‘Call Centre & Health Problems’- Dark side of the shiny coin


It’s 11 in the night and their day has begun! No, they are not heading for a party. They are heading for their respective call centers, the latest working hub of our Indian youth. Lucrative money, plush offices, working for companies in the U.S. and U.K., are the things, which make these call centers a major hit with the young generation across the country. However, long hours of work, permanent night shifts, high work targets to achieve and irregular mealtimes are posing a lot of health problems for these youth.

Burn Out Syndrome or BOSS syndrome is seen very commonly among young people working in cal centers. The symptoms of this syndrome include chronic fatigue, insomnia and complete alteration of 24-hour biological rhythm of the body. Gastro-intestinal problems are inevitable for those working at nights, as the body is under chronic stress.

Although most of these cases do not require medication, guidance about physical and mental coordination to meet the demands of a call center job is necessary. While good money, weekend parties, bubblegum culture and ultramodern décor of the call centers does lend a glamorous image, it is certainly not easy to adjust to their work culture, is what is the version of those in the industry.

Jesmine

Call center services providers thrive

Call Center service providers are having it good. With so many 500 fortune companies coming in to India, Call Center service providershave the opportunity to work with so many reputed brands.

Call Center service providers like daksh, exl,msource etc, are recruiting in large numbers to shorten the gap between demand and supply. And also because that the Call Centers have a high attrition rate.

To stop this high attrition rate, Call Center service providers have put in place so many facilities like gym,canteen, study room etc for its staff. Now the Call Center service providers have started to offer management courses for its staff. May be such moves will stop the high attrition rate in the industry.

Threat of Call Center jobs moving to India: An issue unnecessarily overrated

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The big hue and cry by people abroad over the multinationals moving their Call Center services to India is absolutely not needed. A study by the London based research firm put aside all such fears when it predicted that only a paltry 5% of the 4.78 million call center jobs worldwide will be located Offshore.

The fear has been instilled in Europe and US after a number of big firms started relocating their Call Center Services to countries like India and other low-wage markets. Firms like Dell, ebookers etc have already moved their Call Center Services to India, on the account of saving on the operating costs, and supposedly more firms are in the fray.

But the new study shows the Call Center Services market in a totally different light. According to Datamonitor, 241,100 agent positions will be located offshore in 2007. That number represents 5 percent of the total global Call Center market, which will have grown to 4.78 million agent positions by 2007.

However, it’s not just India, which is looking to gobble up the full Call Center Services market pie. There are other contenders too, who have an equally good chance of becoming the preferred Call Center Services provider. There is Mexico, South Africa, and Malaysia, which, are becoming among the leading Call Center Services locations. They will in fact eat up the share of the Indian and Philippines market, whose share of the offshore market will drop to 64% in 2007 compared to being 70% in 2002.


This shift in trend is due to the fact that firms are witnessing an excessive demand for non-English languages and is the global Outsourcing portfolio by opening Call Center Services in different locations. It expected that Mexico will experience massive growth in the number of Call Center agent positions serving offshore markets, primarily the US. The report also noted that firms are seeing increasing demand for non-English-language services and are balancing their global outsourcing portfolio with Call Centers in different geographical locations.

Call Center Services are increasing day by day in India

Software bigwig Hewlett Packard has set up its Call Center Services in India. It’s setting up this Call Center Service in India to cater to its North American consumer market. This will be HP’s first Call Center in India for the American market.

This HP’s Call Center Service in India will be in addition to three to four third party service providers. Digital GlobalSoft, Daksh eServices and VServe will provide the Call Center Services in India, serving with a capacity of about 1000 seats which will be assisted by the upcoming HP Call Center in Bangalore with about 500 to 600 seats.

Call Center Services India staff are right up there, says UK firm

Lots of the clients have praised the staff of Call Center Services India. Now another satisfied client showers praises on the Call Center Services India. In fact they have gone as far, so as to say that they are doing a much better job then what their UK counterparts are doing. This statement comes as a slap on the face of all the people who doubted India’s capabilities.

National Rail Inquiries chief executive Chris Scoggins told British Members of Parliament that at least 50 per cent of future inquiries could soon be answered from India. He also added that the quality of the Call Center Services India is equally good, if not better in some of the cases.

Although the staff of the Call Center Services in India is paid one-sixth of what their UK counterparts earn, the Call Center work in India attracts very top quality staff. Although the clients say so, there are a few complaints from the customers. But the company spokesperson said that customers are getting good service, but they are bugged up only because local jobs are moving to India. And he also emphasized the fact that, by Outsourcing services to Call Center Services India, they would be saving an estimated ₤25 million over a period of five years.

Training institutes required for churning out qualified staff for Call Center Services

Call Center Services, India is booming, but it is short of the right kind of employees. And hence the high attrition rate. Now a Delhi based training company, NetSpace Communications is all set up five training centers to train the workers of the Call Center Services, in India.

There is a great demand for agents to work in Call Center Services,India, but the supply is low and is not up to the mark. And so training is crucial, because out of 100 people who apply for a Call Center Services job, only 5 get selected.

The course will have three modules: basic, intermediate and advanced. Costing approximately around Rs 20,000, the entire course will span 180 hours. There is good demand for staff who can handle Call Centers for overseas clients, as the domestic market for such services is yet to pick up.

Call Center Services , India providers charting their own success stories

Call Center Services providers in India are a happy lot. With so many multinationals wanting to Outsource, Call Center Services , India are having a great time of it. They operate out of nice and classy looking offices, mostly situated on the outskirts of the city, because the land rates are cheaper there. With lots of capital investment in hand they manage to build huge offices with all the facilities on the premises itself. They have in-house gyms, recreation rooms, cafes, canteens etc.

Call Center Services , India providers don’t have to worry about getting staff as well. After all India produces millions of graduates each year, who are more than willing to work at a salary which is one-fourth of their US or UK counterparts. Because it is higher according to the Indian standards. So they get cheap manpower, which is extremely well educated, is English speaking and computer savvy. In fact most of them are engineers and other technical background staff. Call Center Services in India don’t even have to worry about the high attrition rates of 30-40%, because for every one person that goes out two people are waiting in the pipeline to be absorbed. For the salary that the Call Center Services providers in India pay to their employees, they get around 8 hrs of work shifts out of them and plus there are night shifts once in a while.

Even after there being so many players, vis-à-vis, EXL, MSource, Convergys, Vertex, Perot Systems, Accenture, WNS, GE Caps, and a host of other Call Center Services providers in India, everybody is surviving and doing well. Everybody has their own fair share of clients and are getting good business out of them.

It’s a woman’s world in the Call Center Services India

Call Center Services have created employment opportunities in general, but it is true that the woman population in the Call Center Services India is growing. There is a growing trend amongst women to join Call Center Services India.

Tracmail, which is a five-year-old Call Center Service center, employs 2,000 people at its Navi Mumbai office, out of which, 45% percent of the employees are women. At another Call Center Service center, 24*7, the percent of women employees has increased from 25% to 40% in the last two years. The average strength of female staff in India’s $1.4 billion (Rs 6,650 crore) Call Center Service industry ranges between 30 and 60 per cent.

The one question that everybody is curious to know is, why women join this industry and why are the Call Center Services India industry hiring them. One of the main reasons that is apparent is that they can start young, and plus they can save some money as food is subsidized and there is a pick and drop facility available to the staff. And the reason why Call Center Services India industry is hiring them is Call Centers plainly believe that women are better suited to voice-based projects and women seem to have better communication skills.

Still, India trails behind the US where Call Centers have nearly 90 per cent women on their rosters. But even then the women are increasing at Call Center Services India and the trend is likely to continue.

US based IT company eFunds boosts infrastructure of its Mumbai Call Center

It was one of the first to take the bold move of having an Offshore Call Center in India, and it worked. Efunds will now have a total of 2,900 people employed in its Call Center across its three centers in India. It has now decided to expand its Mumbai based Call Center capacity by 200 seats.

Efunds Corporation, which provides Call Center services to clients in US and UK-based in the financial services, retail and telecommunication sectors, Outsources close to 90 per cent of its work to India and only 10 per cent is done onshore in the US.

According to recent reports, the Indian Call Center industry is expected to grow by an astounding 68 per cent in the next 12 months to touch 1.58 lakh seats, overtaking Australia to become the largest Call Center country across Asia in 2004. This is some wonderful news for the already booming Indian Call Center industry.

Call Center service providers operate out of swanky offices

With the money that the multinationals save by not opening Call Centers abroad; is utilized by them in making fully equipped, classy offices in the countries where they Outsource from.

Most of the Call Centers are situated on the outskirts of the city. These Call Centers are situated almost all over India including places like Chennai, Bangalore, Gurgaon, and Noida etc.

The only glitch one faces while working in Call Centers though is working in odd hours, mostly in night shifts. And that could take a long time to get used. Otherwise life in a Call Center never has a dull moment.

With the rate at which the Call Centers in India are rising, it might not be surprising that it will be the leading employer and will create lots of work opportunities for the unemployed..

Call Center Service providers are having it good

Call Center Service providers had a great time in 2003, and 2004 is poised for a much better period.

Call Center Service providers such as Daksh, Msource, Convergys, Exl, Wns, etc are constantly adding clients to their portfolio. It’s amazing that, even after there being so many players, everybody has a fair chunk of the profits.

Call Center Service providers have a stringent selection procedure, spanning over 5 to 6 rounds of interview. Only after this tedious process do they select a candidate. It is very surprising that, out a 100 candidates who appear for an interview, only about 5 candidates are selected. Most of the training that they provide is in house, which could be for a period for as long as 2- months.

Call Centers are trying to woo their employees

Even though the ITES industry has been growing at a breakneck speed, almost 70% annually, riding on the back of the Call Center Services and Business Process Outsourcing, it has somehow not been able to retain its employees. And this is a problem, which has been bugging the IT industry.

One of the reasons why the Call Center Services industry has had such a high attrition rate of almost 30%, could be because it hasn't been able to attract the right kind of people. The right kind of employees for the Call Center Services industry would be people with excellent oral communication skills, an ability to grasp the nuances of different cultures and adapt to them, and the ability to cope with high stress. And the lack of that, has led to this exodus of employees.

At present there are around 70 Call Centers in India. And the attrition rates in the Call Center Services industry has doubled to 30-35 per cent, which mathematically means that one-third of the employees are always in exit mode in the Call Centers in India in the past year. One other reason for the high attrition rates in the Call Center Services Industry could be that, since the employees are generally younger, they tend to work only for money and then they take that money and utilize it in pursuing their higher studies.

Some of the facilities provided to employees by some of the Call Centers to increase the feel-good factor include a 24-hour cafeteria, well-equipped recreation rooms and games, gymnasiums, cyber cafes and yoga centers, and not to mention the regular outings to discotheques. All this is done say industry leaders to make the employee feel important to the organization. And only then he/she is more likely to have an interest in the success of the Call Center and would stay longer. Additional incentives such as Esops and other long-term benefits also help in keeping the attrition rate low in this highly attrition prone Call Center Services Industry.

Call center training institutes In India ready to have a ball

Opening up of hundreds of call centers in India has surely created tremendous job opportunities. But to match the supply with demand, the need for trained professional has increased quite a bit. Computer training institute has decided to foray into this field, which has a remarkable potential for growth. It has set itself a goal to train a fifth of the professionals needed by the country's rapidly growing call center executives.

The BPO sector covers remote white-collar services that include insurance claims processing, documentation, payroll management and accounting delivered through phones, computers and the Internet. "We hope to train about 200,000 students for the call center operations. We will aim to produce manpower for the $200 billion global BPO mart. We expect India to have 10 per cent share of it. As Nasscom estimates that there would be shortfall of 1.1 million trained call center staff in India by 2008, there exists huge opportunity for IT training companies," Khera of Aptech, said. Initially, Aptech would train 3,000 students for the call centers in select cities and centers, after which the course would be extended to other cities as well. He did not give details on how much Aptech hoped to earn from training students for the call center segment.

Call centers are springing up fast in India, which boasts of a large number of English-speaking graduates who can be hired at nearly a tenth of their US counterparts. While some multinationals provide in house call center training, Indian software and call center companies are emerging as one-stop service centers.

Goldstone Teleservices launches its call center operations

So another call center starts its operations. That has become a sort of routine nowadays in India. The only difference being that It’s an Indian based call center, already having U.S. clients.

Rajendra Kakker, the managing director of the State Bank Of Hyderabad, formally inaugurated the business process outsourcing division of Goldstone teleservices. If not much it will definitely create more employment opportunities.

The BPO division is located in the scenic Banjara Hills in Hyderabad. Services like call center and back office support services in human resource management, banking, finance, telecom, and healthcare etc will be provided.

The infrastructure is a fully equipped 200-seat call center with great features like multi-media blended contact center, offering inbound, outbound, e-mail, web-chat and unified messaging services.

At Secunderabad Goldstone already has a 100-seat back office support center, which is linked to the Banjara Hills center by a dedicated fiber link. And its plans for the future are also ambitious like its plans to set up a 1,000-seat facility at Charlapalli. With so many call centers sprouting all over the country, it won’t be surprising if in future India has more call centers than the population of India itself.

Setting up a call center: not a child's play

Getting into the call center is not easy to begin with. First of all it miles away from terms like innovation and creativity. It's a very capital-intensive venture and can be a good proposition to invest in.

To make a success out of the call center business, one has to have a proper infrastructure and a group of well-trained professionals who are capable of taking up a pilot project. Obviously the person getting into the call center business has to have experienced and quality employees leading the operation, to make the venture work. Intense training should be provided in the areas of accent neutralization and customer handling and clear instructions should be given on how to handle a call. The entire business depends on how you handle your clients and once you screw it up, you can't get back what you lose.

Setting up of call center requires putting a lot of things in place. One has to take care of the registration, duty free imports of the hardware, communication and manpower etc. Suppose it is a 200-seat call center, it would require an investment in a 2 Mbps international private leased circuit for inbound services, comprising two half circuits-one in India and the other in the US or UK through an international carrier and other technical stuff like voice witch/EPABX, multiplexes (for data and voice transport), modems, routers and RISC/ CISC servers, headsets, desktops, E1/T1 circuits for the connectivity, IVR, CTI and ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) are needed.

One more crucial aspect is to have a good recruitment procedure, which will cut the attrition rates and help in smooth functioning of the call center. In terms of getting a client signed on, the essential is to have a core team who has gone through the learning process in a call center and the essential team of HR, Finance, Trainers, and Operations in place." With all these things in place one is sure to find the call center business successful

Texas firm backs off call center deal

First Consumers National Bank call center has no takers as yet. John Pascone, president of the Albany Millersburg Economic Development Corp., had been talking for months with a Texas firm about filling the call center, which has been vacant since March 31.

Now it seems that the company - a Delaware trust called Telvista, which is headquartered in Dallas - has lost interest in the deal, and it's back to square one for Pascone, who had been working with the company since July. But First Consumers National Bank is looking at other potential clients.

Tom Womack, a spokesman for Telvista, confirmed that the firm had looked at the Albany call center, located in the old Price Chopper building in Heritage Plaza, but that the company was no longer considering the move.

Meanwhile Pascone said that are other very potential clients vying for the call center, which include a bank, a large call-center operator and two other candidates. On March 31, First Consumers National Bank shut down its call center in Albany and laid off 180 employees. That move followed a bankruptcy filing by First Consumers' parent company, Spiegel Inc. The Albany call center opened its doors in July 2001.

Marketing vacant call centers is a big challenge, in part because of the changing nature of the call center business.Not only are many companies outsourcing their customer service, technical support and other services to third-party call centers in an effort to cut expenses, but numerous firms are also choosing to open offshore offices in places such as India and the Philippines.

It's an ever-changing business. Firms definitely feel offshore pressure, but the interesting thing is that people who have done offshore are finding that the quality of service isn't as good, their clients are not as satisfied and there are language issues. So there's a variety of challenges that come with that, and we've seen people bringing business back to the U.S. because of quality-control issues.

So the call center business hasn't matured fully, only when it settles down and matures, can we see the call center market reaching its full potential.

Teleperformance sets up 100% owned call center

The news of one more firm opening its call center in India is not surprising. Teleperformance USA, a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) and customer value management (CVM) services, today announced the opening of a wholly owned call center in India.

The call center facility, which has a 500-seat capacity with growth potential up to 1,000 workstations, will operate as a division of Teleperformance USA providing outbound and inbound teleservices to companies looking to take advantage of lower operating costs that can dramatically improve their bottom line.

Offshore outsourcing of teleservices is becoming a viable solution for companies wanting to provide customer service and sales at lower costs than have been traditionally available in the US. Offshoring does cut their costs dramatically.

Managing director Sanjay Mehta, along with other local senior management familiar with both the Indian and American cultures, heads the call center in India. Opening call centers in low cost countries like India and China etc, is a very viable option to the firms, who can serve their clients worldwide, and at a rate at which they can’t even dream to operate in U.S. or U.K.

Planning to open call center services in India

Any business decision boils down to weighing the risks and rewards. And so does the decision of move your call center off shore. On the reward side, the advantage of using an overseas call center is the same as importing goods from a developing country: It can be a whole lot cheaper. In India, the country most frequently touted as the next frontier for call centers, wages are about 20% of what they are in the U.S. For example you can expect to pay about $2 an hour for a call center operator, including benefits.

And the unlimited supply of English speaking graduated and not just any college graduate, many call center employees have technical degrees. GE Capital alone has over 12,000 operators standing by. John Oliver, a spokesman for GE Capital, says that in India, his company has found 'a tremendously well-educated workforce that has a very refined work ethic.'

A recent study by Datamonitor found that a 150-seat call center that costs $5.6 million to run for a year in the U.S. costs about $2.2 million in India. Service bureaus can cut into that savings, of course, but even service bureaus promise savings of 25%to 35%. Though some consultants say that the difference between call centers in the U.S. and those in India is that in the U.S., the variable costs are high and the fixed costs are low, whereas in India, the variable costs are low but the fixed costs are high. Around 150 and 200 companies say they run call centers in India.

Although opening call centers has many advantages, without clear and inconsistent training across all your training center, customer service could go for a six. According to GE's Oliver, 'The key thing is you have to approach it with rigor, you have to be dedicated, and you have to make sure it operates properly, and then it doesn't matter where the hell you do it.'

Call centers In India and Philippines look to form alliance

There’s a possibility that call centers in India and Philippines may develop a relationship due to mutual needs. The reasons for such an alliance are many, and some of them are listed below.

1.India is a rising economic power, posting fast GDP growth rates above 5 percent. For many reasons, the Philippines should pay attention to India.

2.Another reason is that India has a huge population and a market that may be as big as China.

3. One more reason is that India is a powerhouse in the global IT and business outsourcing services sector. While in some respects India and the Philippines compete with each other in this field, there’s possible complementation and alliance. For example,

A. Because of the executives providing call center services in India have a thick accent.
B. Call center executives in India have less familiarity with the US culture than the Filipinos.
C. Indians are less adept than Filipinos at certain call center services, such as telemarketing.
And that’s exactly the reason why some Indian call center operators, therefore, have been looking to invest in the Philippines so that they could offer their US clients a complete line of services, which would be served in both India and the Philippines.

Indian BPO mantra: Talk like An American

No amount of training or exposure can teach a person to speak in the exact way a foreign language is spoken. You can just learn how to speak it, but actual intricacies of the dialect are very difficult to pick up. India's much touted, English speaking, back office soldiers who man the 24-hour call centers of multinationals round the world have been the subject of flak in the recent past --- the problem is the Indians do not speak their English the way the Americans or the British pronounce their words.

This can be more than just an irritant as vouchsafed by Dell Inc, the world's largest computer seller that decided to shift its customer support work for corporate clients back to the US, last month. Earlier this month, Lehman Brothers also decided to take back its internal computer help desk, outsourced to Indian IT major Wipro, due to the dissatisfaction with the skills offered in India.

The problems regarding the accent have just started. But there doesn't seem to be any solution. The call center executives just have to keep learning, it seems. Because these problems, at one level, seem inevitable. In spite of TV and e-mail, people living thousands of kilometers away and without local knowledge cannot always answer inquiries authoritatively.

The fear here, as exemplified by the Dell and Lehman Brothers example, is the doubts that have been creeping in about the quality of the Indian Business and Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. Indeed, the threat to the BPO industry is generally seen as one of resistance in the developed world to jobs shifting to countries like India.

The Indian BPO industry has been growing at a mind boggling 60-70 per cent annually with revenues growing from $ 565 million in 99-00 to almost $ 2,400 million in 02-03. Future projections look brighter --- employment to over a million people by 2006, up from the current 200,000. Revenues are estimated to increase to $ 2,400 million by 2006.
It is said that while the Indian IT industry took 15-20 years to start making its presence felt, the Indian BPO industry has done it in less than 10 years.

The prescription for the current problem is two-fold --- re-training call center executives adequately to retain the current business as well as moving up the value-chain in terms of the quality of jobs outsourced.