The Indian contact center market is among the fastest growing markets. How would you describe the transition?
The Indian market is maturing faster than any other market elsewhere. Now the emphasis of Indian contact centers is more on quality rather than quantity. It is also encouraging to note that the contact centers in India are early adopters of emerging technologies and they are at par with contact centers in other matured markets, say in Europe and North America. Secondly, the domestic market for contact centers is literally exploding. The domestic contact center market growth is easily surpassing the growth of the BPO industry here, as BPOs in India are now reaching a mature level. This is a good sign as it indicates the huge potential of serving the Indian customers.

What makes the domestic market click here and what are the main verticals leading the way in domestic contact centers?
Part of the reason for the domestic market boom is the fact that Indian companies servicing India are now using support as a differentiator. How they service their customer has become very important to them. They may not be able to differentiate on the price but definitely on the support part of it. We have seen this trend occur in other markets but in India, it is maturing much faster than it ever matured in the European or the American market. The major segments that are tapping the domestic market are typically financial and banking institutes, communications industry and manufacturing to some extent, who value servicing their customers a lot.

Although the Indian market has shown remarkable growth in recent years, how far is it from being a good example of a matured market?
I would say India is still in the early stages of being a mature market. Having said that its important to note that there are several established contact centers in India that are extremely high on maturity and quality levels. Compared to the time taken by the European and the American contact center markets, India is learning very fast and catching up quickly with the mature markets.

What are some of the emerging technologies being accepted rapidly in Indian contact centers?
We find the acceptance of solutions for contact center like workforce management, performance management solutions, SIP and VoIP applications gaining. Also, unlike other markets, India has been quick in adopting unified solutions.

Another area that is emerging is the acceptance of speech recognition solutions. We now have contact centers that support services in more than ten languages. This is widely being used in banking, aviation sector and communications industry. This feature is useful for a country like India where customer base is diverse in terms of language usage.

Which industries are lagging behind in modernizing or accepting contact centers?
Typically, it's the healthcare industry and government agencies that are not emphasizing on refreshing its contact center technology. Primarily, it is because these are not consumer specific or commercial entities. These sectors will definitely pick up but at a different rate.

What negative factors should India look out for and fix in order to continue the growth momentum?
One of the key issues that has the potential to hold back the growth is lack of basic infrastructure-whether it is telephone infrastructure, network, the Internet, power or building. If any of these are not in place and aren't reliable, it can lead to a slowdown of contact center growth. The high attrition rate is another concern. The observations are that attrition rate in some contact centers run as high as 100%. However, this is characteristic of any emerging market and it will stabilize as India matures. The contact centers are also facing a talent crunch. As the market is still hot, finding the right talent, training and retaining them is a big challenge.

Malovika Rao
malovikar@cybermedia.co.in