, hotel and airline reservations, and e-mail queries.
The Indian Call Center market is broadly segregated into two---Outsourcing and Offshoring model. Outsourcing model, however, involves a third-party service provider referred to as a Call Center bureau, which is engaged to deliver certain functions at a cost advantage
Saturday, January 03, 2004
UK to Play James Bond: To probe outsourcing job losses to India
There is full-blown outrage in U.K. over outsourcing. Worker unions are on a nation wide protest and are resorting to strikes over job losses in outsourcing to India. Now HSBC Holdings Plc, BT Group Plc, Aviva Plc and all the other companies who have gone in for outsourcing in order to cut costs are going to face a probe by U.K. lawmakers, a move which is backed my the MPs.
Union estimates that even the jobs that are there in U.K. at present are at a risk. The future of around 500,000 workers working in 6000 call centers, is hanging in balance. What further intensifies the fear is an estimate by Deloitte & Touche research, earlier this year, reveals that the world's top 100 financial companies will, reportedly outsource one million mainly administrative and technology-related jobs to India by 2008.
All these claims are not hypothetical, because many companies are planning the shift, mainly multinationals like HSBC is expected to employ 8,000 people in India, China and Malaysia, by the end of the year. BT is planning to start 2,200 new call center posts in India. Aviva also said that it plans to have a 1,000-person call center and claims- processing unit in India. With so many companies planning to move offshore the butterflies in the stomach of the unions is justified.
The companies will be enquired as to why the call center jobs have been outsourced, despite Britain having competent workers. The relevant firms will have to give a fitting explanation on their decision to outsource.
Friday, January 02, 2004
Thriving call centers and all set for more
Call centers are the latest fad to hit the Indian scene. Every multinational is opening its call center in India. It's so amazing that within a small period of time, hundreds of call centers have opened up in India, some big and some small.
Just to list down some of the call centers. There is Convergys, Msource, Exl, Daksh, WNS, 24/7, VCustomer etc to just name a few. These call centers serve international clients worldwide. The process is somewhat like this. The customers are say, suppose in the U.S., they are given a toll free number. When the customer dials this number his or her call is transferred to the call center in India. And most of the time the customer doesn't even know that this is an offshore service center.
But how can a U.S. customer not make out the heavy Indian accent. Well that is because the training the call center executives are given in accent neutralization. Not only are they taught how to speak in the, "phoren" accent but also on how to take every call, handle irate customers and a glimpse of the American lifestyle. They are given 2 to 3 months of exhaustive training in customer care, but it actually depends on the policies of the call center, depending on which it could take less time or more time.
The qualification for a customer care executive is nothing much, apart from being a graduate with good communication skills. The salary range is anything between 8 to10k, depending on experience and the call center you are applying in. the work timings are not something to go gaga over, cause most of the work is done during the night shifts. That is the reason may be why the attrition rate of this industry is so high and most of the executives don't see it as a long-term career choice. People do it to earn some quick bucks and leave it after some exposure. The odd timings and long work shifts make it hard to cope up with, and moreover it ruins your social life completely. But some people do get used to lead life in a call center, because the growth is quick and the moolah gets better. The future indicates more call centers and consequently more jobs.
Thursday, January 01, 2004
U.K. bank to outsource up to 5,000 jobs overseas
This is surely a golden period for India, for great opportunities are coming India's way. After the corporates, now even the banks are jumping into the wagon of outsourcing. The recent announcement by Barcalays, a U.K. based bank is sure to bring smiles to India.
Barclays will move at least 500--and possibly up to 5,000--call center jobs out of the United Kingdom. Most will be outsourced to India, with South Africa also under consideration. According to its current strategy, Barcalays call center operations would move offshore with up to 5000 jobs, up for grabs.
In early 2003 Barcalays had started its operations in India with a staff strength of 500.But it's presently related to administration and back-office processing with no call center functions. Barclays has about 58,000 employees in the United Kingdom, with 9,500, or about 16 percent, in call centers.
More and more British companies are turning to outsourcing, with opening of their own call centers in countries like India, China, and Philippines etc., though the first choice is India. Compared to American companies, U.K. is doing it at a slower reported rate. Recent reports have estimated that less than 15 percent of leading British companies have started outsourcing activities, compared with 35 percent of their American counterparts.
It is estimated that the United Kingdom has lost as many as 50,000 jobs to Indian outsourcing in the last two years. Call centers employ about 600,000 people in the United Kingdom, but are expected to shrink rapidly with jobs migrating to India, South Africa, Eastern Europe, the Philippines and China in the near future.
The British government has downplayed outsourcing worries so far. But it is fast becoming a fact that major percentage of U.K. firms are now started to look overseas for outsourcing. And another fact is, that the protests against outsourcing by the U.K. workers have also been on the rise. Because there is concern that their jobs which rightfully belong to them are being moved to low-cost destinations in a bid to save money.
