The Hindu Business Line : 24x7 on major expansion drive, plans global delivery centres

A BUSINESS process outsourcing (BPO) services provider, 24x7 Customer, has charted out a major expansion plan that includes setting up centres in Hyderabad and Chennai and global delivery centres later this year.

This move would involve a significant ramp up of the company's headcount from the current 4,300 to 7,000, while actually growing at compounded annual growth rate of about 100 per cent.

The Founder and Chief Operating Officer, Mr Shanmugam Nagarajan, told Business Line that the company has carved a niche for itself by offering integrated customer lifecycle management services. "Most Fortune 500 companies prefer such an offering and this is where we are different from other service providers."

"We have decided to set up one additional centre in Hyderabad and Chennai. While the Bangalore operations would be consolidated into two major centres from the present four, the existing centres in Hyderabad and Chennai would continue. Initially, in Hyderabad, we plan to locate an incubation centre and move to a larger facility later this year," he said.

"Some of the Fortune 500 companies prefer an onsite centre or a combination of offsite and near- shore centre. Therefore, we are in the process of zeroing on what we call global delivery centres. When customers want such a service, we have decided to offer them by locating them as per convenience. Even if this means slightly higher cost, we do not mind it," Mr Nagarajan said.

"Attrition has been a major problem for the BPO industry and losing trained experts is a matter of concern. There are instances of pretty high attrition, but 24x7 has managed to keep it low at 30 per cent. However, we are trying to cut it down further to less than 10 per cent," he said.

On recent reports about some call centres facing problem callers; Mr Nagarajan said, "Often such an issue is magnified. There may be some instances of such an issue cropping up. But often this is not presented in the right perspective. Even if this were true, such an issue is not related to just BPO, it could apply to any other business and needs to be understood in the right perspective."

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