CALL CENTER SERVICES: Moving to the Next Level

Now the call center companies have settled down to do some serious business and they are getting along well, the focus shifts to the next level. This has led to the growing importance of call center training companies, organizations engaged in providing benchmarking services for these centers, besides real estate and other ancillary services company.

n Recruitment and Training: The success of call center business in India will depend on the kind of training that will be available to the call center companies The pioneers in the field sought to fill the training gap by importing training tools – that included getting trainers from the US to kick off their operations. These trainers were flown in to do the needful and needless to say, they did a fairly good job. But as the capacity of these operations kept increasing astronomically, the companies are unable to handle on-the-job training.

Considering that most of the training that is being imparted in the country is nowhere near the global standards and the fact that there is a great training divide between what is needed and what is available or delivered, some companies have tried to fill up the gap.

The need for trained professionals has led to the emergence of two types of training markets. One, the easy way out was setting up shops to train people to take up these jobs. Training institutes saw this as an opportunity to fill up the training gap.

Some Leading Players

Call Center Training Space
Holistic, Hero Mindmine, Planetworkz, Aptech, Karrox, Tata Infotech, Webcom, Call Center College, Saphire Callnet

Certification, Audit, Benchmarking Space
Benchmark Portal (Purdue University) QAI, COPC, TMQI, ThinkHarbor

Real Estate
Jones Lang LaSalle, Richard Ellis, Cushman & Wakefield

Amidst all this chaos, the immediate gainers are those companies who are genuinely serious about paying attention to the whole process of call center training and wanting to extend their expertise to offer training solutions to the companies who wanted to setup such centers. These companies strongly object to being clubbed with the student-training institutes. They say, they are pure B2B players who offer training solutions to the call centers. They take up the training responsibilities right from the recruitment process to training, retraining and continuing education. The Mindbank provides a total recruitment and training solution to the call center companies in India. Holistic Enterprises, offers similar solutions to the startup call centers, domestic as well as international.

Considering the need for manpower development as key critical factor the success of the fast-growing call center industry, the largest computer training player in India NIIT, launched its initiative Planetworkz. Planetworkz offers a three-week certificate course in customer service program to a one-year program that prepares fresh hires in generic education for an ITeS career.

How Benchmarking and certification differ and complement each other...

In a nutshell, an organization needs to do both certification and benchmarking to understand its performance both internally as well as compare it with the competition. Often, benchmarking has an inherent ‘threat’ perception since it means sharing performance data externally but if conducted in a professional manner, can be highly effective. It is common practice to use an external consultant or an industry forum to conduct benchmarking exercises to ensure confidentiality and removal of any organizational biases. Here are some key differences between certification and benchmarking:

Certification is the first milestone in an organization’s performance assessment whereas benchmarking provides a continuous improvement framework, especially from an industry and competition perspective.

Certification initiatives consider cause and effect within processes whereas benchmarking provides a framework for identification of gaps in business strategy within the organization.

Certification frameworks address matrices as operational parameters whereas benchmarking frameworks provide for a better understanding of the financial impact of performance gaps within the organization

Before that Aptech Computer Education had launched its IT Enabled initiative called ‘Calltech’. Aimed at the Call Center market in India, the course is designed to provide the required skill-sets to aspiring call center professionals. Calltech imparts technical and professional training modules for providing the students with a leading edge. The curriculum has been designed by industry professionals trained by AT&T and also includes modules by Call Center and sales experts. The course equips students with all the contemporary requirements of the industry with a rich training imparted by faculties with expertise in communication skills training, who are aware of cultural nuances of different communities. The course targets freshers and working professionals with positive communication and social skills as well as technical professionals aspiring to work for the Call centers.

Other players in the field include Holistic, Hero Mindmine, Karrox, Webcom, STIknowledge. Tata Infotech, primarily an IT education company from the Tata group has also diversified into the call center training area.

n Certification and Benchmarking: There has been a sudden spurt in the interest about getting certified and benchmarked by call center companies, especially international ones. Surprisingly not a single domestic call center have bothered to go for certification and benchmarking. According to reports most of the call centers are facing trouble related to existing standards like ISO 9000 as they are being taken as being predominantly manufacturing-oriented. There was a certification and benchmarking gap in the industry which has been very well fulfilled by COPC, a US-based agency and Jon Anton’s Benchmark Portal, a Purdue University initiative. QAI (India), has recently started helping Indian companies in getting offering training, assessment and certification on behalf of COPC, ISO and Six Sigma.

Importance of Benchmarking