The Indian Call Center Journey
The Indian Call Center Journey
The Indian Call Center Journey
"The call center business appears to be going the dot-com way with a lot of big names
pumping in dough. Ultimately, only the fittest will survive."
For instance, while a FMCG company could use the call centers
for better customer relationship management, for a
biotechnology company, the task could be of verifying genetic
databases. (Refer Table I). Call centers began as huge
establishments managing large volumes of communications and
traffic.
These centers were generally set up as large rooms, with workstations, interactive voice
response systems, an EPABX,3 headsets hooked into a large telecom switch and one or more
supervisor stations. (Refer Table II). The center was either an independent entity, or was
linked with other centers or to a corporate data network, including mainframes,
microcomputers and LANs4. Call centers could either be 'captive/in-house' or in form of an
'outsourced bureau.' Captive call centers were typically used by various segments like
insurance, investments and securities, retail banking, other financial services,
telecommunications, technology, utilities, manufacturing, travel and tourism, transport,
entertainment, healthcare and education etc.
TABLE II
CALL CENTER CLASSIFICATION
Outsourcing bureaus were outfits with prior experience in running call centers. These helped
the new players in dealing with complex labor issues, assisted in using latest technologies,
helped in lowering the operating expenses and financial risks.
Outsourced bureau operators were utilized by companies at various stages viz. setting up of
the center, internal infrastructure revamps, excess traffic situations etc.
Moreover, India had the largest English-speaking population after the US and had a vast
workforce of educated, reasonably tech-savvy personnel.
In a call center, manpower typically accounted for 55-60% of the total costs in the US and
European markets - in India, the manpower cost was approximately one-tenth of this. While
per agent cost in US worked out to approximately $ 40,000, in India it was only $ 5,000.
Apart from the pioneers British Airways, GE and Swiss Air, HLL,
BPL, Godrej Soaps, Global Tele-Systems, Wipro, ICICI Banking
Corporation, American Express, Bank of America, Citibank, ABN
AMRO, Global Trust, Deutsche Bank, Airtel, and Bharati BT were
the other major players in the call-center business.
After the projections of the NASSCOM-McKinsey report were made public, many people
began thinking of entering the call center business. (Refer Table III).
During this rush to make money from the call center 'wave,' NASSCOM received queries
from many people with spare cash and space, including lorry-fleet operators, garment
exporters, leather merchants, tyre distributors and plantation owners among others.
GE, Swiss Air, British Airways set up captive call center units for their
Mid 1990s
global needs.
Following increasing interest in the IT-enabled services sector,
NASSCOM held the first IT-enabled services meet. Over 600
May 1999
participant firms plan to set up medical transcription outfits and call
centers.
May 2000 Venture Capitalists rush in. Make huge investments in call centers.
Most of the call centers are waiting for customers. New ventures still
coming up: capacity of between 25 seats and 10,000 seats per
Quarter 1, company. Small operators discover that the business is a black hole
2001 where investments just disappear. They look for buyers, strategic
partnerships and joint ventures. Brokers and middlemen make an
entry to fix such deals.
However, most of these people entered the field, without having any idea as to what the
business was all about. Their knowledge regarding the technology involved, the marketing
aspects, client servicing issues etc was very poor. They assumed that by offering cheaper
rates, they would be able to attract clients easily. They did not realize that more than easy
access to capital and real estate, the field required experience and a sound business
background. Once they decided to enter the field, they found that most of the capital
expenditure (in form of building up the infrastructure5) occurred even before the first client
was bagged. These players seemed to have neglected the fact that most successful call
centers were quite large and had either some experience in the form of promoters having
worked abroad in similar ventures or previous experience with such ventures or were
subsidiaries of foreign companies.
Even for those who did manage to rope in some clients, the
business was limited. As if these problems were not enough, the
players hit another roadblock - this time in form of the high
labor turnover problem. Agent performance was the deciding
factor in the success of any call center. Companies had
recognized agents as one of the most important and influential
points of contact between the business and the customer.
However, it was this very set of people whom the Indian call
centers were finding extremely difficult to recruit and more
importantly, retain. In 2000, the average attrition rate in the
industry was 40-45%, with about 10-15% of the staff quitting
within the first two months itself. Even though attrition rates
were very high in this industry worldwide, the same trend was
not expected to emerge in India, as the unemployment levels
were much higher.
The reasons were not very hard to understand. In a eight-and-a-half hour shift, the agents
had to attend calls for seven-and-a-half hours. The work was highly stressful and
monotonous with frequent night shifts. A typical call center agent could be described as
being 'overworked, underpaid, stressed-out and thoroughly bored.'
The agents were frequently reported to develop an identity crisis because of the 'dual
personality' they had to adopt. They had to take on European/US names or abbreviate their
own names and acquire foreign accents in order to pose as 'locals.' The odd timings took a
toll on their health with many agents complaining of their biological clocks being disturbed.
(Especially the ones in night shifts).
Future Prospects
The Indian call center majors were trying to handle the labor exodus through various
measures. Foremost amongst these was the move to employ people from social and
academic backgrounds different from the norms set earlier. Young people passing out of
English medium high schools and universities and housewives and back-to-work mothers
looking for suitable opportunities were identified as two of the biggest possible recruitment
pools for the industry. Such students with a good basic level of English could be trained
easily to improve their accents, pronunciation, grammar, spelling and diction. They could be
trained to become familiar with western culture and traditions. The housewives and back-to-
work mothers' pool could also be developed into excellent resources. This had been
successfully tried out in the US and European markets, where call centers employed a large
number of housewives and back-to-work mothers.
The telephony system is analog and inadequate. It took on average three attempts just to
get a line of out my hotel. The telecom market is not deregulated, and international calls
are very expensive. The business culture and the mix of Government intervention will be a
cultural shock for Western business people with no previous experience.
Add to this a lack of a call center industry and very few people
with call center experience which makes it very hard to recruit
call center managers with a proven track record."
Exhibits
Exhibit I: Call Center Terminology
The company conducted discussions with various vendors like Lucent, Nortel,
and Cisco for architectural designs and directions for the call center technology.
Case Study
About Client and Company:
The client, based in Columbus, is a leading and trusted provider of government assisted wireless services
and non-lifeline telecom services. The company wanted a complete back up support system to cater its
need of back-office operations where the applications of candidates can be tracked and verified to
expedite the processes. The company was also looking for one stop source which can take care of their
extensive and growing numbers of customers and provide them better and prompt services.
Analysis:
The client was specially concerned about the numbers of applications and the time of response taken by
in-house staff. This was not only resulting in wastage of time but also in loss of customers to the
competitors. Once we presented them our delivery model of work, since then, they have been associated
with us, and we are proudly handling their back-office and customer support operations.
Our Solution :
We deployed expert call center agents who were well versed in English and had accurate and effective
account knowledge. The purpose was to assist the customers effectively and quickly. The customers
were provided with toll-free numbers so that they would not hesitate to call. To make services more
customer centric, we initiated two shifts of working- one which would work in night to complement the day
hours according to western zone of timings and other in daytime as per Indian Standard Time. To cope up
with the elaborate and painstaking work of processing applications, callcenterinindia. info employed
expert back office administration workers.
Results :
Now, the team at callcenterinindia.info caters about 60, 000 customers on monthly basis. We have not
been able to meet the expectations of our client but have been able to elate the company with our
services. We provide bi-monthly progress and performance reports to our client as well.
Client talks:
Thanks for providing such an excellent support. I appreciate your timely help and for offering such a
wonderful outsourcing experience.
Program Performance :
We are consistently achieving new benchmarks and exceeding services level expectations. We are
handling about 50, 000 customers on monthly basis for this client and adding more than 60 percent as
customer acquisitions monthly,
1. CTI Server
2. Flexible IVRS
3. Agent Client
4. Administrator client
5. Scheduler/Calendar
6. Monitor and Alarms
7. Reports
8. Workforce Management
Critical Success Factors:
Integration of existing CRM Servers: BSNL has different packages working for CRM activities across the
operational units. These CRM can exist in Oracle/Sybase/DB2/SQLServer and even in Foxpro.
Application to match Local Scenario: The requirement of services being offered through these call center
is geography specific and depends on the customer base and competition scenario. SIS does the case
study of the requirement and presents the complete solution to meet the requirement and configure the
application to meet the requisite.
Training Agents and Supervisor: SIS do understand that any system integration project is incomplete
without the handing over of the technical knowhow and operational knowledge to the customers. SIS
practices this in action and hands over the complete knowledge to the customers so that the operations of
the call center can be handled by the customer himself without the hindrance.
Project done so far
1. Ahmedabad Telecom District - BSNL (Inbound/Outbound Call center integrated with CRM/Billing
System)
2. Gujarat GSM -BSNL ( 150 seats Switch based Inbound/Outbound Call center integrated with
CRM/Billing System)
3. Rajsthan BSNL (Call center Inbound/Outbound Call center integrated with CRM/Billing System)
4. UP(West) BSNL (all centers spread across Noida, Meerut and Bareilly Inbound/Outbound Call
center integrated with CRM/Billing System)
5. UP(East) BSNL (Call center Inbound/Outbound Call center integrated with CRM/Billing System)
6. Kerala - BSNL (Call center Inbound/Outbound Call center integrated with CRM/Billing System)
spread across Trivendrum, Ernakulam, Trichur and Calicut.
7. MP BSNL (Call center Inbound/Outbound Call center integrated with CRM/Billing System)
8. Raipur BSNL (Call center Inbound/Outbound Call center integrated with CRM/Billing System)
9. iCall,i Factor, Ahmedabad Predictive Dialer International
10. BJP, New Delhi - Unified Messaging System
11. ONGC Mumbai - Unified Messaging System
After Flatworld’s pilot, the initial market scope extended from the USA to cover the UK, Canada and
Anglophone Africa. Extensions were not only in business divisions, products and market scope but also in
budgets. The marked increase in productivity of the in-market sales team resulted in the extension of budgets
as well.
Customer Response
The customer remarked that the call center offshore outsourcing deal they got from Flatworld was extremely
successful, as the results from the pilot paid for Flatworld’s subsequent quarterly service fees!
The customer thought it was important to build a team rapport across customer and service provider. They
made it mandatory for the in-market sales team to visit the development center in India and our sales support
team and interact on a more personal level.
The customer also expressed that the company strategy to differentiate itself from competitors in terms of the
quality of staff deployed in its initial customer facing interaction and solution development was a success.
Read this Case Study on Call Center Services offered by Flatworld to a leading global Call Center Operator.
Outsource your call center needs to Flatworld now.
Learn more about Flatworld's Success Stories.
Some Indian Case Studies:
1 Pune Citibank MphasiS Call Center
Fraud
2 Baazee.com case
CEO of Baazee.com was arrested in December 2004 because a CD with objectionable
material was being sold on the website. The CD was also being sold in the markets in
Delhi. The Mumbai city police and the Delhi Police got into action. The CEO was later
released on bail. This opened up the question as to what kind of distinction do we draw
between Internet Service Provider and Content Provider. The burden rests on the
accused that he was the Service Provider and not the Content Provider. It also raises a
lot of issues regarding how the police should handle the cyber crime cases and a lot of
education is required.
The case related to posting of obscene, defamatory and annoying message about a
divorcee woman in the yahoo message group. E-Mails were also forwarded to the victim
for information by the accused through a false e-mail account opened by him in the
name of the victim. The posting of the message resulted in annoying phone calls to the
lady in the belief that she was soliciting.
Based on a complaint made by the victim in February 2004, the Police traced the
accused to Mumbai and arrested him within the next few days. The accused was a
known family friend of the victim and was reportedly interested in marrying her. She
however married another person. This marriage later ended in divorce and the accused
started contacting her once again. On her reluctance to marry him, the accused took up
the harassment through the Internet.
On 24-3-2004 Charge Sheet was filed u/s 67 of IT Act 2000, 469 and 509 IPC before
The Hon’ble Addl. CMM Egmore by citing 18 witnesses and 34 documents and material
objects. The same was taken on file in C.C.NO.4680/2004. On the prosecution side 12
witnesses were examined and entire documents were marked as Exhibits.
The Defence argued that the offending mails would have been given either by ex-
husband of the complainant or the complainant her self to implicate the accused as
accused alleged to have turned down the request of the complainant to marry her.
Further the Defence counsel argued that some of the documentary evidence was not
sustainable under Section 65 B of the Indian Evidence Act. However, the court relied
upon the expert witnesses and other evidence produced before it, including the
witnesses of the Cyber Cafe owners and came to the conclusion that the crime was
conclusively proved. Ld. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Egmore, delivered the
judgement on 5-11-04 as follows:
" The accused is found guilty of offences under section 469, 509 IPC and 67 of IT Act
2000 and the accused is convicted and is sentenced for the offence to undergo RI for 2
years under 469 IPC and to pay fine of Rs.500/-and for the offence u/s 509 IPC
sentenced to undergo 1 year Simple imprisonment and to pay fine of Rs.500/- and for
the offence u/s 67 of IT Act 2000 to undergo RI for 2 years and to pay fine of Rs.4000/-
All sentences to run concurrently."
The accused paid fine amount and he was lodged at Central Prison, Chennai. This is
considered as the first case convicted under section 67 of Information Technology Act
2000 in India.
The laptop contained several evidences that confirmed of the two terrorists’ motives,
namely the sticker of the Ministry of Home that they had made on the laptop and
pasted on their ambassador car to gain entry into Parliament House and the the fake ID
card that one of the two terrorists was carrying with a Government of India emblem
and seal.
The emblems (of the three lions) were carefully scanned and the seal was also craftly
made along with residential address of Jammu and Kashmir. But careful detection
proved that it was all forged and made on the laptop.
The accused person submitted 6,000 vouchers to prove the legitimacy of trade and
thought his offence would go undetected but after careful scrutiny of vouchers and
contents of his computers it revealed that all of them were made after the raids were
conducted.
It later revealed that the accused was running five businesses under the guise of one
company and used fake and computerised vouchers to show sales records and save tax.
SELECTED ASIA / PACIFIC CASES:
The following section provides a selection of actions taken against file-sharing Web sites
and P2P services in the Asia/Pacific region, focusing on Australia, China, Japan and
South Korea.
2. Reportedly, China has become a leading exporter of counterfeit and pirated goods to
the world. The U.S. industry estimates the value of counterfeit goods in China at US$19
billion to US$24 billion, with losses to U.S. companies exceeding US$1.8 billion a year.
The severe piracy problems derive from a combination of cultural, historic and economic
factors and are further aggravated by inconsistent, weak enforcement by officials. File-
sharing Web sites and networks such as Jelawat and Kuro have been developing
rapidly, too. The distributors of P2P software claim that file-sharing falls within the
private use exception to copyright, but the Supreme People’s Court of China rejected
this interpretation. Increasingly, copyright owners and right organizations are
challenging file-sharing Web sites on copyright infringement claims.
3. The Beijing No 1 People’s Court ruled in April 2004 that the Web site chinamp3.com
violated the IP rights of Hong Kong-based entertainment companies Go East
Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment (Hong Kong), and ordered the site to pay
US$19,000 in damages. The suit concerned the unauthorized distribution of MP3 music
files. The defendant argued that he had merely provided links for download and not a
direct download service, and therefore should not be held responsible for the IP rights
violations. According to observers, the court’s ruling may prove to be a significant
development in the nascent field of Chinese copyright enforcement in the digital age.
Copyright:
http://www.cyber.law.harvard.edu/media/files/wpsupplement2005.pd
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