India's Phone Centers Take Calls From Home

In Shift, Outsourcers Tap Domestic Market as U.S. Demand Ebbs

HUBLI, India -- With the U.S. in recession, India's call centers have opened a new outsourcing frontier: India.

The shift is a sign of how India's flagship export industry is shifting from providing services to the developed world to catering to its own, quickly growing market. The Indian economy grew 6.7% for the fiscal year ended March 31.

While outsourcing revenue from within India is still a tiny fraction of the global market -- $12 billion in 2008 out of $500 billion spent world-wide -- it is expected to hit $95 billion by 2020, or nearly 15% of the expected global market, according to a recent McKinsey & Co. report. The overall global market for business process outsourcing will reach $640 billion in the same time, the report says.

Indian outsourcers capture contracts from U.S. clients largely by touting India's low wages and big cost savings. But at home, providing those lower costs means setting up offices in rural areas, where wages and property costs are lower than in its bigger cities.

"We cannot deliver and make money in the same way we make money for an international market," says Ananda Mukerji, chief executive of Firstsource Solutions Ltd., a Mumbai-based outsourcer.

In April 2007, his company opened a call center in Hubli, a city of 800,000 people 370 kilometers northwest of Bangalore, India's outsourcing capital. Hubli is best known for its cotton and peanut farms.

But it is also a place where wages and rents are half of those in major cities such as Mumbai. A call center worker who gets roughly $500 a month in Mumbai would earn $250 to $300 a month in Hubli.

Firstsource now has 450 workers in Hubli, where it is the largest private employer. It is one of the company's 15 outsourcing centers for the domestic market. During the past two years Firstsource has seen the India share of its annual revenue, which stood at $370 million in the year ended March 31, jump to 13% from 1%.

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Stanchart expands Indian call centre

Despite adverse market conditions, global banking major Standard Chartered has decided to further strengthen the call centre operations of its outsourcing hub Scope International in India.StanChart plans to double its staff strength of its Indian call centre division from the current 1,100 by the end of this fiscal, the bank said in a statement.

Scope International has played a key-role in Standard Charteredandaposs success in India and elsewhere. The upscaling of Scope Internationalandaposs call centre operations will support the bankand aposs plans to increase customer engagement,StanChartandaposs Regional Chief Executive India and South Asia Neeraj Swaroop said.

The expansion will support the groupandaposs ambitious growth plans in the country as well as other markets, the bank said.

Scope International is planning to increase the size and scale of its call centre operations in Banglore and Chennai, which currently service customers in India and UAE respectively.

At present, these centres handle in and out-bound customer calls, while Chennai centre handles collection-related services for UAE clients.

These operations will be expanded by March, 2010,the bank said.

Scope International supports StanChartandaposs operations in 70 countries.

Source : http://www.offshoringtimes.com/

Aegis to take on AOL's India call centre

Aegis BPO Services announced today that it is taking on AOL’s call centre operations in Bangalore, India.

The acquisition, which is expected to close at the end of April 2008, will see Aegis provide customer service and technical support to AOL customers.

AOL call centre employees in Bangalore will then officially become Aegis staff.

Aparup Sengupta, Aegis managing director and ceo said this was a defining and historic moment for the company.

“We are proud to welcome a team that have built a legacy of superior customer management practices,” said Sengupta.

Maneesh Dhir, executive vice president of AOL International, said: “AOL will continue to have a significant presence in India and to strengthen its local operations.”

Source : http://www.callcentre.co.uk/

Warning that Indian call centre bubble

INDIA'S burgeoning call centre industry, which has drawn thousands of jobs from Britain, is heading for contraction within the next two years, according to a new report published today.
The boom in outsourcing sales, customer services and other telephone work to low-paid, English-speaking Indians has generated competition that is driving down prices and pushing up pay, market analyst Datamonitor said in its study.

The report says newcomers to the market are aggressively discounting to grab a share of the £255 million business, resulting in shrinking margins and raising questions as to who will survive.

Datamonitor said a "shake-out" is inevitable within two or three years, and its report predicted this it will largely be driven by consulting companies exiting the market, and either spinning off their contact centre operations or turning over the management of their customer care services to third parties.

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Indian call-centre workers demand money without menaces

“There's a traditional perception that debt collectors are tough, that they rough people up,” Manu Sharma, a smart Indian executive, said from his sleek office in Delhi's outskirts. “That's not how we work”.

Welcome to the touchy-feely world of outsourced debt collection, an industry in the throes of rapid expansion as India's call centres - famous for flogging computers, life insurance and mobile phones - now look to cash in on the global credit crunch.

Forget the old image of the debt collector as a menacing ogre out for his pound of flesh. Mr Sharma, who heads a 200-strong team that makes thousands of call to American homes every evening, is one of a new breed who are chasing - ever so sensitively - the growing horde of hard-up Westerners.

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Indian call centres: One size doesn’t fit all!

Chennai: Small size matters, especially in call centres. With mid-sized companies increasingly outsourcing part of their work to India, they are not necessarily looking at 1,000 associates working for them. A 50-100 seat centre not only is easy to manage but also more receptive to smallest of processes. “Size always creates an element of macro management and that we believe is not desired by small and medium companies outsourcing from the UK. We have witnessed over the last few years that the smaller the centre is, greater is the attention and devotion given to small processes and it is this, that we seek in our efforts to secure 50 more call centres to partner with us,” says Mr Paul Kopec, Chairman of Scotland-based VoiceStream Group.

Paul’s company recently acquired 75 per cent stake in Chennai-based Helios Outsourcing, bringing an end to its search for a single partner to outsource and manage their voice-based outbound tele-marketing requirements in and around India. So, is this where the growth is, asked Business Line, during a recent interaction with the new owners of Helios. “Yes. The growth is in the associate call centres of 50-200 seat size, across the country, from Kashmir to Tirunelveli,” Mr. Kopec shot back. VoiceStream will be investing close to $3 million during 2008-2010 and over a period, expects a revenue stream of about $85 million from the 100 call centres that they will be associated with in India.

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The Indian call centre workers who turn to drugs to stay awake on the night shift

Call centre workers in India are turning to drugs to keep them awake while speaking to British callers.

There is growing evidence of staff smoking cannabis during work hours and abusing over-the-counter medicine to keep them going through their long night shifts.

More than a quarter of call centre workers used drugs, mainly cannabis, compared to just 4.1 per cent of the wider population, according to a study published in the Indian Journal of Sleep Medicine.

Last week, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime visited India's outsourcing capital of Bangalore to warn India's largest call centre companies of the problem and persuade them to cooperate with the first detailed survey on the issue.

Pradeep Kumar, the UN's project coordinator, said it is difficult to convince the major companies running call centres of the urgency of the issue.

'Denial runs pretty deep.' he said. 'And it's not because they don't know of the problem. They are vaguely aware of it, but it's not really a priority.'

He said the UNODC had decided to target Indian call centres after being alerted to the growing problem of drug use by doctors running clinics near the main call centre areas in Bangalore and Gurgaon on outskirts of Delhi.

'It was a matter of anecdotal evidence coming from the GPs, psychiatrists and counsellors, who say that they do see a large crop of young people coming in with drug abuse problems, which was not the case five years back.'

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Aegis buys Indian call centre

Aegis BPO Services, part of the Essar Group, has announced the acquisition of AOLs call centre operations in India for an undisclosed sum. Following this acquisition, which is expected to close at the end of April 2008, Aegis will take over around 1,200 AOL people and enter into the tech support segment. AOLs call centre operations include both voice and nonvoice activity and it will now be serviced by Aegis.

Aegis MD Aparup Sengupta said, This acquisition gives us clear visibility and expands our line of services .Aegis, which has consistently taken the inorganic route to grow the business having made eight acquisitions since 2003, would continue to pursue this strategy. According to industry observers, Aegis is likely to have paid around USD 25 to 30 million for AOLs call centre business in India. Aegis has a top line of over USD 200 million Rs 800 crore.

Though Aegis said it had won the deal through competitive bidding, it was unlikely that any large BPO player would have shown interest in picking up this business, given the small scale of AOLs operations. AOL International Executive VP Maneesh Dhir said, the decision to divest its call centre business was part of a strategy to focus on core operations.

AOL started its call centre business in India in July 2003 and it has also got a KPO and software services operation.

It also has BPO relationships with other third party vendors. Following this acquisition, Aegis head count moves from 19,000 to over 20,000. Mr Sengupta said, it would be using the AOL acquisition to bag other tech support businesses.

Aegis is currently focused on telecom, BFSI, retail, healthcare with presence in 17 centres in India and nine in the US.

Source : http://www.offshoringtimes.com/

Sources: AOL close to India call center sale

AOL will sell its call center in Bangalore to Indian business process outsourcer Aegis.

AOL is close to selling its call center in India to Aegis, a BPO (business process outsourcing) company of India's Essar Group, according to informed sources.

Aegis was one of several companies that bid to acquire the 1,000-staff call center in Bangalore. A formal announcement is expected next week.

An AOL spokesman did not confirm the proposed sale of the call center. Essar dismissed the report as speculative.

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Indian offshore call centers 'not doomed'

Offshore call centers are expected to continue growing, despite the fact that some companies are bringing their customer care services back home.

Lloyds TSB became the latest British company to decide to reduce its use of Indian call centers. But earlier this week, Barclaycard announced that it is moving more work to Mumbai, and Datamonitor contact center outsourcing analyst Peter Ryan said it is shortsighted to predict the end of customer service outsourcing.

Investment in offshore markets will continue for some time, as companies attempt to capitalize on lower costs and high-quality client care, Ryan said, predicting that more industries "than ever before" will be looking to adopt outsourced customer services.

This year "will be one of the most challenging in contact center outsourcing's history," Ryan said.

Ryan said, however, that call center operations will have to invest in Web-chat, SMS and e-mail technologies if they want to attract new customers. They also must offer systems tailored to specific vertically integrated industries, he said.

Companies will be looking for suppliers that can satisfy demand from multiple contact channels rather than just voice, he added.

Datamonitor predicts that outsourcers will start to focus on higher-value services--such as business-to-employee care and technical support--that are likely to lead to higher revenues and profits over the long term.

Steve Ranger of Silicon.com reported from London

911 service is also seeking Indian Call Centre

Callers to police stations could soon be talking to someone in India as forces are now allowed to privatise their call centres. Police across the country are privatising their call centres and backroom staff in a bid to cut costs. The Government has been forced to relax the rules to allow forces to sign contracts with private companies, including foreign ones as there is a massive cash shortage.

This means that police will be able to use Indian call centres to deal with routine police inquiries. Currently all civilian support staff are employed by the police. Over the next year as many as 20000 civilians will be transferred to private companies but some jobs could go overseas. The computer giant IBM is the first private company to have secured a deal. It has signed a £400 million contract with Avon and Somerset Police.

The 999 service will not be affected by the changes.

Source: http://www.callcentersindia.com/

Call Centers Leaning More on Web Chats, E-mails

Traditional call centers have long been a staple of the point of contact for the customer. Historically, these centers were viewed as cost centers for the company as their only purpose was to keep the customer happy and that was not directly related to revenues.

While this view is misguided, it still formed the basis for the traditional call center and, in some industries, this erroneous view still thrives. However, for a majority of companies, times most certainly have changed and while consumers as a whole still prefer to call a company and speak to a live representative, e-mail is becoming a more popular communication choice than in the past. However, unless these companies take a more customer-centric approach to this communication channel, they may have fewer customers burning up any of their channels.

Customer Service Response Rates Down

Hornstein Associates studies the responsiveness of organizations across multiple industries. In the firm's annual e-mail responsiveness survey, results indicated a steady decline in the customer service response rates since 2002.

In 2007, only 33 percent of companies responded to e-mails sent to customer service within 24 hours, a decrease of almost half from a high of 63 percent in 2002.

According to ICMI's (International Customer Management Institute) 2007 Quality Monitoring Report, more than three quarters, or 77.7 percent, of call centers handle customer e-mail transactions, with only about two thirds, or 64 percent, actually monitoring e-mail contacts.

Web Use Increasing

The use of the Web has also increased over the past several years, and customers are increasingly using this portal for communicating with companies.

As a result, many companies are making this communication channel available to their customers. The good news is that these companies are also monitoring them for performance. Since ICMI's 2004 study, the use of Web chat as a contact channel - and the monitoring of chat transactions - have both increased. According to the 2007 study, 12.8 percent of this year's respondents indicated that their center handles chat sessions, compared to only 8.7 percent three years ago.

Although only 54.5 percent of these organizations monitored this channel in 2004, 70.3 percent are now monitoring this channel. However, only 27.4 percent of centers that offer Web self-service options take the time to monitor customers' self-service interactions.

Self-service is a great option to afford customers -- after all, we as a society are demanding it. However, our demand for customer service continues to increase as well and companies that fail to recognize this will quickly lose customers to those companies that do.

Monitoring all communication channels does require time and money, but it is well-spent when customers are happy. After all, happy customers are loyal customers.

Source: http://www.callcentersindia.com/

Egypt Attempts to Become a Player in the Call Center Industry

Egypt is looking to make a dent in the international call center market, touting the advantages it holds over call center giant India. There has also been an attempt to convince India to outsource some its already outsourced labor to Egypt as well.

Among the advantages boasted by Egypt are a multilingual workforce, a common time zone with Europe and greater proximity to the United States. Another advantage is superior roads, which allow staff to reach the call centers much easier than in India. The government of Egypt has also established what it calls a “Smart Village” out in the desert. This gated compound is equipped with state of the art technology, and currently houses such industry leaders as Microsoft (News - Alert).

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Web-based software links 'home agents' to call centers

SEIZING on two trends that businesses use to cut costs — outsourcing work and leasing software off the Web — a San Carlos firm has created what you could call a homey offering. And it just might preserve some local jobs.
Contactual Inc. designed a Web-based software to link "home agents" — or employees working from home — into call center operations, replacing the need to physically be at a call center.

With its OnDemand Contact Center software, some clients are choosing to outsource customer service, technical support and telemarketing work to American employees' living rooms rather than to India or Ireland.

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Call Centers Continue to Struggle with Attrition

The call center industry caused a significant stir when it looked to offshore outsourcing as a way to cut costs. These organizations found that overseas workers were not only skilled and educated, they could speak English well and were willing to work for much less than their U.S. counterparts.

The industry is facing a changing market, however, and English-speaking and competent workers willing to put in the long hours necessary to fulfill the role of the call center agent is starting to diminish, forcing call centers to re-examine their compensation packages.

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Work at home call center home business Plan

Stressed out from employed at eerie call building or maybe even at your regular job hours, having the feeling to be at home and pay the time that you indeed need for yourself, and yet vexed approaching how the income will come in since you need a good bank equilibrium to presence at home and comforting for a bit. There is no need to worry now for there is a new line of work before you for you it's entitled the "work at home call center" jobs.

Can you just make up, no more supervisor to report to, no more successively and whoosh around to complete responsibilities at home and at work, and yet earning the financial capital that all of us necessitate so much. Can't presume this, can you? But this is what the new at work fad get to you in the form of work at home opening.

Work at home jobs are varied in number appeal to the every single skill and realization base and even for who have no prior capability at in work. On such at home work opportunity lays the new form of home based call centre vehicle. You no stretched need to work those peculiar hours adjourn out of the comforts of your home now you possibly will do the call center work from the comfortable surroundings of your home . Sounds good doesn't it!

These work at home call center jobs not only give you the feeling of ease of working from your home but also offer the flexibility in terms of hours and they also pay your worth. There are a lot of out sourcing firms that are in the market to employ individuals ready to give their services and work as call agents from home it's only a matter of some research and you could have plenty of them asking to work for you. The home based call center job will not only bring in the financial resources you require but will also help you relieve the stress that you would normally undergo from your regular job.

Its time you give yourself a break and reason of taking up a call center job that ought to lead you out of a tense life and be the cause of you the amusement of animation at home in accumulation to it give you the ready cash that you are valuable of earning. Hence its time you gave it held and for yourself and that home which you so fondly invent for yourself and your private.

About the Author
Robert Woods specializes in helping people find the best work at home business opportunities available. Visit Robert's Work at Home Business Opportunities site for details. Don't reprint this article. Instead, reprint a free unique content version of this same article.

Source : http://www.goarticles.com/

Indian call center lands in Ohio

More foreign companies are finding that hiring Americans offers distinct advantages, reports Fortune's Jia Lynn Yang.

It would be easy to imagine Reno, Ohio, as the type of place that would be hit hardest by outsourcing - a small American town losing out to the invisible hand shifting jobs to places like Bangalore and Guangzhou. Instead, outsourcing is bringing the jobs to Reno. Across the street from an Army Reserve center and next to a farm, a customer-service call center hums, its 250 workers answering phones for online travel agency Expedia. The center's owner? Indian conglomerate Tata Group.

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Call center outsourcing: the cost of an empty seat

Ken Carlon of Optima explains how increasing occupancy in a call center can be a key to increasing income.

For outsourcers it's generally utilization in terms of occupancy. There is a false economy that can be created around profitability by client where an outsourcer may generally feel, in order to be profitable, they need to charge a certain amount per hour.

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Promoting Local Call Centers: Xenophobia or Good Business?

Several British companies, including energy supplier Powergen and financial services company NatWest, are promoting the fact that they only use call centers based in the UK, reports CIO Today. So is this xenophobia or just good business?

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Indian telemarketing professionals

When we concern about Indian Call Centers and Employee working there, one intimation directly towards the charmed skin guys. Yes, They all are coming from the North East Indian States. Ever you attend any glance on this calculation? I am saying it is true at least for Indian national capital city New Delhi. Similarly this sour is also going towards other cities also letting them out for other countries too. So the Call Centers are like a boon for all these guys.

There are stark differences among the eight northeastern States with respect to their resource endowments, levels of industrialization, as well as infrastructural facilities. The economy of all these States remains underdeveloped and primarily agrarian with very weak industrial sectors and inflated service sectors. The industrial sector has mainly developed around tea, oil, timber in Assam and mining saw mills and plywood factories in other parts of the region.

These states are far away from our Metropolitan Cities and if we want much luxury should find there sorry. Rather students during schooling get much similar English there what is popular in USA and Europe also their accent is being similar. They also believe in self-dependent tradition.

Now, suppose a boy has finished his schooling belongs to North East States. If he thinks to get some higher education may be college or other than college what he can do? See, he is trying to shift in any metropolitan city. He migrates from his native place. Comes to Delhi. Reaching there, gets he can solve one of his problem here that is higher education. Unlike their states gets some conditional puzzles like language, atmosphere, Infrastructure. Being in touch with other migrated peoples he mould himself for the new challenge. He found here much difference in earnings also. Left the rest part, being an independent he tries to get job here to run his life with appropriate education. Finally decide to be set in Call Center Industry.

So we can say these students are trump card for Call Center industries. They are taking part in the growth of City indirectly targets our country development. We know here in India better chances for a good BPO. One who wants to rum a call center here founds cheap manpower, well educated youngsters, best infrastructure and one most prominent thing honesty. All are helpful for growing customer care outsourcing services. That is the reason most of US & European Call Center looking India for their new branch.

About the Author
Mridhu is the author of Indian Telemarketing Professionals.She was inducted into this profession just three years back.

Article Source : http://www.goarticles.com/