The Hindu Business Line : Youth take the call

Near the Pacific Coast, a corporate honcho can breathe easy. His company's financial statement reads like a fairytale ending, as customer service and payroll administration have turned out much cheaper.

So, who are the cost-busting folks behind the scenes?

Far away in the Indian sub-continent, a curious mix of go-getters work odd hours and do business with gusto.

Global village calls

A Boston-based businessman calls customer service to install his software. The call gets directed halfway across the globe to Chennai where Chitra, a customer service executive, introduces herself as "Lizzie" and answers the caller's technical queries in a neutral accent. It's past midnight, but Chitra continues to handle more American customers with oodles of tact. As the voice auditor monitors the call, she must ensure that there's no `dead air' during the telecon.

"In a BPO company, you don't have to work too hard, but you have to work smart," quips Chitra, who joined the call centre right after her graduation. Despite the late working hours, the job made her competent in meeting targets. The literature graduate has also been trained to tackle cross-cultural issues. "We had a communication class in our company and learnt that some of the international clients can be sarcastic to the core."

Deepak, a process associate at Allsec, is also gung-ho about the international exposure offered at call centres. For the level headed post-graduate, switching over to his alter ego `Tim' at work is not much of a strain. "My team members and I work as a family, while trying to stay on target," he declares.

With a chequered background in hotel management, sales and hardware, he is keen on working his way up in the company. However, Deepak feels that the call-centre bubble may burst in a few years and he's saving most of his earnings. Ashokan Pichai, Head of Ma Foi Training Academy, points out that his students intend joining call centres to kick-start their careers and seldom think of blowing up future earnings on parties or other indulgences.

"What you see is what you get," is the apt one-liner for call centres. Targets reached by an associate are displayed on a notice board and if he/she makes a record sale, team members are more than willing to give kudos. The BPO associate's performance is rated by three benchmarks: meeting expectations (ME), exceeding expectations (EE) and outstanding expectations (OE). "There are strong quality and service level metrics (for the call centre), which are maintained for ensuring customer satisfaction," explains Anu Sharma, Head-HR, iGATE Global Solutions. Appraisals are frequent in most call centres, and if the customer executive exceeds expectations, the rewards are on a platter, ranging from gift vouchers to salary hikes.

Some of the fresh graduates, who are well placed in call centres, are not swept away by the perks and they want to make the best of their early stints. "I'm having a hands-on experience in dealing with customers," affirms Deepa, who is working on an offshore project for a UK-based bank. The 20-year-old is well versed with factoring accounts and she's also pursuing her masters in human resource management. "The on-shore trainers and our team leaders motivate us a lot," she says.

Zeroing on opportunities

Quite a few HR professionals seem optimistic about the opportunities that BPO companies offer to young Turks. "A graduate gets a well paying job, works for a couple of years, earns a decent amount of money, gains confidence, learns the importance of customer service, develops superior communication and problem resolution skills, and is more mature to make a career choice of his liking," says N. Raghuram, Head-HR, SlashSupport, a tech support company.

Vacancies lie tucked away in the less glamorous offshoots of outsourcing such as medical transcription (MT). "The segment has a lot of potential for youngsters who want to use their listening skills," says Praveen Padmanabhan, the Production Manager at Swins Ifosys, a Chennai-based MT company. A graduate joining an MT company starts on an equal footing with his counterpart in most other BPO segments. After getting a hang of the mid-western lingo and the Texan drawl, a transcriptionist races against time to process audio files (600-700 minutes long) in eight hours. "Every single line that is typed should satisfy the client," stresses Padmanabhan, who has been in the business for seven years. The transcriptionist's work is expected to be 98-99.5 per cent accurate and measure up to the Six Sigma quality benchmark.

Though MT also has its share of night shifts and real time work, it gives youngsters a chance to work in the comfort of their own home. In fact, some companies also offer loans to HBTs (home-based transcriptionists) to buy PCs. "Home offices and flexi-timing are giving MTs an edge over other BPO segments," points out Padmanabhan, adding that there's a shortage of 1,000-2,000 transcriptionists in Chennai and about 3,000 in Bangalore.

Low-margin outsourcing firms are also wooing young professionals. After an MBA and a short stint in a retail chain, Sukanya is a business manager in a BPO publishing unit. She is keen to use her marketing skills and fluency in French and Italian while dealing with European clients. "This job is more of a stepping stone rather than an end in itself," she says. The determined 20-something plans to spend her savings on an executive programme or a Ph.D. abroad.

Without the pressure of real time deadlines or night shifts, Anne, a project manager in a BPO unit, edits encyclopaedias and textbooks for leading publishing houses such as Wiley, Pearson and Prentice-Hall. With a background in media studies, she hopes to carve out a niche for herself in the publishing industry.

Fun vs. attrition

It's no secret that attrition is a bugbear for most BPO units. Allsec's Deepak points out that 100 to 200 people leave the company every month in search of greener pastures. As a result, HR managers are doing their bit to retain talent pools. "Retention is a key focus area and we manage it through several HR programmes ranging from skill enhancement to fun@work activities," explains iGate's Anu Sharma. Some of the activities include distance-learning programmes, internal job posting and close interaction with the senior management.

Slashsupport too has a reward and recognition system and a technical skills enhancement programme in place. "We believe in setting people's expectations right, even at the time of interview. It is important to select the right profile of technology enthusiasts and provide them with adequate training programmes to scale them up to team leaders," points out Raghuram of SlashSupport.

Job-hopping within the BPO sector is driving up attrition rates, due to which companies are going in for anti-poaching agreements. Such contracts prevent new entrants in the BPO space from hiring employees from other BPOs. D. Rajiv Krishnan, CEO of Ma Foi Outsourcing Ltd, explains that call centre associates are in high demand because of their proficiency in spoken English, which is hard to train, and they are constantly in search of a higher pay. Staff turnover rates are higher in call centres than in transaction-based BPOs, as many call centre associates cannot cope with night shifts, he adds.

Ma Foi Academy's Ashokan has a more pragmatic take on work-related stress in BPOs. "Youngsters should not walk into BPOs with stars in their eyes. Freshers have to orient themselves to the organisation's needs and adjust their schedules." The academy also administers a 16PF psychometric test for its candidates to find out whether a BPO/ITES job will suit their temperament.

Certain companies, on their part, have realised that CFOs (chief fun officers), a campus-like ambience and part-time MBAs alone cannot be the magic wands to de-stress employees. Instead, they give candidates a reality bite and tell them about the hardships in BPO set-ups. "The main thing is that many of the older paradigms are being re-looked at. Rather than sugar-coating the pill, companies are working to create an acquired taste so that employees do not come face to face with the bitter truth," says Ma Foi's Krishnan.

With BPO workers defying time zones to interact with clients worldwide, a Pandora's box of psychological issues and ailments is opening up. On the brighter side, youngsters in BPOs are perked up by the rewards, appraisals and fun-at-work activities. "The key result-area targets and incentives really motivate employees and this leads to eustress (a positive form of stress)," explains Dr Sangeetha Madhu, a clinical psychologist.

She finds that some BPO employees even have the emotional maturity to straddle a US-centric culture at work and a traditional set-up at home. "The youth in the BPO segment are very enthusiastic and they have a need to achieve."

Ma Foi's Krishnan likens the ITES-outsourcing boom with the industrial revolution in the 19th century. "In call centres, employees are sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for the next customer whose call is routed to them. Things have come full circle; your customer now determines the speed at which you work," he says.

Innovation is key

Professionals in their mid-20s are drawn to back-office operations and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). After completing a master's programme in international finance in the UK, Govind headed back to India to join an outsourcing firm as a financial analyst. A semi-formal back-office set-up is a far cry from a youth-centric call centre. However, most of Govind's colleagues are his contemporaries and the office environment is congenial. "My American boss told me to call him by his first name Joe," he says.

As a financial analyst, Govind works on balance sheets and company profiles for corporate clients. Though there are real time duties and occasional night shifts, his tasks are more complex than those of call centre workers or medical transcriptionists. "New BPOs are typically in processes, which are higher in the value chain. A lot of design and research work is getting outsourced. So stereotypes of BPOs being synonymous with call centres are changing," explains Krishnan.

Indira, an ICWA, is enjoying her work in the back-office branch of a multinational bank in Chennai. She interacts with clients, including some high networth individuals, based in Singapore and the UK. "I'm having a better exposure to international banking practices," she says. Young bankers in the organisation are also enthused by the performance-based incentives.

Innovative HR practices and job rotations are on the cards at BPOs, which are intent on making back-office jobs less monotonous. Job rotations cutting across geographies, processes and functions are catching up. "Companies can move associates from finance to marketing or even across industry verticals," suggests Krishnan.

The BPO segment itself is still nascent but it has a lot more to offer freshers and seasoned professionals now. "We expect this (BPO) to become the career pattern for a vast majority of the labour pool in India in the next 5-10 years," foresees SlashSupport's Raghuram.

Despite the competition from South-East Asian and Latin American countries, India can notch up a higher growth in outsourcing with its English-speaking population and skilled manpower. In the meantime, outsourcing firms have to get cracking on smart HR strategies and creative back-office work.

Picture by Shaju John

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