The Hindu Business Line : Boxing Day there, holiday here

IT was curtains for a day for several call centre agents across the country, as the West raised a toast to the holiday season. Many BPO companies closed their outbound processes including collection calls to the US and UK markets which were busy observing Boxing Day.

"Although we are into non-voice processes, as many as 95 per cent of our 800 employees were on an off today, as the operations relating to Financial Services and Mortgages remained closed for a day," Mr Rohit Arora, Chairman of eMR Technology Ventures, said here. The company would also remain closed on January 2.

While it was `work as usual' for bulk of employees of HCL BPO who are involved in 24X7 operations, those who are handling functions such as inbound order taking or outbound collection could breathe easy.

"Majority of our employees are into process such as technical helpdesk and customer service which work across the year. Even e-mail and chat support operations were running as usual today. However, certain US processes involving 30 per cent of our workforce were closed today," Mr Ranjit Narasimhan, President and CEO of HCL BPO, said.

He said the company's operations in Belfast (Northern Ireland) too remained closed for Boxing Day.

For Mumbai-based Epicenter Technologies, outbound voice calls to the UK and Australia including telemarketing and collection calls, remained closed. "As much as 40 per cent of the workforce was on an off today, as our clients in these geographies were not working," Mr Navanit, Chief Operating Officer of the company, said.

Hero-ITES closed only one outbound process pertaining to voice business in the credit cards, while all other processes were fully functional.

"Yesterday, most of our processes were closed and the staffing was low. However, less than 15 per cent of our total employees working on a particular process were given an off today," said Mr Rohit Chanana, Business Head of Hero ITES, adding that some outbound and inbound processes may be closed on December 31.