Thanks to a number of real factors and a little media publicity, the question is no more "whether India?" Just a year back, the emails that Voice&Data received from foreign companies seeking to outsource customer interaction to India were all asking basic questions—about Indian agents’ capability to speak in an American accent, labour laws in India, and sometimes even what ACD/cabling the Indian companies were using !

Not any more.

Not only are they asking the next level of questions, the number of such emails have also multiplied several times. Today, most of the questions are, in the order

• who are the clients? (past record)

• what are the services they are offering at present (experience)

• what do they have (not so much technology but mostly scaleability related)

• and "your opinion about the company" (management team)

Questions that are more for actual decision-making than gathering information.

At any given time, visitors to the contact centers in Delhi and Mumbai are in plenty. The visitors have different profiles—from companies seeking to outsource to India, consultants, and even those wanting to invest. "The phase of exploration is over. It is the beginning of decision making and investment," says one such business visitor.

Investment, yes. Let us talk about the other major change that has happened since last year.

In December 1999-February 2000, Voice&Data had asked about a dozen contact center companies in the US about their plans for India. Most of them were uninterested.

Today, they are all here. Wanting to invest in facilities in India. While most of them do start with a 20/30 seat pilots with an Indian company, few have plans to continue the sub-contracting work. Convergys is setting up on its own. Sitel, West Teleservices, and Stream have opted for joint ventures to tackle the regulatory and bureaucratic problems. While Convergys worked with 24/7 Customer on a pilot basis before deciding to open its own facilities, Stream also worked with Tracmail on a sub contract basis before deciding on the JV. A few others have today sub contracted to Indian companies (See table The Believers).

On the wake of recession in the US market, cost became extremely important and opening facilities in India made tremendous sense. So it is a peculiar situation for Indian companies. While they planned to compete on cost, India’s advantage, the same cost factor, is becoming the major problem for them.

However, that creates an opportunity. With the customer interaction business shifting in a significant way to web, Indian companies can partner with voice call centre companies in the US by offering web-based support to supplement their business.

Whatever strategy they adopt, Indian companies have to learn to build their own USP. They cannot compete on India’s strengths alone. Probably the most significant and radical change in just one year !