Focused Education For Call Center Jobs

The rise in the volume of call center job requirements has made it necessary to provide the right training and education required to succeed in this field. Taking this into consideration, an Indian University is planning to start a diploma course catering to the booming call center industry. This program will train students from across the country to successfully carry out a BPO job. This will be a major step in providing quality human resource to a sector achieving immense growth and showing huge potentiality.

The program will admit high school pass-outs and provide intensive training, thus minimizing the training prevalently done by the BPO firms themselves. The course hopes to create a pool of call center professionals who will handle the BPO jobs better. The course, apart from imparting basic technical and communication skills will also offer specializations in certain areas of finance, customer care, health care etc. The university will provide learning materials ranging from printed manuals to web-based interactive labs.

BPO Race Heats Up

The competitiveness of the BPO market is expected to increase amidst the global economic slowdown, as per published reports. Firms are already looking for ways to consolidate and some giants are planning for mergers. Analysts are predicting an increase in the process of mergers and acquisitions in the BPO industry.

Another term doing the rounds in this industry is “Globalization”. Talks about India losing its edge in the world market to China are gaining some momentum. But even Indian firms are not sitting back. They are investing heavily in Chinese and Japanese markets to gain a foothold. The debates about the competency of the Indian and Chinese BPO firms are heating up as there is wide-spread speculation about China outrunning India by 2012. The future holds the key for many Indian firms as they prepare for battle. Nevertheless, it is imperative that globalization has awakened many nations to the prospect of outsourcing boom.

Online Support Caters To Customer Care

We’ve all used online chat support or email support services for our queries. But we need to ponder on the actual utilization of these customer services. Let us first clarify that chat support or email support is not for those who has technical queries or queries which require some time to get solved. Industries which can best use this service include telecommunications and online retailers.

The need for these services depends on the complexity and urgency of a query a company may experience. Chat support or email support service in BPO generally caters to those queries which are simple and takes very little time to get solved. In order to best utilize the services offered by an online support you need to keep your account information ready before you contact the support person. So, we must acknowledge the fact that companies are coming up with outsourced technical support options to help its customers and that alone speak volumes about its commitment and dedication to the betterment customer care.

Advantages Of Business Process Outsourcing

For any business the main focus is to battle rising costs and provide quality services to their customers. Through business process outsourcing companies can offload their non-core business functions and concentrate on their core businesses. This results in better productivity and increased revenue.

This has resulted in more companies opting for outsourcing in BPO companies for both high end and low end jobs. This means that more specialty BPO companies are entering the market making the task of the clients easier and simpler. These are following points that drive companies to outsource their business.

The first factor is cost effectiveness. The back office operations of a company like customer service, accounts, HR are important areas that can be handled by BPO specialist. Most of the like to outsource these services so that they can concentrate on core business functions. The other advantages associated with outsourcing are economy of scale, business risk mitigation, utilization improvement and superior competency.

Tips To Motivate BPO Employees

Everyday the call center managers face a tough time to keep their morale high to motivate call center agents. Motivation is an important tool to the sprinkle the salt of enthusiasm in a BPO team. There are many ups and downs through which a call center goes. Even during these times they have to keep their spirits high and blend a feeling of smile in their voice. It is not the face but the voice that the customers hear; therefore a gloomy voice can drive away a prospective customer.
Working in call center can be extremely stressful and therefore one has to keep the team motivated at any cost. A miserable call center employ can lead towards low productivity and high attrition rate. A call center agent is continuously expected to perform well and act in courteous manner. Incentives, raises and bonuses can be short term motivating tips but they are losing their importance in the frontline.
There are various other tools which can be adopted by call center managers to motivate their teams. It does not cost many resources too. The agents can be recognized for their excellent job done. The kudos give to call center employees will not help to perform better but also keep them motivated throughout their working hours.

BPO Service For Competent Solution

BPO services are now getting engaged with both inbound and outbound business process activities to fund organizations with potential solutions. In fact, BPO companies are one of the most versatile solution providers who not only reduce process expenditure but also increase the efficiency of specific domains assigned to them.

To survive in this competitive market every organization need group of talents, supporting infrastructure and high level of precision and to achieve all these it is quite imperative to have latest technological application at every aspect. This is the requirement where BPO services actually steps in.

BPO companies are one of the major supports in global customer related services; especially the product back-ups are dealt most efficiently with professional BPO experts. Besides, transactional processing, inbound and outbound activities, financial analysis and advisory, travel queries etc. are few of the major services provided by a competent BPO company to their clients.

Medical transcription: Booming BPO Service

Medical transcription is also known as MT and it is related to health profession. It deals in the process of transcription and converting voice recorded reports dictated by physicians or eminent surgeons into a text format. It encompasses the process of document typing and formatting functions according to an established format or requirement.
The current environment of healthcare sector is that even the most established BPO service providers find it challenging to establish their potential and sustainable growth. Through medical transcription one can reduce payroll and operational costs. This also helps them to boost revenue and maximize shareholder value.
Medical transcription is provided to hospitals, healthcare institutions, multi-specialty clinics and physician practices. This BPO service is carried out for the functions like clinical summary, history, physical reports, progress notes, discharge summary, rehabilitation reports, operative reports, patient charts, surgery notes and emergency room reports.
Generally the medical transcription team consists of client account manager, proof reader, editors and tier- 1 transcription. A full medical transcription service from call centers is fast, accurate and secure

Call Center Careers

Call center is one of the hottest career options for youngsters today. With rising competition in various sectors call center industry is not lacking behind. A call center can be defined as place or an office where calls are received and made. It has adequate amount of telecom facilities, wide database and access to the Internet. The services provided in call centers can be voice based or non-voice based. Since it is multi-billion dollar industry there is lot of scope for growth.
Call centers exist in various areas of business like banking, insurance, manufacturing, collections and technical support. Call center is one of the recently introduced career option. Call centers provide wide variety of services like telemarketing, order taking, product inquiry, customer service and technical support. Basically the call centers are of two types these are international and domestic. There is much scope for call center business in India due to high number of English speaking professionals. The main attraction of this industry is that it comparatively pays good wages than any other job and the minimum college level graduates are hired for this. One only needs excellent communication skills and offers excellent facilities like subsidized meals, transport and medical facilities.

Outsource Technical Support For Your Business

Today even small businesses need computers as well different software and various network solutions. Most of the companies do not have technical support in their payroll. Therefore, they need to outsource technical support. If you have just started a BPO business then you must be looking for cost effective means to outsource technical support.
Many BPO companies offer technical support as part of their customer care service to provide assistance for their products or services. This is given rise to many remote computer support companies that provide all types technical assistance. The technical support staff provides assistance through phone, chat or email. The callers have the advantage to cal up at any time of the day. They usually call up through a toll free number, through mail-in-service, an internet bulletin board or through on-site contract. The quality of customer services differs from company to company.
Most of the organizations rely on information that comes via computers. Problems arise when there is system failure or any sort of operator error. The technical support executives ensure that there is smooth running of your computer systems. This way you can get rid of any technical hindrance that comes in way of your business commitments.

Lessons From Poor Customer Services

Customer service is an integral part of purchasing and user experience. It is basically an interaction with customer through which his queries are solved. A good customer service is the part of successful business. Due to this many business work hard to have a good communication with their customers. Today technology has changed the equation of good customer service. Making the right channels to use customer service requires an understanding of tasks and optimizing the use of different channels.
Despite the use of new technologies in BPO such as automated phone systems and live chat, poor customer services is the primary reason why consumers switch service providers. According to survey more than 49 percent of the 2000 consumers in US and UK said that poor customer service led them to change their service providers. Poor customer services will not only bring down sales but can also defame the name of the company. It will be difficult to retain the existing customers and even more difficult to acquire the new ones.

Workings Of Call Center

A call center is place where calls are made and received to potential customers. The calls that are received from customers are known as inbound calls and the calls that are made to customers are known as outbound calls. Today most of the organizations use calls centers to keep their customers informed about the services they provide. It can be said that call centers have now become a means to market and advertise a product or service.
A call center is usually a closed office with rows of agents taking calls through their headsets. Some of the call center services are inquiry handling, customer care queries, business transcription, answering services, order taking and others. The place where calls are taken is known as floor and there are no phone rings otherwise there would be lot of disturbance. The calls are taken through automated and computerized process. The system through which calls are taken is known as queuing system. The calls are directed to an agent who is free for a longer period of time. In case the agents are busy with another customers the call is put on hold.

Inbound Call Center- What Difference It Can Make.

Call centers are set up to expedite the process of customer service in BPO units. A call center agent acts as an interface between the customer and the company. Customer services in BPO provide assistance to people who need information about a particular product or service. BPO companies invest tremendous amount of money for customer care services.


An inbound call center is place where calls are received for varied day-today business. Today companies have understood that customers are not happy to receive computerized voice over. The call centers that have live phone operators are preferred by customers. The advancement in the field of telecommunication has enabled companies to position their call center overseas.
The calls made in any inbound call center fall in different category. Most of the customers make calls to obtain information, seek assistance, or report a problem or issue. Telemarketing is one of the outbound calls which is quite different from the calls made a sales agent. The inbound calls are expensive from the operational costs point of view but they are invaluable.

Second Venture of BPO Provider

The premier BPO service provider Tarang Services is launching its second Development Center in the city of Bangalore. Business process outsourcing firms are now planning expansion by the droves. There is a positive vibe in the air brought about by the winds of change. Tarang’s new unit will have a seating capacity of about 250 call center employees. BPO services are not the only industry that this Development Center wishes to cater to. Other centers like smart cards, soft skills library and contactless payment services are also on the anvil.

The BPO wings have provisions for more expansions in the future. Tarang is planning to acquire new clients and customers in the coming months and this new unit will definitely help them add to the exposure. References are the means by which Tarang has the major chunk of its business and these new clients have come through from industry recommendations on the goodwill of the company’s call center services.

India Continues To Lead The BPO Market

According to the reports by Market Vista: Q2 2009 on global outsourcing, the outsourcing transaction volume increased by 10 percent globally in the second quarter as compared to the first quarter this year. These reports were issued after the contracts being signed by the financial services and manufacturing firms.

Everest Research Institute, the global outsourcing and offshoring activity serves as a central source of independent and objective strategic intelligence and actionable insight for leading corporations, technology providers, suppliers and investors in the global outsourcing and offshoring market place.

During the second quarter of the fiscal year, out of 30, 13 offshore call centres were established in Asia. In the same period, the transaction volume in Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa, Latin America increased by 25 percent Nikhil Rajpal, Principal, Global Services said that, there has been significant increase in market as compared to Q1 2009 in terms of transaction signings and captive set ups.

HCL BPO To Set Up A Training Institute

The BPO wing of HCL Technologies, one of the ITes service providers, is planning to set up training institute. The institute is likely to come up in Chennai in a year’s time. It will create a pool of quality resources that will be useful for HCL itself as quoted by A. P Rao, the senior vice –president (human resources).
Due to recession many professionals have got into BPO services. HCL has created an innovative method to increase the quality of working conditions in order to retain the existing talent. This new programme is called “Aspire”; under this programme the company will offer training programmes to professionally qualified professionals.
This training programme will enable professionals to move HCL’s IT services. If a BPO employee undertakes this training programme he will have to work for four days and on the fifth day he will have to attend the training programme. This training programme will jointly conducted by NIIT.
So far, HCL has already enrolled 400 employees after taking the test from BPO services to IT services. This year so far 500 employees are getting trained. Though the training is imparted at HCL organization, the company charges a course fee of Rs.50,000. However the company would pay back the course fee in two years.
Mr. Rao said that due to downturn, it has become necessary for any organization to improve efficiency through innovative ideas and most of the organization is reducing the attrition rate and quality of working conditions.
Mr. Rao added that, the existing head count in HCL BPO services was 10,000 and it hoped to grow by 25 percent next year.

BPO Industry Faces Tough Phase

The Indian BPO companies that grew at a blistering rate of 30-32 percent for many years have almost halved to growth rate of 16.3 percent in the financial year 2008-09. They are likely to plummet further to 4-7 percent in this financial year due to economic slowdown.
The software exports revenue is projected to grow at a mere 4-7 percent to reach $48-50 billion in the year 2009-10 as said by the industry association Nasscom.
Earlier in February, Nasscom had reduced the growth target for IT exports to 16 percent from its forecast of 22-24 percent that was made in the mid of 2008 for the financial year 2008-09.
The major reasons for decline in BPO industry is technology spending by global major, pricing pressures, delay in demand pick up and overall bleak economic outlook.
India’s largest software exporters Infosys and TCS have predicted tough business environment this year. Domestic IT- BPO revenue grew by 21 percent to touch Rs 12.5 billion in the financial year 09. The total industry revenue for domestic and exports was $58.8billion in the financial year 2008-09.
According to Nasscom findings, the domestic revenue is expected to grow by 15-18 percent in 2009-10. The BPO sector has reached $58.8 billion in 2009-10 from $52 billion in 2007-08.

Paramount Plans to Outsource

Hollywood’s largest revenue source, Viacom Inc’s Paramount Pictures is in talks with other studio to outsource the back office portions of its home-entertainment operations. This is an attempt to cut back on costs in the declining markets of DVD’s.
Paramount is trying to explore a potential outsourcing agreement with News Corp’s Twentieth Century Fox, Sony Corp’s Sony Pictures and General Electric Co’s Universal Pictures.

Sony is one of the leading contender as it has both manufacturing and distribution operations in house. The executive of Sony confirmed that, the company is in talks with Paramount to handle Paramount’s DVD distribution and back office functions.
Under the potential agreement, Paramount could handle marketing and sales for its DVD’s. Its studio partner will handle production and distribution which will be in exchange for a fee. Outsourcing these operations to another studio will help paramount to save somewhere between 410 million to $20 million annually.
This is not the first time that a Hollywood studio is outsourcing its back office operations to save costs. Twentieth Century Fox handles the domestic home video production of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Some decades ago, Universal and Paramount distributed films internationally through the same company named CIC video owned by Cinema International Corp. For years the sale of DVD’s was high in Hollywood Studios. This allowed the producers to spend on big budget films than to pay lavish salaries to top movie stars.
The format of disc format was hit hard by the economic recession at the end of 2008. This caused a dip in sales of DVD’s by the last quarter. The sales have continued to slide and some studios are reporting declines which are as large as 20%.
These massive declines have forced Hollywood studios to find out ways to cut down on costs especially on high manufacturing and shipping costs that can make an impact on studios like Paramount.

According to Adams Media Research, the gross U.S video of Paramount including the titles it distributes for DreamWorks Animation fell to 3.4 % which was about $2.61 billion. This drop was less than many studios that included Fox and Sony.
Paramount faced some of the major challenges which included the departure of its top home entertainment executives as well as restructuring of top level executives and 31 layoffs in the production department.

Aegis Plans to Acquire BPO Firm In Africa!

Mumbai: Essar group’s BPO arm Aegis Ltd is looking to acquire a Business process outsourcing company in Africa.

Essar Global Chairman Shashi Ruia said in a press conference that Aegis is looking to acquire a BPO company in Africa; however they did not disclose the details.
Aegis BPO's Chief Executive Aparup Sengupta said that, they wanted to have their footprint in South Africa as it is one of the developing BPO market. He added that, the acquisition or assets purchased will be in the area of customer lifecycle management space.

Over the last three years, Aegis BPO has acquired 12 firms worldwide. Recently it has acquired an Australian BPO service provider, UCMS group which was bought for AUD 45 million last month.


Last year in October, Aegis BPO has acquired NASDAQ listed offshore BPO firm for 1,057 crore. This has enabled the Essar Group Company to add Philippines to its list of delivery locations.

The company had earlier said that in a press meet that, it had plans to acquire four BPO companies. The merger and acquisition team of Aegis at any point of time evaluates at least six targets. Therefore this time it is eyeing in an African BPO company.

BPO Vendors Plan to Extend Offerings !

Bangalore: Some firms like Wipro BPO are adding newer processes to their service offerings. Even Hinduja Global sees growth in areas like customer service management from other verticals. Other companies like Kale Consultants plans to add more platforms.

The Indian BPO industry is relatively less affected during this current downturn than its other counterparts. The business process industry is planning to expand its services offerings to cater incremental growth as existing customers look to outsource more to reduce costs.

Mr. Ashutosh Vaidya, head of Wipro BPO said that the company is adding more processes to cater to the growing needs of customers. As the sales cycle stay elongated the BPO vendors expect growth from existing customers. Even small BPO firms like Caliber Point, one of the subsidiary of Hexaware Technologies is seeking for more projects from its existing clients.

Mr R. U. Shrinivas, CEO, Caliber Point expects to leverage the expertise of its parent Hexaware to build newer solutions and processes. This is so because about 30 percent of its customers are seeking to do more work.

The independent BPO firms are however looking for partnership with the IT vendors to launch solutions. Mr Partha De Sarkar, CEO, Hinduja Global Solutions, said that it does not make sense for them to develop solutions on their own as they are capital intensive and the returns on investments are unpredictable. Mr. Sarkar said this while stating that his firm has partnered with system integrators, software vendors and hardware companies.

Hinduja is bidding as a consortium for projects and sees good demand in areas such as customer relationship management across different verticals which has partnered with Talisma and Astute Solutions.

Kale Consultants which mainly offers platform based back office services in areas such as billing, ticket sales audit and revenue accounting plans to add more platforms in other areas too. Mr. Vipul Jain, CEO of Kale Consultants said that, some of their customers are using one or two platforms. He added that, people are more willing to outsource while looking at the value proposition more strongly.
According to National Association of Software and Services Companies, the Indian BPO industry is expected to grow at a rate of 15 percent marginally ahead of the IT services.

President Approves Of Malabon Call Centre Training Program!

Manila, Philippines: The local government of Malabona, one of the cities in Philippines announced free training seminars for prospective call centre agents. It has recently graduated 90 individuals who are now on their way to work in the county booming business process outsourcing service.

The vice mayor of Malabon Arnold D. Vicencio said that, all of the above mentioned individual will be given certificate of attendance and completion by this June.
Vicencio added that most of their call centre trainee graduates are undergoing training in call centre firms in Makati and Ortigas to learn about the various BPO services. A call centre is a centralized office where an agent handles telephone calls on behalf of the client or business. The one who takes calls is known as customer care specialist or customer service representative.

The clients include telemarketing companies, mail-order catalog houses, transportation and freight handling firms, hotels and IT companies. Generally, the size of the operation is defined in terms of number of seats. A seat consists of station with two or three people alternating in several shifts to provide 24 hour support services. The main target of BPO industry includes United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

Vicencio added that presently his staff is planning their second call centre training session and said that the classes will start in July for the next batch. The students who enroll in this program will be taught how to speak correct English, correct usage of grammar and diction. They will also be trained on basic usage of call centre equipments like speaker phones and computers.

The Malabon vice-mayor added that, all instructors are accredited by the Technical Education Skills Development Agency (TESDA) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). Therefore there is no doubt that, they will offer best training to the students.

Vicencio also said he decided to arrange for a training program after knowing that, the BPO industry needs an additional of 1,20,000 workers this year as recorded by DOLE. This growing demand has prompted President Gloria Macapagal- Arroya to pass an order for the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) to immediately conduct training and other re-tooling programs that would transform computer engineer and other skilled professionals into highly professional call centre agents.

President Arroya earlier justified that this re-tooling directive for engineers and electronic manufacturing after learning that despite financial crisis employment opportunities are still there in the BPO industry. These are animation, medical, transcriptionist, software developers and other call centre services. President called the BPO industry as the new symbol of competitiveness.

Till now, Arroyo administration had released P500 million for high school vouchers so that, the young generation can study in high schools. Another P500 has been invested in finishing schools where scholarships will be available for a young Filipino. This will help him or her to cope up with the requirement of the industry especially fluency in English language. She added that they have moved the value chain and Philippines will continue to support the BPO industry with right policies.

Egypt as an outsourcing destination :- Egypt is a distinctive emerging offshoringlocation offering unique advantages with a strong government support.Egypt has a large graduating talent pool of 330,000 students enjoying considerable European languages capability.

http://sourcingthoughts.blogspot.com/

This blog covers parent's and students insecurity about opting BPO as a career option.There is a great dilemma about bpo , that whether Bpo is a long term career option or just a place to make some good bucks.

Infosys Plans to Hire from Smaller Towns!

Bangalore: Infosys BPO Ltd, the domestic business process outsourcing wing of Infosys technologies is heading to small towns looking for potential employees.
The company will hire employees at lower salaries in small towns and the resulting cost efficiency will help Infosys BPO grow faster despite its late entry in the domestic market. These new hires are being offered 10-15% less salary than their counterparts.

Apart from all this, lower rentals and a less intensive training schedule will enable Infosys BPO to pass on 30% cost efficiency to its clients.
Amitabh Chaudhry, the chief executive officer of Infosys BPO said that, the Indian BPO market will expand rapidly over the next five to seven years. The officials at Infosys BPO expect to double the revenues.

This new strategy is a win –win situation for both Infosys BPO and its employees. The employees will no longer have to work in the graveyard shift. The company will be flexible in hiring employees at lower costs so that after 24 months they will be ready to serve the international clients if required.

Ghana Government Develops Data Centers To Support BPO's !

Accra, GNA- The communication minister Mr. Haruna Iddrisu on Tuesday said that, the government was working to establish a national data centre to suppport the development of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.

The BPO industry is an information technology enabled service in which the clients from other parts of the world subcontract BPO services for which they have the advantage of low competitive edge over the local firms which have high competitive edge in the that area.

He added that the, government was working up to install the fibre optics across the country to support the activities of the BPO industry. This will help in the growth of the economy and make it the most preferred destination for business process outsourcing.

The minister confirmed this during the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding( MOU) between the Ghana Telecom University College( GTUC) and the Rising Data Solutions( RDS), a Ghanaian multinational BPO service provider. This was done so to implement and design a BPO specific training course to be implemented by the GTUC.

As per the terms of the MOU, the RDS would enhance the communication and professional skills of the qualified GTUC students to work with them through training programmes by the GTUC faculty. This would be through staff interactions,exchange of experiences and best practices.

The speech by Mr. Iddrisu, was read on his behalf by Mr. Botingna Al-Hassan, a director at the ministry. In his speech he said that,BPO has become a fast developing industry driving the economies of many developed countries.

It has been estimates that BPO industry could provide jobs to about 37,000 youth in Ghana with an added value to the economy of the country by 750 million dollars.

Mr. Iddrisu said that, the country had requirement in the BPO industry and the college graduates need to be trained so that they could earn a decent living.

Therefore GTUC and RDS signed the MOU saying that, it would help the youth to equip with required skills to enter the industry.

Dr Osei Darkwa, President of the GTUC, said that the BPO industry is currently faced with shortage of skilled manpower, which is one of the factors for its slow growth.

Therefore to develop a talent pipeline BPO industry GTUC signed the MOU with RDS in the short and long term. This would ensure a continuous supply of trained manpower required for the industry.

Dr. Darkwa expressed the hope that, the collaboration with RDS would equip the students in the areas like communication skills,computer skills,telemarketing,listening skills, accent neutralisation and keyboard skills which are required to succeed in the industry.

Mr. A.J Whitman, Public Relations Manager of the RDS said, the signing of MOU was a landmark
in developing human resource and relationship for the growth of the BPO industry.

He also added that, RDS was committed towards creating more number of job opportunities and use its ability to drive the industry by using its strategic partnership that would allow development of skills based on knowledge sharing.

BPO Solutions For Online Dating Forum !

Manila, Philippines: A reputed business process outsourcing( BPO) solutions provider in Philippines named eTelecare Global Solutions will offer a customer care services to the subscribers of major online dating forum.

The president and chief executive John Harris said that, the company would provide BPO services like billing inquiry,acquisition,technical support,profile management and customer retention. The identity of online company was not disclosed.

This online dating company has millions of subscribers all the world who live in many countries and speak many different languages. Harris said that the, company plans to invest in process, technology and people. eTelecare Global Solutions intends to create real and sustainable value for this client. It would an opportunity to expand their relationship globally.

eTelecare has its delivery centres in United States,Philippines,Nicaragua and South Africa. Presently the company has plans to expand its business in Cape Town. The company has opened up its delivery centres in South Africa to provide services to the Europeans, North Americans and to the in- country clients in English, French,Dutch,German,Portuguese,Italian and other European clients.

Harris also added that,eTelecare was selected to deliver high quality services, achieve performance level and subscriber retention rates compared to the internal service centres.

Pakistan-One of the Attractive Outsourcing Destination !

According to the consulting management firm A.T Kearney, Pakistan has become the 20th most attractive outsourcing destination across the globe. The concerns are only about the instability of Pakistan and the growing displaced population due to ongoing military operations with Taliban. The country made significant jump on A.T. Kearney’s 2009 Global Services Location Index released on May 18. The position of Pakistan jumped from #40 in 2007 to #20 in 2009.
As per the reports, the Middle East and North Africa are among the most attractive destination in ever-changing geography of popular outsourcing destination. Both of these have skilled work force and enjoy proximity to Europe. The index ranks among the top 50 countries worldwide which have expertise in providing outsource activities like IT services, support services, customer care, contact center and back office. Among the listing countries like Jordan and Egypt are some of the top locales.
The countries have been marked on 43 different attributes related availability of skilled labor, business environment and financial attractiveness of a country. Factors like cost effectiveness is a huge motivator like giant companies for places like Pakistan. This is one reason why it scored so highly. When the same was released in the year 2007, about 40% of its weighting was given for financial attractiveness.
This is global index; and it gives an insight at where the companies globally outsource their work. There are plenty companies in the Middle East that outsource work to Pakistan. The percentage of US companies outsourcing work to Pakistan is less. If conditions stabilizes in Pakistan then it might attract become an attractive outsourcing destination.
Presently Pakistan faces a Humanitarian crisis with up to 2 million displaced due to intrusion of Taliban militants in the Swat valley. Similarly Mexico has seen growing violence due to drug trafficking since the last Global Services Location Index released in the year 2007. It only dropped one slot in the index that from #11 from #10 over the two years.

Tata Group Defers Plan to Set Up Rural BPO !

The famous TATA group has decided to defer its plan of setting up a rural business process outsourcing( BPO) unit near the proposed steel plant at Kalinganagar in Orissa by two years. The reason being the infrastructure for the center is not yet ready and the construction was hindered by an agitation by the locals. The locals protested the development of the six million-tonne greenfield steel project in the Jajpur district of Orissa.

According to a senior official the company is now planning to start a rural BPO in its own traditional bastion Jamshedpur. It has plans to replicate the model in Orissa and in couple of other areas. The company has already identified a school building for the proposed site in the Sakchi area of the steel city which is owned by the Tata group.

After the completion of the project and once the center becomes operational the 250 run seater will run in four shifts. The project aims to provide employment to 1,000 rural youth from Jharkhand as said by an official.

The company official also added that they had plans to open this rural BPO in Jamshedpur as a template which would be operational by the end of this year. Once the center is operational, the company aims to start similar centers in Orissa which might take eighteen months after the first center. There are plans to open 3-4 such centers.


The Tata group has already identified Kalinganagar in Orissa as the one of the location to open a rural BPO in Jharkhand. The exact location is yet to be finalized. The company is planning to open one more rural BPO center in Orissa.

Last year in May, Tata steel had planned to establish rural BPO center in Kalinganagar which aimed at providing employment to the local educated youth. The locals agitated against the displacement and loss of livelihood by the company's mega steel plant in the Jajpur district.

The center was supposed to be established by Tata Business Support Services( TBSS), which is the BPO wing of the Tata sons. This is in partnership with the Tata Steel Rural Development Society, a corporate NGO managed and controlled by the Tata group.

The company had even started recruiting locals for the center and had sent few of them for training to TBSS headquartered in Hyderabad. According to sources the new recruits have been placed in Hyderabad. Presently, they have been trained to handle Tata Teleservices’ customer support in Orissa.

Ghana Tops In Business Process Outsourcing

According to a study made by AT Kearney, Ghana tops in business processing outsourcing in Africa. After seven years of dealing with IT projects, reforming the higher education sector and implementing tax breaks with the BPO industry, Ghana has reaped huge profits.

The report titled “ The 2009 AT Kearney Global BPO Services Location Index” ranked countries for their abilities to handle BPO services. It used a weighted combination of scores on 43 measurements grouped under three criteria which were prospects of finance, availability of skilled work force and business environment.

Though India has led the ranked globally but Ghana is no far behind among the overall ranking in sub- Saharan Africa in terms of actual BPO revenue. South Africa is still the continent's leader in providing quality BPO services. Ghana' s rank was boosted by financial issues.

Ghana scored the highest and followed closely to India for being a quality BPO service providers. The ranking was among 50 countries on the basis of financial attractiveness which included compensation cost,infrastructure costs,tax and regulatory costs.

Yaw Owusu, managing director of Gateway Innovations, part of a venture to promote BPO in Ghana said that, Ghana scored 3.26 which was considerably higher than South Africa which scored 2.28.

Most of the countries have engaged in endless conferences and market research,but the west African nation has worked to have strong police work force and political stability to protect civilians and private property.

Ghana's investment to attract offshore clients started seven years ago, when government set up an incubation facility firm for IT start up companies. Then the government started investing on higher education to incorporate skills which were required to compete global BPO outsourcing service providers. It also set up a special secretariat for IT enabled services and BPO so that, Ghana could be projected as one of the lucrative destination for offshore outsourcing. Meanwhile the private companies set up the Ghana Association of Software and It services Companies( GASSCOM)

According to the Kearney report, Mauritius- the island nation ranks at 25th position. It is due to the availability of high skilled labor and favorable business environment. Presently Mauritius has 1.2 million population and it is in the process of joining the OECD, a symbolic entry into the club of advanced economies. The main strength of Mauritius are in the value added service area. It has boosted business from IT software and services from companies like Oracle and Ceridian- a human resource outsourcing firm.

Presently Ceridian has many vacancy as it serves the francophone market in the CyberTower,the government sponsored technology park. Even companies like Accenture and Infosys use Mauritius for their global delivery functions.

Though Ghana remains at the top position according to the survey carried out by Kearney for BPO desirability, South Africa remains the largest offshore destination in Africa. It has cluster of successful contact centers in Cape Town along with several research and development operations around its aerospace hub in Pretoria.
This year, South Africa dropped to 39th place in desirability rankings after it lost points in all three individual metrics.

The government of Ghana has created a free zone area right outside Accra and other areas in different parts of the country, where companies specializing in Business Process Outsourcing can set up operations.

The best part is that the companies in the free zone area can pay zero taxes for 10 years from the date of commencement of operations and only 8% of the tax after a period of 10 years.

Ray For Hope For BPO Employees In Kenya !

The government of Kenya has assured BPO job seekers to provide outsourcing jobs, after there were rising number of job cuts by business process outsourcing industry.

Safaricom, one of the most profitable companies in East and Central Africa, demonstrated that, private sector is not about to outsource its non core services when it opened its Jambo Contact Center incurring a cost of 800 million Kenya shillings( US$10.6 million)

Paul Kukubo, CEO of the Kenya ICT Board, the agency charged with marketing Kenya's BPO industry said that, the government is ready to outsource its non core, non sensitive services to the local BPO service provider. This is because Safaricom still does not understands the benefits of outsourcing of outsourcing.

The subscribers of Safaricom were happy with the customer services provided by a local BPO company but still the BPO industry was in loss. The local contact center has currently employed 1,500 staff and can handle 100,000 calls from the 13 million Safaricom subscribers.

Gilda Odera, the managing director of Skyweb-Evans and chairperson of the Kenya BPO Society said that, it was a matter of time before Safaricom will be forced to outsource work as a part of the contact. Safaricom should play a part of their corporate responsibility by outsourcing their non core functions to one or two local BPO companies.

The CEO of Safaricom Michael Joseph said that in the launching of the contact center, the company will effectively allow to handle customer queries and be a medium between the company and the subscribers.

According to the managing director of the outsourcing company Cascade Global,Peres Were, the government is not doing much to promote local outsourcing;the digitalization process is going too slow. The BPO industry has been trained on various aspects of the government services and the companies are waiting for the results.

The government of Kenya is still not ready to digitize the business processes even before the present fibre-optic cables became operational. The process has been slowed down due to lack of fund for the local and international BPO marketing strategies.

Regarding the era of digitization at the Ministry of Lands,the ICT Board's Kukubo argued that, the board had sent a proposal to the cabinet, paving the way for a public-private partnership, and the document is yet to be approved.

Kukubo said that digitizing records is only one such aspect at the Ministry of Lands, they need to periodically maintain the overall manual system and introduce a system from the most basic to the most complex at the ministry.

The Ministry of Land is one of the busiest government agency and has been considered to be one of the most corrupt areas due to sky rocketing prices of the land. The process of ownership is quite prolonged and tedious. It requires people to travel from upcountry to Nairobi even for simple tasks finding the owner of the property.

Telecom Services In BPO Is Expected to Rise High !

The outsourcing revenues from the telecom sector in India are expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate(CAGR) of 31% to nearly $ 2 billion by year 2012. This study made by Ernst & Young, is first of its kind on the potential of the domestic BPO.

Bharti Telecom has been growing at a CAGR of 41% in the past two years. The telecom industry has been adding around 10 million subscribers every month with a subscribers base of 375 million from the year 20008-2009.

Bharti Airtel is one of the largest mobile service provider. It played a major role by outsourcing many of its non core functions in the year 2005. It has set an example for other Indian companies and is changing the way that these companies used to function putting pressure on employees to follow the suit, the consultancy said in study. Telecom revenues made up 50% of the domestic BPO revenues which was $661 million in the year 2008.

The telecom domain has already witnessed a couple of large outsourcing deals in the recent months and the trend is expected to continue as said by Ernst & Young partner Milan Sheth. The trend started in the year 2005 when Bharti telecom signed a deal of $272.2-million with four global companies which were IBM Daksh, Teletech, Mphasis and HTMT to outsource its call centers.

According to report the telecom sector in BPO is of great demand for customer care, sales and marketing. Customer services is one of the key needs in telecom industry because this can help in increasing sales and lead generation.

The telecom services in BPO is also a job creator. Last year it generated employment for nearly 1,22,440 in BPO firms- a number that is set to double to 2,94,444 in 2012. After telecom, banking is the biggest employment generator for domestic BPO firms.

According to reports, the banking sector employed around 70,100 people in the year 2008. These figures are expected to go up to 2,25,900 by the year 2012. The two sectors combined together constituted 80% of the domestic BPO revenues and the revenue is expected to reach to $6 billion in the year 2012.

Reputed Californian Company To Open New Call Center in Indiana !

A reputed company in California is planning to open a new customer service center in Indiana that will employ nearly 600 employees.

Alorica Inc. announced on Wednesday that, it would open the new call center in Lafayette at an area of 49,900 square feet. The area was formerly occupied by Silent Thunder , an indoor go-kart track. The Chino-California based company already employs more than 750 employees at an another call center in Terre Haute.

The CEO of Alorica Andy Lee said that the new center in Lafayette speaks volumes about their feelings in the state of California. The company said that it will run a new call center for a telecommunication client which the officials did not disclose.

Alorica has more than 7500 employees across 16 locations and expects to hire more employees for the Lafayette center by this June.

Infosys Forecasts Outsourcing Prospects In the Middle East !

Bangalore: As the economy of the developed market shrinks, Infosys Technologies, India's second largest software company is seeing good outsourcing prospects in the Middle East, as said by a senior officials on Wednesday .

Nasdaq-listed Infosys, has acquired three deals in the global markets over a span of five months as told by Infosys senior vice president Subhash Dhar in press meet. Last month, Infosys forecast its first decline in annual revenue as the global demand for outsourcing slowed down due to economic meltdown. This was halting stage for India's Burgeoning BPO service providers.

India's $60 billion IT outsourcing sector which provides outsourcing solutions from software coding to managing computer networks and call center services faces a threat to the rising competition from the global rivals such as IBM and Accenture.

On the contrary the extreme panic from the R-word is slowing down. The Indian BPO market is striving to overcome the present economic crisis. The Indian market is already showing some signs of recovery and starting from the next quarter of June to July, the investment will be back on track.

The spending on technology is happening and will continue to grow. Investments will continue to grow at a slower pace than a year ago. Today, the companies have become cautious regarding the business cases and investment pertaining to it. Unlike before, Infosys is spending quality time in terms of calculations and realizations of ROI.

The Big Gaint Indian Companies Plan To Outsource

India, one of the most preferred BPO service providers in the world, is now outsourcing software and back office projects Egypt as its vendors. Wipro technologies, a corporation based in India has planned to outsource their domestic work to more populous state in Arab country to leverage lower costs and availability of skilled labor.

Wipro has some top customers like Bharti Airtel,Dena Bank, and Unitech Wireless said that, Egypt is emerging as one of the most attractive location for offshoring due to 10 to 15 percent lower costs , availability of technical skills across different programming language including Windows and Unix.

Anand Sankaran, senior VP and business head, India and Middle East Business, Wipro said that ,the company wants to outsource 20 percent of their work to Egypt. Presently,the company is offshoring jobs from middle east and India to Egypt.

The attractive subsidies of Egypt that create local employment that includes incentives like waiver on training costs and salaries for new recruitment is compelling companies like Wipro to offshore work to the country.

The government is providing different subsidies towards the training programmes of new hires. Wipro is planning to hire 400 new professionals in Egypt within a span of two years. Wipro presently hires 100 professionals at its Cairo centre. Every year almost 30,000 out of 3,30,000 students graduating from Egyptian universities are from computing and engineering background.

For businesses, lower corporate tax rates along with other facilities make Egypt one of the thriving destination to invest. Last year, Egypt attracted FDI worth USD13.2 billion, and by 2010, the country aims to have FDI of around USD10 billion. Hazem Abdulazim, chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency ITIDA, Egypt said that, country has already reduced taxes from 40 percent to 20 percent and ITIDA does help multinationals with incentives like subsidizing the training of professionals.

At a time when vendors and customers are seeking alternatives to rising costs, outsourcing policies in Egypt will help many companies who want to outsource work. The low wage inflation of Egypt which is 5 percent compared to 10 to 15 percent in other emerging locations and the low currency fluctuation of Egyptian pound compared to US dollar will help to keep the operation costs in the region stable.

Wipro is one of the largest companies in India which has its presence in Egypt, other companies like TCS are also planning to start their operations in Egypt.

According to a research firm Gartner, Indian customers need to look beyond the limits of their geographical boundaries much like their western counterparts.

Gartner predicts that Indian companies will increasingly offshore work and it will a priority on their outsourcing strategies. This will result in outsourcing deals offered by some Indian companies that include high end services like design,architecture and business consultancy.

However, Egypt does not pose as threat to India for being a global service provider. When it comes to IT/ ITes sector, India and Egypt complement each other and utilize their strengths to open new avanues. This will help India to build partnership with the Egyptian companies.

BPO's Thrives To expand Admist Financial Crisis

Dagupan City: Admist the shrinking economy and growing financial turmoil, the business process outsourcing(BPO) industry in Philippines continues to grows since its inception in the year 2001.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroya said that, the benefits attained in the country's economy due to BPO service providers have reached the grassroots. She said that, they have created the BPO industry from almost nothing in the year 2001. At the start of administration, there were only 4000 employees but today there are 400,000 BPO employees.

The Philippine BPO industry has grown by leaps and bounds. According to the records of BPO industry in the country, there were 101,000 employees. This number rose to 163,000 in the year 2005 and again in the year 20006 this number rose to 236,000. During the year 2007, the number of BPO employees had reached 300,000 then again it increased to 372,000 in the year 2008. Currently there are 400,000 employees in the BPO industry.

The Philippine BPO industry has received great support from president Arroya in terms of wider access to communication and information technology. There has been provision of broadband services in cities and other developed areas. Accredited companies like Ecozone information technology are entitled to a holiday from the revenue generated and local taxes for four and eight years.

Arroya said that,they worked to speed up the telecommunication network infrastructure by bringing down the cost of connectivity. The president added that, their role is to provide an environment for growth. Now, the third area of development is the human capital to provide world class service.

In the year 2008. a total of 26,454 students graduated from Pangulong Gloria Scholarship Program, out of which 17,650 have already been employed in call centers.

Speaking about the common people, Mic Cruz, a cyber agent was happy to get a job in a reputed call center because she is able to support her family well. Alejandra Manabat, a canteen owner said that, her canteen sales grew up because of the BPO service providers. A jeepney driver, Homini Intendencia is quite excited about his growing number of passengers even at night. Efren Borja, a real estate agent is able to provide a better lifestyle to his family due to the growing number of call centers in the nearby vicinity.

Salt Lake River Plans To Outsource Work

The Salt Lake River officials are planning to outsource 40 to 50 information technology workers job after there was job cut for nearly 100 employees this year. The utility officials had to reconsider their decisions to cut costs amidst the sluggish economic growth. They had to pursue a reasonable option to keep the utility rates low.

Regulators who are in charge of the other utilities in the state are concerned about this outsourcing, because SRP is a wing of political subdivision in the state. They said that outsourcing of jobs to other states or countries would not be allowed at other utility companies.


The officials at SRP have been meeting many BPO service providers to discuss how they would handle the utilities of the computer services. They would be requesting for proposals from the different companies to perform the work as said Kevin Nielsen, the information-technology services manager of SRP.

Some of the employees who do not deal with customer service will be replaced so that, SRP or the outsourcing company rehires them.

Nielsen said that, it is a mixed bag. Some companies have their data center in Tempe, one in Colorado, while others have their data center in India, Philippines or Brazil.

According to an analysis by EquaTerra, an international outsourcing consultancy, SRP spends more than the industry cost on its computer services. Of late, it has been considering to cut down costs for its information- technology division.

Mr. Nielson was not willing to disclose what SRP spends on the division as that would reveal the companies data and hamper their process of bidding on the outsourcing work.

The spokesperson for SRP, Scott Harelson said that, the shrinking economy is to be blamed. The revenue of the company has gone down tremendously but their expenses have relatively remained high. Therefore the company is looking at opportunities to save money and keep their rates relatively low.

SRP does not fall under the management of Corporation Commission such as other utilities such as Arizona Public Service Co. or Tucson Electric Power. Instead, a 14-member board of directors governs SRP.
Nielsen said that, it is still to be decided if the board will be asked to approve outsourcing. Some board members have approved of outsourcing their non core functions to global service providers.
Mr. William Arnett a board member said that “If it comes up, we'll look very hard at it and find out if it is really worth the savings”. He added that in this day and age, one has to look at everything that comes down the road. While others said they trusted SRP management.
Mario Herrera another board member said that "I'm not there to micromanage because that is not my job, I feel very confident in the people that run these different departments."
SRP directors will not consider outsourcing 40 to 50 jobs but other aspects too, as it too has been affected by the weak economy. The company was hit hard during recession. According to a report by Chief Financial Executive Mark Bonsall, during the month of March, SRP had nearly 40,000 fewer customers than projected.
SRP had reported a loss of $24 million in March alone, and hence had reduced its planned capital expenses for the month by $22 million. Before offering severance packages to 99 employees this year, 83 had accepted, while the downsized the contract workers, temps and unfilled positions.

Legal Process Outsourcing Needs To Be Developed In India

Maharashtra, India: The legal process outsourcing had garnered a lot of media attention in India, but still there is sizeable proportion of legal community that still needs to consider the legal services to low cost destinations.

The offshoring of legal process outsourcing services to India goes to way back in 1995 when law firm Bickel & Brewer initiated its captive process in India. The legal process outsourcing began to gain popularity around 2005. Within few years in business, the industry has made a profit of $225 million in revenues in the year 2008. However, this is only very small portion for the entire legal processing outsourcing industry. According to a recent survey results, the legal experts are not aware of the benefit of legal process outsourcing services. If it is addressed properly, the legal outsourcing in India is expected to grow by leap and bounds.

Most of the law firms are relatively new in terms of outsourcing and have not incorporated offshoring in their overall business strategy. A large number of law firms, irrespective of the size of their business are apprehensive about offshoring their legal work to BPO service providers in India. They have also expressed concerns regarding data security,client confidentiality and the quality of work being delivered.

The reduction in cost is one of the primary factor for offshoring legal services to India. The other significant drivers include client pressure to reduce costs by offshoring, increasing work pressure, time zone and competitors decision to offshore work. According to Neeraj Kandala the lead analyst of legal services, there is some awareness regarding the benefits of offshoring work. However majority of the benefits are not that substantial to overcome their concerns.

Data security and quality of work are some of the major concerns for the law firms. Most of the legal documents have confidential data and it is quite understandable that the law firms might have apprehensions with respect to security.

There are reputed and experienced offshore legal service providers that do take adequate precautions to ensure that there is no security breach. Therefore, the legal firms needs to be convinced regarding this. Further, the global BPO service providers need to win the confidence of the legal firms by providing quality work. This should be taken as a challenge for the provider community as the gap between the quality providers and not-so- good providers will remain a consistent problem until sufficient maturity is earned both by the legal firms and the service providers.

Recession Has No Affect On Sitel !

Sitel, one of the leading Business process outsourcing ( BPO) company in Philippines, expects its $1.8 billion business to grow by 30 percent this year. This is the same rate of growth which, it had in the last financial year and aims to find more opportunities in times of global recession.

This Tennessee-based company has 6 contact centers in the Philippines. According to Steve Barker the Chief Operating Officer of Asia Pacific Region, the country accounts for 10 percent of company revenue. He stressed that, despite the economic crisis in US their objectives for 2009 will not change if not better.

Mr. Barker also added that, this year being the most challenging time for the company but growth can come from anywhere. Their new clients might want some cost saving factor and will outsource work having some confidence in Philippines.

On Wednesday,Sitel formally launched its site in the country at One Julia Vargas, Pasig City. The company has an area of 3,000-square meter and has capacity for over 2,000 agent seat and is in the outskirts of Ortigas Business Center. The company is looking forward to expand in North and South Luzon. Sitel opened another center in Pasig at the Wynsum corporate Center with over 2,000 seats. The third facility is in Cyber One,Quezon City, with over 1,000 seats plus a fourth in Cybergate, Mandaluyong City, which has more than 780 seats.

In addition to all these, the BPO firm has two sites in Baguio City with more than 1,800 seats. The other site is in Baguio with 500 work stations. It is now being built and will be operational by end of July or August this year. The company is also utilizing 95 to 96 per cent of our capacity for this project.

The 6 local facilities service center of the BPO firm has an average of 58,000 customers and Filipino agents carry out some 1.5 million customer conversations per day. The company, in its 10 years of operations in Philippines has never lost a client due to performance issues.
Sitel, is among the top 50 BPO firms in the world. It carries out clients customer care and transaction processing needs via 6000 associates in 27 countries and has more than 155 facilities throughout North Europe, North America, South America, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
Sitel began operations in the Philippines as a cost-effective contact center model for English language clients around the world. The country has evolved as a leading hub for global call centers owing to the Filipinos’ who have proficiency in English, which is the primary language of business.
These are some of the key benefits that attracted Sitel to the Philippines and making it a great market for offshore contact center support include:
• Availability of highly-motivated and skilled workforce
• A well developed country, with a stable economic and political situation
• Easier of access for visitors from around the world as no travel visa is required
• Reliable and high end redundant infrastructure
• Reduced operational costs.

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Common BPO terminologies

A: Abandoned Call: It is also known as lost call. This is call in which the call hungs up before it reaches an agent.

Adherence to schedule: It is general term which is used for an agent to refer that how well he/she has taken a call during a shift, time spent on handling calls, time spent on waiting for calls to arrive i.e availability of calls and the specific time the agent was available to take calls.

After Call Work: This is also known as wrap-up or post call processing(PCP).It is followed by an inbound transaction, this often includes data entry work, completion of forms, making outbound calls if necessary for completion of transaction. During this mode the agent is unavailable to take calls.

Agent: This is the person who handles inbound and outbound calls. He/ she is also known as customer service representative (CSR), telephone sales or service representative (TSR) or customer service professional.

Agent Group: It is also known as skills, queue or split group. It refers to the group of agents that share a common set of skills such as able to handle calls for customer support services.

Agent Call Out: This is an outbound call placed by an agent.

Agent Status: This refers to the status of an agent he or she is into like unavailable, after call work, talk time.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD): It is one of the underlying factors for any call center distribution. ACD is a method for distributing incoming calls efficiently and equally among all call center agents. With the help of ACD the calls can be directed to the idlest agent within the group of agents. The agents in the ACD environment are assigned to a hunt group. In a hunt group the agents are trained to take calls on a specific topic. This is useful when high amount of calls is expected.


Answer Supervision: This is the signal sent by ACD or other device to the local or long distance carrier to accept a call. If the long distance charges apply then the billing starts for either for the agent or for the call center.

Audiotex: It is voice process facility that enables callers to automatically access the pre-recorded calls.

Auto Wrap-up: It is one of the features of ACD that automatically puts the agents into After Call Work (ACW) after they finish taking calls or disconnect the calls.

Automated Attendant: It is a voice processing capability that automates the function of the attendant It is kind of system that prompts the callers to respond to different choices like press one for sales,two for support etc. This is a automated program then coordinates with ACD and send the callers to the specified location.
Automatic Number Identification (ANI): This is one of the features of telephonic network that passes the number of the phone the caller is using in the call center. It is actually North American term and an alternative term for Calling Identification Number (CIN).

Auxiliary Work State: It is state when the agent is not taking calls, typically not associated with handling of calls.

Average Delay of Delayed Calls: This is the total delay for all calls divided by the number of calls that had to wait in queue.

Average Handling Time (AHT): The sum of average talk time and average after call work for a specified time period:


Average Speed of Answer (ASA): It is the total delay divided by total number of calls. It is also known as average delay.

Average Time to Abandonment: This is the average time the callers wait in queue before disposing a call.


B:

Base Staff: This is also called seated agents. This is the minimum number of agents required to achieve the required level of services and response time objectives for a given period of time. Seated agent calculations assume that the agents will be in their seats for the given time frame. There will fixed schedules which will add in extra agents to make up during the break time, absenteeism and other factors that can hamper the taking of calls.


Beep Tone: It is an audible notification that a call has arrived. It is also known as zip tone.

Blockage: These are the calls blocked from entering the queue.

Blocked calls: It is the call that cannot be connected immediately because no circuit is available at the time calls arrive.

Call Blending: This combines the total inbound and outbound agent group into one group of agents who are responsible for handling calls. It is system which is capable of blending the calls automatically; it puts the agents who are making outbound calls into inbound mode and vice versa.

Call by Call Routing: This is the process of routing each call to the desirable destination according to real time conditions.

Call Forcing: It is one of the features of ACD that automatically delivers calls to the agent who are available and ready to take calls. The notification is through a beep tone but do not have to press the button to hear the call.

Call Vectoring: It is versatile method for routing incoming calls that can be combined with automatic call distribution to improve the efficiency. A call vector is series of call processing steps like providing ring tones, busy tones, music, announcements and queuing calls that define how calls can handled and routed. These steps are vector commands as it determines the type of processing those calls will undergo. The vector commands can direct the calls on the premises and off the premises to any skill group or hunt group. With the combination of different vector commands, the incoming callers can be treated differently depending on the time/date, importance of the call, the expected wait time or some other criteria.

Calls in queue: It is real time report that refers to number of calls received by the ACD system but is not yet connected to the agent.

Centum Call Seconds (CSS): It is a unit of telephone traffic measurement. The first C is the Roman numeral for 100. Here, 1 hour=1 Erlang= 60 minutes=36 CCS

Collateral Duties: This refers to the non phone tasks like data entry and is flexible in nature. This can scheduled for periods when the call load is slow.

Conditioning Routing: This is the capability of the ACD to route calls depending on the current situations. It works on “If then” programming statements.

D:

Data base call handling: It is an application, whereby the ACD works in sync with the database computer to process calls based on the information in the database.

Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS): It is the string of digits that the telephone network passes to the ACD to indicate the number the caller has dialed. The ACD can then process and report on that type of call according to the user defined criteria. One trunk group can have many DNIS number.

Dual -Tone Multifrequency (DTMF): It is a signaling system that sends pair of audio frequencies to represent digits on a telephone keypad. It is also used for the term touchstone (an AT&T trademark).

Dynamic Answer: This is a feature of ACD that automatically reconfigures the number of rings before the system answer calls based on the real time queue information. This feature helps in saving money for call centers.

E:

Envelope Strategy: A strategy where enough agents are scheduled to handle inbound call load and other types of work. Here the priorities are based on inbound call load. When the inbound call load is more, all agents handle calls but when the call flow is less, some agents are reassigned some work which do not have a fixed time frame.

Erlang: An Erlang is a number between 0 and 1 that indicates how busy a telephone facility over a period of time. An erlang of 1 applied to a particular telephone circuit indicates that the phone is 100% busy of the time. An erlang can be applied to the group of lines in a telephone trunk line.


Erlang B: It is a formula developed by A. K Erlang which is widely used to determine the number of trunks required to handle the known calling load over a period of one hour. The formula assumes that if callers get busy signals, those calls go forever. This formula is generally accurate in situation where there is few busy signals.

Erlang C : This formula calculates predicted waiting times which are based on three things, these are number of servers, the number of people waiting to be served and the average amount of time it takes to serve each person. It can also predict the resources which are required to keep the waiting times within the target. Erlang C assumes that no call has been lost so that it can overestimate the staff required.


Error Rate: This refers to the number of defective transactions or defective steps during a transaction.

Escalation Plan: A plan that specifies actions to be taken when the queue begins to build beyond acceptable levels.

F:

Fax on demand: A system that enables agent to request for document using the keypads of their telephone. The selected documents are delivered to the fax number they specify.

Full- Time Equivalent (FTE): This is term used in scheduling and budgeting, in which the numbers of scheduled hours are divided.

G:

Grade of Service: The probability that a call will not be connected to system because all trunks are busy. The grade of service is represented by "p.01" which meand that 1% of calls will be "blocked."

H:

Handled Calls: It is the number of calls received and handled by the agent or by the peripheral equipment. It does not include the calls that receive busy signals or are abandoned.

Handling Time: This is the time spend by an agent in talk time after call work like handling a transaction. It can also refer to the time it takes for a machine to proess one transaction.

Help Desk: It refers to a call center which is set up to handle queries regarding the product installation, usage or problems. The term is used in the context of computer hardware and software support centers.

S:

Screen Monitoring: The capability of system that enables a supervisor or manager to remotely monitor the activities of an agent.


Service Level: It is also known telephone service factor. This is actually the percentage of incoming calls that are answered within a specific time i.e “A% of calls in B seconds”.

Speech Recognition: The capability of voice processing system to decipher the spoken words and phrases.


T1 Circuit: It is high speed digital circuit used for video, data, and voice with a band width of 1.544 megabits per second. It is the equivalent of twenty four (24) analog voice trunks.


Talk Time: The time an agent spends with a caller during a transaction.

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) : It is protocol that governs the exchange of sequential data. This protocol was developed by US department of defense to link dissimilar computers across other kinds of network. It has since become a common standard for all commercial equipment and applications.

Trunk: This is a telephone circuit linking two switching systems. It is also called a line, circuit or exchange line.

Trunk Group: It is a collection of trunks associated with single periphery and used for common purpose.


Virtual Call Centre: It is a distributed call center that acts as a single site to handle calls and reporting purposes.

Voice Processing: It is a blanket term that refers to the combination of voice processing technologies. These include Voice Mail, Automated Attendant, Voice Response Unit (VRU), Audiotex and Faxback

Voice Response Unit (VRU): This is also known as Interactive Voice Response Unit (IVR) or Audi Response Unit (ARU). A VRU responds to the digits entered by the caller or the speech recognition. This is in the same way as that of a conventional computer which responds to keystrokes or clicks of mouse. When VRU is integrated with database computers, the callers can interact with the database to check the current information that is account balance and complete the transaction that is to make transfers between accounts.