List of Articles

Know All About The Call Centre Business
By - Sandeep Tapaswi

With 2 new call centers arriving on Pune’s horizon, it is time that Puneaites familarize with Call centre operations and the entrepreneurial and employment opportunities.

WHAT IS A CALL CENTRE
Much has been heard recently about Call Centres. The main business of a Call Centre is to attend customer calls. These calls are not made in person but through internet and can be Voice, Web Chat or E-mail. A call centre agent, also called as Customer Service Representative / Executive, has to have the expertise in dealing effectively with the client in one or all the above types of calls. The main areas in which a call centre operates are Sales Support, Complaint Handling, Technical Queries, Customer Relationship, Accounts Management, Lead Generation and follow up, Telemarketing, Credit and Billing problems, Market Research and Database Development.

WHY CALL CENTRES ARE IMPORTANT
Business Imperatives
Everybody understands that customer service and eventual retention of the customer is of utmost importance in business today. Companies also come up with various schemes and discount offers which need to be properly communicated to the customer. Such aspects have made the customer contact operation very sensitive and vital to the business. The skills and volume of efforts required to effectively achieve this objective has led to the emergence of a specialized call center industry.

Cost Imperatives
The management guru C. K. Prahlad has introduced the theory of outsourcing non core competencies in order to improve focus on core competencies. Outsourcing also reduces costs. Most private insurance companies and cellular operators have outsourced their customer service operations in India, for better quality at lesser costs.

The International Angle
Due to the advances in telecommunication, attending calls in India from International customers has become very much feasible and convenient. Call centre agents operating from Indian soil can, economically, attend to customer queries from across the globe. Consequently, Indian call center industry has gained a lot of importance and it now looks at global markets for its operations.

Unique features of an International call centre

  1. Agents work during the night or odd hours to cater to calls made (during their day times) from around the globe. Most call centres have US clients because of the favourable 12 hour difference, but some call centres also cater to clients in Europe and Australia.
  2. The entire operation is tremendously cost effective. To give an example, the annual cost to company, in US dollars, to have a Customer Service Executive operate in USA is around 50,000 compared to 5,000 (including the telecommunication costs) when outsourced to India.
  3. Due to the 10 fold cost benefits, Indian companies have tremendous growth opportunities.
  4. Potential to tap other opportunities like business process outsourcing for international customers also exists.

TYPES OF CALL CENTRES
 Domestic / International
This is the simplest distinction depending on the client profile. Whereas a domestic call center caters to Indian clients, an international call center caters to International clients.

Inbound / Outbound
 Whereas Outbound call centers make outgoing calls for follow up on enquiries worldwide, Inbound call centres attend Inbound calls relating to customer queries on a product or service.

Captive Inhouse / Outsourced Bureau
 Many Call centers are operated by large airlines, banks, mutual funds, telecom services, IT product companies, among others. These organisations have set up call centers for their inhouse captive needs. Examples are British Airways, GE, HSBC, Delloite etc..
Third party call centers provide service to their clients and are refererred to as Outsourced Bureaus. Daksh, Cybiz, Global, Epicenter are the leading outsourced call centres.

Delivery channel
The delivery channel or mode of customer interaction e.g. Voice, E-mail, Chat, Web Call back, Web Call through, WAP, Web collaboration, Touch screen etc. is another way of differentiating call centres.

Call centers for specific verticals (specific Industries)
Some Call Centers focus on specific verticals eg. Cellular handset manufacturers, Banking, Insurance etc.. The executives in such centres have to be well versed with the domain knowledge of these areas. For example, the executives working with a help desk for a cellular handset manufacturer will have to be in a position to answer technical queries from handset users. Naturally, Call Centers focussing on specific verticals operate in a niche market and can target higher margins. Obviously, there is a unique demand for executives in Call Centres operating for specific verticals.

The Indian IT enabled services Industry
Call Center is one of the major services that can be classified as IT enabled services. Some others are listed below

Job and career opportunities in IT enabled services
After the boom of IT services in the mid nineties, IT Enabled Services are going to be the nation’s next driver of growth. Infact the IT enabled services will throw up opportunities in diverse fields from Engineering to Finance to Sales with the main thrust on Service issues. It is of great interest to note that apart from the huge demand for the customer care executives at the working level, new openings are also available at the middle and senior management levels like Team Leaders, Training Managers, Shift Supervisors, Account Managers, Process Analysts etc.

Opportunities for All
The Call Center industry in India is just in the offing and has tremendous growth potential in the coming years. Entrepreneurs and professionals can make the most of this opportunity provided they look little beyond the conventional.

The author is CEO, Fands Infonet Pvt. Ltd. and can be reached at response@fandsindia.com