People is something that India has plenty of. In India, people will regard this as career, unlike the US. These may be good points to highlight while selling to international customers. But the reality is that large pool of potential CSRs have to be trained to work as CSRs.

Is anyone doing that? Not a single contact center company misses to mention about their "excellent" training facility. But the fact is that these training programs are skill enhancements. They are not people development.

Any employer runs skill enhancement programs. But if this industry wants to really compete in the international market, the manpower has to be developed.

Here we are not talking of the training of agents in a call centre but preparing graduate students to be confident enough to speak in English and more importantly, infuse a sense of customer service in their minds which is absent in India.

The private institutes that have mushroomed, have a long way to go. "One doubts whether they will ever be able to fill the gap," says a management consultant. "It is not accent or a few American expressions that is important. It is a sense of urgency to genuinely feel about satisfying a customer."

Today, the recruitment strategy of most contact centers is simple: poaching. The trend started by a few big companies who initially poached from whatever small number of domestic call centers existed, has really caught on.

Unless an effort, either by the industry or by the government—ideally jointly—is made, this is likely surface as the most severe problem.

• The Professionals

• Who's Who

• The Battle for Location

Shyamanuja Das