The Hindu Business Line : Today's crisis, tomorrow's opportunity

Why should the murder of someone working in another BPO firm affect and bother you? Why should the security leak in another company affect your image? And yet, this is precisely what is happening today.

Quo vadis? The BPO industry at large shouldn't have to suffer for the sins of a few of its constituents.

The bad news seems to never end for the BPO industry. The latest scam where an employee of HSBC has been arrested for defrauding 20 London- based customers to the tune of £230,000 has made headlines not only in India but globally as well. Newspapers have been quick to remind the readers lest they forget about the BPO "hall of shame."

Readers are reminded of the scams that occurred in Wipro Spectramind, April 2004, the scam involving M Source April 2005 and close on its heels, the Sun expose in June 2005 where data was sold, creating a furore in the media. Add to this the nightlife stories and the "relaxed" personal value systems of overpaid employees and you get a completely distorted view of the industry, its processes and its people. Looks like the media loves to hate BPO!

Perception is reality

People who are familiar with consumers and brands are familiar with perceptions as well. You may be the most modest individual on the face of the earth but if for some reason the world perceives you as "arrogant" then clearly you will have a problem.

If your brand is seen as "value for money" or "merely functional" then all your attempts to up the image ante will not work. Videocon suffered from this same malady and tried to counter it by coming out with a range of different brands such as Kenstar, Sansui, Toshiba, and so on in India. Such is the power of consumer perception.

The BPO industry, if not at the crossroads on the image front, is certainly at an extremely crucial and vulnerable phase of its evolution. It needs to sit back and evaluate itself before it determines where it can possibly be. It is important for it to understand what its constituents think about it. What do customers, employees, prospective employees and opinion leaders perceive it to be? This is extremely critical today if it is to move forward tomorrow on the image front.

BPO's brand associations

I live in Bangalore which has a fair share of BPO companies. This is a typical conversation that one has heard. "Where do you work?" asks a middle-aged man and a 20-something says "XYZ" (a confusing name, obviously) so by way of clarification the young man says "BPO." The older man says, "Oh, BPO!" I am always intrigued by this response.

The reason for this could be any of the following impressions. "Call Centre", "Are you the silly fellow marketing for that bank?", "You obviously earn a lot and spend most of it at the pub", "Girls are not safe in your industry, are they?" This is one set of unspoken reactions. The other is more knowledgeable! It could include people who have heard of The World is Flat or those who might have even read its first chapter! But what seems apparent to me is that there is a lot of haziness in the minds of people about this industry which surfaces when an incident like the recent, unfortunate one involving HSBC happens. "You mean people can just walk in and walk out with data?" asks someone.

All of these perceptions and half-truths can seriously hurt the industry when a crisis like the recent one strikes. In fact, it would be interesting to do a nodal map of brand associations of the BPO industry.

What do relevant people think it is and what do they know about it? This could be a good first step. I expect interesting facts would come out of this research and people from the industry may be in for some nasty surprises!

Building equity for the industry

The BPO industry has a close association with software. Software giants like Infosys have their own BPO operations.

And the BPO industry needs to go back in time to what the software industry did to become "the industry of choice" to customers, prospective employees and investors. They communicated extensively, some people even said ad nauseam. But they realised their objective.

People like N. R. Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji and the late Dewang Mehta got written about. Several companies like Infosys, Wipro and Satyam became household names. Companies like TCS recruited engineers in droves. Expressions like `ESOPs' and `lock-in period' became part of the average person's vocabulary.

Parents even knew what `sitting on the bench' meant. And while software got recognition and respect both locally and globally, individual firms like Wipro, Infosys and (recently) TCS became major brands. For global recognition, some of them got listed on the Nasdaq or on the New York Stock Exchange.

This, to my mind, is the big challenge. BPO is seen as one big opportunity but beyond that not too much is known about its nuances. Is the fact that there is far more to BPOs than call centres known widely? Is there awareness about the development of knowledge process outsourcing? Is the attrition in the industry really as high as it is made out to be? What are the ranges of assignments that are being done? We know you can't name your client but what is the type of work? What are the security measures that are being adopted to protect the interests of clients and in turn their customers? Who is the champion of the industry who can talk for it and champion its cause and share its concerns? Whilst I do not possess answers to some of these questions, I do hope that the industry's leaders have answers.

More importantly, I hope they will find ways of communicating this to relevant audiences.

Equity for the firm

The recent crisis of the BPO industry and the ones preceding it have had one unfortunate result.

All the companies in the industry have been tarred with the same brush, irrespective of the activity of the individual firm.

And I think there is a great opportunity for a few firms at least to stand out from the crowd. And it is something which is strategically critical for obvious reasons.

Why should the murder of someone working in another BPO firm affect and bother you? Why should the security leak in another company affect your image? And yet this is precisely what is happening today as the BPO industry rides one image crisis after the other. The industry quickly goes into a feverish frenzy of activity, talks about the issue and goes back to business as usual.

And this is the challenge. How does the industry shrug off the crisis of the present and yet think of the future? And the future has to be the collective equity of the industry as well as the individual strength of a few key players.

The time to act is now.

Every crisis represents an opportunity for a brand, whether it is an individual product or an entire industry. The course of action, too, is simple.

Determine your current position.

Understand the opportunities available to you

Realistically estimate where your brand can be in the future

Determine a strategy that is relevant to your business process and that will make you unique

Think long term. Crises will come and go but brands will remain.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is the CEO of Brand-comm.)

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