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Ashwini Phadnis
Moumita Chatterjee Bakshi

New Delhi, Oct 7 The interest of leading BPO companies in taking on the call centre work of Air India appears to be waning. The airline has received bids from about six vendors including Omnia, Sparsh, InterGlobe, Firstsource and Gujarat-based Azure. This is a far cry from 16 BPO companies that attended the pre-bid conference held in Mumbai last month.

Industry sources told Business Line that vendors who are learnt to have dropped out of the race include Infovision and Quatrro, among others. “The companies have submitted their technical and price bids, and they will now be evaluated on the basis of technical criteria,” the source said.

The move to have an integrated contact centre comes as the newly merged airline looks to expand its wings both globally and domestically. Air India, the new name given to the airline created by merging Indian and Air India, operates to 120 destinations in India and abroad with an annual passenger carriage of more than 14 million. It plans to increase operations within India, UK, Europe, Canada, and Gulf apart from expanding its flights to new routes in Australia, South Africa and South America.

The pre-qualification criteria require the vendor to have existing contact centre in Mumbai or Delhi for providing various services to the airline customers. For out-bound services, the service provider would look at pre-flight and post-flight checks, initiate calls for flight delays through multiple channels (SMS, IVRS and calls), and provide tele and direct marketing of NACIL products.

Other requirements include payment gateway for revenue collection and disaster recovery solutions.

“The service providers have been asked to give details of existing and new solutions for revenue collection towards the sale of tickets through these call centres,” sources said.

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