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Pune: August 10, 2008: A twenty-two year-old call center employee was allegedly raped by a cab driver in Pune while driving.
Bengaluru: December 18, 2005: A twenty-four year-old woman employee of HP BPO in the city was sexually assaulted and murdered by a cab driver, and the news has sent shock waves across the country.
New Delhi: December 16, 2005: An employee of a BPO firm was picked up from home by a company cab driver and taken her to an isolated place. He allegedly raped her, and later killed her.

These news shocked the nation. The growing number of such incidents, which was not limited to any particular geography, put the question mark on the security of the call center employees. After a couple of incidents, the BPOs started looking for fleet management solutions for their staff. Installing GPS and walkie-talkies were some of the steps they undertook. But somewhere the solutions were lagging, as they were of no help for a employee to flag in office, in case of trouble.

Panic button is one solution that completes the vehicle tracking and security system. The solution serves as an effective deterrent to a driver's misbehavior by providing extra security, and alarms the call center control room.

Panic Button?
The vehicle mounted radio in the call center car is connected to the 'panic button' mounted centrally on the cab's ceiling, which is accessible to all occupants of the car. A red LED is installed on the button. If the LED light is switched on it means it is working. If it is not, the employees are advised not to board the vehicle as the set up may have been tampered with. In case of driver's misbehavior or distress, the employee in the car needs to press the panic button for a minimum duration of about 5-10 seconds. No sooner than this is done, the control room of the call center receives the 'panic alert' on the designated radio.

A horn alert is activated, signaling the advent of an emergency. The horn continues to blow for a duration of 1-30 seconds, which is programmable. The radio's display will show the identity of the vehicle from which the panic alert originated. The horn alert and display of emergency vehicle ID will override any conversations happening on the control room or vehicle radio. The radio in the car will stay in the automatic transmit mode for a designed duration, during which all conversations happening within the car shall be heard or recorded (on a digitized voice recorder) at the control room radio.

After a brief rest from transmitting, the radio in the car will again send the emergency message to the control room, blowing the horn alert once again and display the vehicle ID on the radio, besides transmitting all the conversations happening in the car.

However, one has to ensure that any deliberate damage to the panic button in the vehicle can cause the panic alert to be sent. Many BPOs in the country have found the panic button to be an extremely good deterrent to driver's misbehavior, besides increasing the confidence and security level provided to employees.

"The vehicle mounted walkie-talkies have an excellent and strong street level coverage across the entire city. Congestion free network, instant communication, even during peak hours or festive seasons, it is the only technology meeting the critical needs of broadcast communication or one-to-many mode of communication, hands-free communication for drivers, loud and clear communication even in a noisy street," says Manoj Kottil, COO, Arya Omnitalk.

The panic button on walkie-talkies is used in BPO vehicles for employee's transportation. It is also important to note that walkie-talkies have been used in such cabs since 2000-2001. The panic buttons have been developed as an add on to those existing communication solutions, he adds.

The Trend
Panic button is seeing a good demand among BPOs concerned about the security of their staff. At present, around 4,500 panic buttons are being used by the BPO industry, as per an estimate. The figure will grow manifold in a few years, keeping in view the security needs for human resources. The industry people think that the market is still in its nascent stage in India.

"The market is still in a nascent stage for panic button (or devices with panic alert features), but it's growing rapidly. People's awareness of these devices are growing. Further, more marketing will get more users to be aware, rising issues such as security and health hazards, small device farm factors (to be able to easily carry and install) and a good cellular network coverage across the country will drive the growth," says Rohan Verma, director, MapmyIndia. The company has recently made an entry into GPS enabled vehicle tracking system.

"The security of resources is one of the key concerns for us, especially women. This has led to the installation of panic buttons in our fleet," says Ram Chandra, manager facility and operations, HP Global e-Business Solutions. The BPO has installed panic button in all its 230 vehicles. So far, we have not witnessed any incident where an agent had to use the panic button, he adds.

By integrating GPS with the panic button, BPOs can track the car in which an alert has been made. Almost every single minute of the cab journey-after the panic button has been pressed-can be tracked. This will continue for as long as the panic event lasts or the default time limit, if set. All the location updates shall also get recorded in the database of the fleet vigil server.

Challenges
The demand for panic button solution or any other safety device took a major dent from October-November 2008. Most BPOs were on a cost-cutting drive, and safety was put outside the window. 100% compliance for any of the transport safety norms were not being enforced, some BPOs were willing to even compromise for 50% compliance for safety norms. They were more concerned about cost reduction on employee transportation. The other thing which came in the way of such deployments is the frequent change in shift and exit of BPO vehicles. As per an industry estimate, almost 60% of the vehicles are changed or dropped in every quarter.

Further, demand for such solutions were seen to be event based. Any recent gruesome event has been seen to have its impact for only a couple of weeks. Lot of compromises on safety standards are seen now, especially a compromise on safety over cost.

"In the last three months, there has been a serious revival in the interest of such safety solutions. BPOs have again started their discussions, and some organizations are on the verge of finalizing some. Today's trend is that BPOs are looking for the latest safety and communication solutions," concludes Kottil.

Akhilesh Shukla
akhileshs@cybermedia.co.in

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