The Hindu Business Line : `BPO industry should meet customers' expectations'

THE strategies drawn for the Indian BPO industry is often specific to the day and is in response to the changing demands from various geographical locations of the world, Professor Harsh Bhargav of IBS Hyderabad said.

Speaking at the National Conference on `India - The Processing Office to the World', organised by the ICFAI Business School, Kochi, he cited the instances of floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters, and how the BPO industry kept on working even in the face of these calamities.

The calamities have also brought to the fore, the need for the customer services industry to react fast. There is also a need to develop the overall quality of service as well as the need to meet the expectations and perceptions of customers on different parameters.

The theme behind the conference was to create the awareness that BPO business is not confined to call centres, but extends to back office opportunities in valuation, credit rating, insurance claims, processing, mutual funds, mortgage, education, printing, publishing, employee compensation and other welfare measures.

The conference was of the view that the sunrise industry of BPO in India has to be academically supported for addressing the shortage of middle level managers and also in reducing the levels of attrition. In his felicitation address, Mr Priyaranjan Jha, Vice-President of GENPACT said that misconception about BPO as a call centre needs to be dispelled and the industry needs to rediscover itself.

Mr Andrew Winston, Head of IT Infrastructure at HCL Technologies dealt at length on the requirements for developing IT infrastructure, on optimising and redesigning of infrastructure to reduce cost and provided an insight on data security and disaster management recovery.

He also spoke about the challenges related to managing infrastructure.

Speaking at the last session of the conference, Mr Damodar Menon, Head NS&I and BITES Project, Siemens India related each theory in behavioural science/Human Resource management to an event in the BPO process, starting from interview, induction, training and development, career growth and exit stages.