Now the call center companies have settled down to do some serious business
and they are getting along well, the focus shifts to the next level. This has
led to the growing importance of call center training companies, organizations
engaged in providing benchmarking services for these centers, besides real
estate and other ancillary services company.
n Recruitment
and Training: The success of call center business in India will depend on
the kind of training that will be available to the call center companies The
pioneers in the field sought to fill the training gap by importing training
tools — that included getting trainers from the US to kick off their
operations. These trainers were flown in to do the needful and needless to say,
they did a fairly good job. But as the capacity of these operations kept
increasing astronomically, the companies are unable to handle on-the-job
training.
Considering that most of the training that is being imparted in the country
is nowhere near the global standards and the fact that there is a great training
divide between what is needed and what is available or delivered, some companies
have tried to fill up the gap.
The need for trained professionals has led to the emergence of two types of
training markets. One, the easy way out was setting up shops to train people to
take up these jobs. Training institutes saw this as an opportunity to fill up
the training gap.
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Amidst all this chaos, the immediate gainers are those companies who are
genuinely serious about paying attention to the whole process of call center
training and wanting to extend their expertise to offer training solutions to
the companies who wanted to setup such centers. These companies strongly object
to being clubbed with the student-training institutes. They say, they are pure
B2B players who offer training solutions to the call centers. They take up the
training responsibilities right from the recruitment process to training,
retraining and continuing education. The Mindbank provides a total recruitment
and training solution to the call center companies in India. Holistic
Enterprises, offers similar solutions to the startup call centers, domestic as
well as international.
Considering the need for manpower development as key critical factor the
success of the fast-growing call center industry, the largest computer training
player in India NIIT, launched its initiative Planetworkz. Planetworkz offers a
three-week certificate course in customer service program to a one-year program
that prepares fresh hires in generic education for an ITeS career.
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Before that Aptech Computer Education had launched its IT Enabled initiative
called ‘Calltech’. Aimed at the Call Center market in India, the course is
designed to provide the required skill-sets to aspiring call center
professionals. Calltech imparts technical and professional training modules for
providing the students with a leading edge. The curriculum has been designed by
industry professionals trained by AT&T and also includes modules by Call
Center and sales experts. The course equips students with all the contemporary
requirements of the industry with a rich training imparted by faculties with
expertise in communication skills training, who are aware of cultural nuances of
different communities. The course targets freshers and working professionals
with positive communication and social skills as well as technical professionals
aspiring to work for the Call centers.
Other players in the field include Holistic, Hero Mindmine, Karrox, Webcom,
STIknowledge. Tata Infotech, primarily an IT education company from the Tata
group has also diversified into the call center training area.
n Certification
and Benchmarking: There has been a sudden spurt in the interest about
getting certified and benchmarked by call center companies, especially
international ones. Surprisingly not a single domestic call center have bothered
to go for certification and benchmarking. According to reports most of the call
centers are facing trouble related to existing standards like ISO 9000 as they
are being taken as being predominantly manufacturing-oriented. There was a
certification and benchmarking gap in the industry which has been very well
fulfilled by COPC, a US-based agency and Jon Anton’s Benchmark Portal, a
Purdue University initiative. QAI (India), has recently started helping Indian
companies in getting offering training, assessment and certification on behalf
of COPC, ISO and Six Sigma.
Importance of Benchmarking
Customer Accessibility: Global competition has reduced organizations'
product/service differentiators and led to significantly greater "customer
focus and accessibility". To improve customer experience, comparing data
points within the organization with competition is important to optimize
resources and achieve business goals efficiently. Benchmarking provides
important information to increase customer experience and reduce cost.
Major Benchmarking and Certification Agencies |
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Purdue University’s Benchmark Portal COPC
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Customer Lifetime Value: To retain customers and enhance 'customer
lifetime value', organizations invest in the research and analysis of customer
behavior. It becomes important to study competition continuously to drive a
differentiation strategy for retaining customers.
Leveraging Best Practices: Studying competitive best practices brings
tactical efficiency. Benchmarking helps leverage best practices where a lot can
be learnt from the competition-the larger the peer group the better the scope
and examples.
Being Globally Competitive: Benchmarking helps understand how similar
companies compete and differentiate themselves in a particular market space if
the right peer group is chosen.
Benefits of Benchmarking
Peer Group Profiling: Peer groups are better defined by industry (e.g.
comparing a bank with another bank) but sometimes organizations may select a
different cut especially if it is to look at the efficiency of a particular
process. Selecting the right peer group is important and comparisons help reduce
barriers to change.
Helps Reach Global Standards: In order that organizations in India
become globally competitive, benchmarking can be an important input in studying
aspirational standards and defining a plan and strategy to achieve the same.
Business and Operational Leverage: Benchmarking is not about
reinventing the wheel–it is a surefire way to learn the way globally
competitive organizations operate in one’s industry space and learn about
global best practices so that mistakes are not repeated. A benchmarking
exercise, followed by regular performance improvement programs and special
initiatives can help organizations see rapid improvements.
Methodology and Use of Data: Benchmarking provides for
best-in-class comparison; helps identify areas of improvement, adaptation and
change; validates business models; clearly identifies opportunities for cost
reduction, and helps understand performance gaps in financial terms.
Benchmarking takes time, effort and dedication and its real results are
apparent over a period of two or more years.
However, the study itself is short and sharp and best conducted in about 1-2
weeks. It needs a multifunctional team to answer the questionnaire and can be
politically sensitive for any organization since it means honestly sharing key
performance data. It also needs strong facilitation skills, both to complete the
exercise and to interpret the results and maximize its intrinsic value.
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