BPO Hub in Indian Hinterland

A back of the beyond hinterland in Karnataka, known as Shimoga, is going to be the site for a BPO hub. The announcement was made by the British Prime Minister on his recent visit to the country. The UK call center giant Xchanging will be setting up the BPO service unit in this town, which happens to be the home town of many significant political luminaries.

The business process outsourcing hub will come into existence soon. The training center to make local talent fit for answering service will start off as well. Initially, the call centers here will concentrate on getting back office functions. The phone answering part will come later, when the agents are trained in receiving and making telemarketing calls.

There is no doubt that the BPO firm has picked up a 3-tier location for their hub. This is probably the first time an MNC has chosen such a location to expand their call center business. It remains to be seen how the BPO service kick-starts. There is a capacity of housing about 1000 employees in the call centers.

The number can be scaled up to 2000 seats in the near future. A project of this magnitude will put any city-bred call center services firm to shame! The CEO of the telemarketing firm has pledged his commitment to the project and also thanked the government for their cooperation and support.

Telemarketing Woes Increase to 200m

The Federal Trade Commission has announced that the number of citizens signing up for the national Do Not Call (DNC) list has touched 200m. That mean, the telemarketing teams cannot call 200m consumers without violating the telecommunication law. This is a big blow for the call center industry. When the DNC list was being talked about being put into use in 2002, the telemarketing services were threatened.

However, that did not prevent the call centers from violating the DNC list at will, setting themselves up for fines and penalties. Nothing prevented the outbound call center agents from calling up the numbers listed on the DNC! Officially speaking, call centers are not supposed to call up the citizens on this list.

The 200m numbers being out of the telemarketing circuit, the call center managers have to think of something new and different. Lead generation has to take a new turn and the outbound call center agents have to be conservative in their approach. There are some who do not support the DNC list on the ground that telemarketing services add to the revenue of the country and such measures only harm the earning potential of the country.

However, on closer inspection you would find that protecting the privacy of the citizens is also the duty of the government. To prevent misuse of call centers, a DNC list is necessary. Surely there are other ways of conducting sales lead generation that cutting rudely into someone’s routine of work and family.

BPO Part of University Course!

After making headways into the most covert economies, the BPO sector is steamrolling its way into universities! In a landmark decision, the Delhi University has inked a MoU with NASSCOM to provide BPO service information to the undergraduates of the university. The course will help the young guns know about this extremely challenging career path. The call center training will help the students to get out of university and focus on pursuing a career in business process outsourcing.

A job in the traditional sections of the industry looks tough, what with the economy in the shape that it is at present. In this sort of a situation, the call centers are the only places where hiring continues undeterred.

The BPO sector as a whole has a lot to gain from this alliance. It’s not everyday that a prestigious university opens its doors to welcome the presence of BPO service among its students. The exposure of the call center sector will only strengthen their recruitment drives. In the course of the call center services training, they are sure to come up with some talented telemarketing and answering service recruits.

Fresh influx of talent is always something that the telemarketing companies are looking at. With a defined structure to impart business process outsourcing training, the students will be most definitely benefited.

UK PM Brings Rural BPO Scheme

The Prime Minister of Britain David Cameron will be taking along a rural BPO scheme for India when he visits the country this week. The call center deal with be sealed with the Karnataka government. According to the deal, the interior heartlands of India will be brought on to the business process outsourcing map.

The business outsourcing firm that will sign the deal for UK is Xchanging Plc. The company will also provide training to the call center agents who will be recruited through the process. This will be the first MNC BPO service to be taken to the rural areas of India.

The deal will see Xchanging building up a 2000-seat call center unit in Shimoga, a hinterland in Karnataka. The area will be included in the special economic zone (SEZ) of the state. This is part of the ongoing process to bring more quality call center services out of the country. UK has many BPO units working for their business outsourcing work.

The BPO service company will be listed on the London Stock Exchange. The experiment will be beneficial for the other projects as well. If this is goes off well, the success of this initiative can be replicated by other call centers in the UK. While they have the cost cut benefit, the Indian areas will be benefiting greatly from these tie-ups.

BPO Hiring 3,600 More in Philippines

BPO giants Convergys Corp. is on a hiring spree again! It’s taking in some 3,600 call center agents for their call centers across Philippines. The current workforce for Convergys is already more than a whopping 20,000. However, the company is looking for telemarketing agents for some 12 call center services units across the country.

To be specific, they will be hiring 2,800 in Metro Manila, 2000 in Cebu City and some 600 in Bacolod City. The expansion plans are necessary for the conduction of their BPO services in the country. This is a time for these business outsourcing companies to stand up and expand their empire.

The BPO giant took this opportunity to thank their call center employees for providing them with the impetus for growth. That is something that is highly recommended for other call center providers as well. Call center services is the only way these companies can grow and expand their territories. Being cash-rich acts as a secondary factor in this expansion drive because no company, however high on money, will invest if they find that their BPO services are not earning them enough ROI.

Another fact that earned them these growth prospects is that they have clients in a variety of fields. So if one of these fields does badly, it doesn’t affect the income of the call answering services firm.

Using Emails for Lead Generation

Lead generation in the B2B sector is a virtual impossibility if you take out emails. Emails are the modern modes of business communication. Entrepreneurs and business leaders will scarcely sit around answering telemarketing calls. Moreover, it takes a lot of convincing to get a business owner to invest the amount of money that changes hands in business to business transactions.

It always makes sense to send over an email outlining all your business strategies, your sales lead generation methods and the processes that you have followed in business lead generation in the past. These things are important because generalized sales pitches won’t impress business honchos.

Emails have a way of their own. B2B lead generation through emails smell of professionalism and practiced efficiency. You have to make the business head realize that you are capable of handling their projects effectively and with minimum resources. How can you do that when you are spending resources waywardly in business lead generation?

That is the idea that will come across if you keep making telemarketing calls all over the place! The lead generation companies have to be careful about these little aspects. The email that you send should be like your brochure, with all the salient details, along with contact information. The more professional you keep it, the more effective it would be.

BPO Jobs Offer More

Human resource managers who handle the recruitment of BPO agents feel that jobs at the call center offer more than just what their job profile says. It may be that the person is being recruited for the inbound call center team or for telemarketing services. Whatever be the designation, the person is trained in the basic tenets of marketing that encompasses telemarketing, client relationships and other soft skills.

No other industry has such an integrated training module that pays so much attention to the development of new recruit as a consummate professional. The marketing skills that you pick up at call centers stay with you for a life time, even if you move out of the business process outsourcing industry.

BPO jobs don’t just bail you out of a possible financial crunch while you are still finishing school. The timings of the call center jobs offer these young ones the opportunity to study in the morning and work at night. They can do some complimentary courses during the day to add to their educational qualification. The biggest gain, probably, is the experience of working in the telemarketing sector.

After doing telemarketing services, you are well trained to handle any sort of a marketing profile at call centers or in hard-core marketing industries. The career options split up wide open for those who try it early in a business outsourcing industry.

Investing in Lead Generation Technology

Investing in lead generation technology makes for a sensible and safe choice. Lead generation companies plan budgets to make sure that they are cutting down on other costs that are not primarily important for their business. Several call centers have cut down on the perks and other privileges that the employees are used to.

All this money that they are saving should ideally be used to get better technology for sales lead generation. Clients, who will want to hire you for telemarketing leads, will check what technology you are going to use. If you show them some obsolete methods of marketing lead generation, they will swiftly bypass you to some other call center that has better technology.

Don’t get me wrong here! I’m not saying the importance of lead generation employees come second to the required technology. But frankly speaking, the era of telemarketing leads through hard work, is over. Now the lead generation companies need web-enabled equipments, data interpretation tools and various other telecommunication devices for telemarketing leads.

A team of dedicated call center agents is definitely needed for sales lead generation, but what really works for the clients is technology. Once you have that in place, they will feel more secure about hiring you for telemarketing business.

Bogus Telemarketing Calls Bother Citizens

Citizens all over the USA and Canada are bothered by incidences of bogus telemarketing calls. The authorities of telecommunication in these two countries, along with several others across the globe, are noticing a sharp rise in the incidences of fake telemarketing calls calling on people for donations to charity and non-profits. These calls tug on the heart of the people and successfully appeal to the good nature in human beings.

People donate money with the help of the telemarketing company. But this money does not reach the needy. Instead the funds are embezzled. On most occasions, you find that the telemarketing services offer products and services that do not exist in the first place!

The problem has reached its zenith in the recent months. There are regular instances of telemarketing calls being made in fake campaigns. Many of these telemarketing campaigns call up numbers on the do-not-call list in complete and direct violations of the telecommunication rules.

The problems catapult to greater heights when some disaster comes to town. Then people are more willing to donate money and do their bit. The telemarketing company often swindles people with the help of their credit card details. The authorities are also making people aware about numbers where they can complain against the fraudulent telemarketing services.

Why McKinley Hill Cyberpark as BPO Hub

The world has a new BPO hub in Fort Bonifacio, Philippines: The McKinley Hill Cyberpark. The call center hub has been in the news for quite some time lately because heavyweights of the business outsourcing world, like HP and Accenture, chose this place as their hotbed. So what’s special about this call center outsourcing place that is beating the others as the preferred BPO services location? There are some very specific reasons.

One, the infrastructure on this cyber park is par excellent. The electricity, the internet, the phone lines, all of these are on their best possible. Companies hiring out this space have no problems working because of the high-end operational back-up.

Two, the buildings at the McKinley Hill Cyberpark are ideal for a BPO house. The lay-out and the impeccable planning make it easier to be the site for many call centers at the same time, without one feeding on another’s space.

Three, the call center units can name the roads and spaces according to their convenience. The authorities give them that unique right. Business outsourcing units are able to promote and advertise without encroaching on public property.

Four, the authorities offer tax cuts and other rebates to the call center outsourcing units who house their offices here. The call center BPO has the privilege of duty-free importation of office equipments and gadgets for their offices.

Answering Service Agents Share Disdain

You are not the only who has a bad experience in the answering service calls. If you go by the ILO report, the ones answering your call doesn’t have a good time either! Yes, the dissatisfaction among the phone answering agents is as much as the callers who they talk to.

The inbound call center is always under pressure to perform. In fact, if you interpret the data on hand, you will know that the erratic call center services are not the faults of the call center agent alone. They have to answer a designated number of calls on a daily basis. Failure to meet the target is considered incompetence and lower appreciation for the employees.

The targets for the inbound call center team are not moderate, by any sense of the term. They are steep and require continued efforts on the part of the answering service agent to hit home. They have to jump from one call to another with very little respite in between. The stress of the workplace gets reflected in the calls that they receive.

Moreover, the need to keep reiterating the same drill on all the calls that they receive gets to them. No one likes to work routine and it’s no different for BPO agents. Innovation in phone answering is a strict no-no because the managers are not willing to cut the agents loose.

Call Center Employees Get Back to Jobs

The domestic call centers are hiring call center agents again. That’s the silver lining in otherwise gloomy prospects for the business process outsourcing industry. Several BPO agents who had lost jobs during the bad phases of recession are coming back to join the workforce. After months of staying at home or working freelance projects at home, these answering service agents are now heading back to the commuter trains and buses that take them back to the cubicles.

It’s a happy journey back to work for every one of them. The layoffs had been cruel and the financial crises they faced are still fresh as a traumatic experience. But it’s time for these call center agents to put those all behind and come back to the desk, effervescent and ebullient.

Take the example of Megan Flockhart. She was laid off from her BPO job when the company decided to cut down their employee strength. After five months of working on freelance projects, she is finally headed to a call center this summer! It’s a case of achievement for this answering service agent. She says, “There are plenty like me! And it’s been a suffocating wait!”

Surely, Megan Flockhart’s vote would go to Senator Charles Schumer for his anti-offshore business outsourcing bill! When you see people like her striving for an opportunity to get to work, somehow you don’t feel nonchalant about your own business process outsourcing job, do you?

Offshore BPO Receives Boost Post Recession

Contrary to the predictions, offshore BPO outsourcing is growing in terms of business volume after the end of the recession. Everest Research Institute has predicted that business process outsourcing will continue to grow in the coming months. Companies that had gone into hibernation during the tough times of the downturn have started coming up to the surface again.

Stalled projects have started taking off, making enough work for the business outsourcing sector. Business firms are looking for call centers that can tackle their projects at competitive prices and also get their work done at shorter deadlines.

The downturn has sucked the financial cushion out of these business firms. So there is no surprise as to why they are looking at the offshore BPO scene. They want to get their call center services done at cheap rates that countries like India and the Philippines have to offer. It remains to be seen how they would react to the anti-offshore business process outsourcing bill proposed by the senators in USA.

As of now, these business firms are actively involved in expanding their empires through the use of offshore call centers. The credibility of the call center services in the developing countries have shot up because other than throw-away prices, these telemarketing units are also offering quality service.

Call Center for the Disabled

After accommodating the fringe manpower like housewives and retired professionals, call centers are now on their way to bring the disabled into the BPO sector. This unique drive has been taken up by several telemarketing firms. However, these new entrants in the business process outsourcing units are being drafted into call center services according to their strengths.

Some are working at the help desk solutions, some are working as data entry operators while some are also into telemarketing services. The ability of the individual decides which business outsourcing function that person can take up. It’s all a question of selecting the right candidate for the right job.

Taking up employment in a call center is probably the best thing that could have happened to these disables. They are now in the mainstream workforce, with a paycheck coming their way at the end of the month. This does wonders to their self-confidence and sense of dignity. Many of them had given up hope of making it to the workforce because of their disability to work in regular offices.

The BPO sector has changed all of that on its head. They are as much a part of the call center services as any other able-bodied person. The way the business process outsourcing units have welcomed the disabled is something that other industries should take a leaf out from.

Call Center to Close Down but Economy Healthy

The Manhattan call center unit of BPO firm Alorica is about to shut shop this September. But the Vice President of Economic Development in Manhattan does not want people to get the wrong views about the economic health of the city. The answering service department of Alorica had to be shut down because business was on a dip. They could not afford to maintain a phone answering service unit in Manhattan if there were not enough projects to keep the cash coming in. Any shutdown is now being seen as representative of the economic health of the area. Probably that is what prompted the VP to come clear about the economic strength of Manhattan.

John Pagen, the VP, clarified that the closing down of the Manhattan call center unit was characteristic of the BPO industry. He cited instances of several answering service units closing down over the country. Pagen pointed out that it was something that was confined to the business process outsourcing industry only. Alorica looks strong on the other frontiers. Their Topeka phone answering service unit is more than 500 strong and still hiring. Many of the laid-off employees of the Manhattan business outsourcing unit have been advised to be up for recruitment in Topeka.

BPO Aborts Contract; Sheds 200

A BPO unit in Corpus Christi aborted a contract with its business partner because the call center was not being able to justify the cost of running the outfit. As a consequence of that, the customer call center had to let go of 200 of its employees. The strength of the customer service call center was 800.

It dealt with customers who had problems with their credit cards, debt and payment. They had their own network of ATM and debit. They also verified and guaranteed the checks that were issued to the customers. The laying off of the employees will start in September. The spokesperson of the BPO outfit clarified that the employees were entitled to severance packages.

This is not the first instance of this call center losing some of their trained agents. In the early months of 2009, the company had shed 1% of its 850-strong workforce. This is the latest addition to the sad plight of the domestic answering service units in the USA. A sharp decline in the number of projects has prompted these customer call center units to pull down their shutters.

It’s no wonder, therefore, that the senators proposing the anti-offshore BPO bill are so insistent about getting it passed! Without the support of the administration, there is no way in which these customer service call center units can spring back from their path to doom.

Lead Generation Through Clicks

B2B marketing firms are looking at web 2.0 ways of doing their lead generation. The B2B lead generation scene used to be much dependent on methods similar to telemarketing. The outbound call center agents would get in touch with the business heads of organizations and try to sell them business services. The shift has come in the medium of communication.

Business head do not encourage telecommunication anymore. They just don’t have the time to conduct business offline. Moreover, for any call center that is offering online business services, it comes across poorly when the methods of the BPO unit are anything but web 2.0! It’s like a paradox.

B2B lead generation is now conducted through emails. The call center sends emails to those enlisted on their database. The email contains hyperlinks that are tracked. The clicks made on the email are registered with the BPO unit. These clicks are the first steps toward lead generation.

The clicks lead the receiver of the email to a business page or maybe even a landing page. The number of clicks per email can be calculated to find out how effective the business lead generation is going along. Telemarketing leads are then followed up by the outbound call center agents over the phone or through personalized emails.

BPO Support MBA School in Cebu

The BPO community in Cebu have pledged their support to building an MBA school in the city. The government of Cebu has taken a lot of initiatives lately to promote the investor-friendly image of the city. It has sanctioned a plan to build up infrastructure to woo BPO services to set up shop in the city.

The funds raised will be like an investment for Cebu because it is quite sure that having BPO service hubs in the city will make sure that the economy of the city will be supplied and bolstered by foreign currency. The MBA institute is another attempt in this direction.

The BPO community of Cebu is supporting the MBA school initiative because they want quality managers to handle their call center BPO outfits. Local talent always works well for BPO services. Because you do not have to import employees from other cities, the cost of hiring them is cheaper.

With a local pool of talent, the BPO service employers can pick and choose the ones best suited for their needs. Within the framework of the city, the MBA institute can also be used to train call center BPO executives while they are on the job. In other words, the MBA could just be what the doctor ordered Cebu!

Saturated BPO Destinations Gets Thumbs Down

The saturated BPO markets of India and Singapore received a thumbs-down from new investors. The call center hubs we know for bagging international projects seem to get the bypass when there are new entrepreneurs on the hire. The new start-up business firms who are looking for phone answering service units are not venturing into territories already filled with call centre hubs. Stiff competition is a major reason for this shift in focus.

Start-ups have very little money to begin with. They need to kick-start their business venture before they hope to make some money. If they try to hire the best answering service teams in the saturated markets, it will cost them an arm and a leg.

That is not the case with the fresh horizons in the BPO sector. Countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia are doing what the start-ups needed. They are offering answering service at throw-away price tags. Their aim is to capture market share and get business projects. These call center units know they have started out late and have their task cut out because of the big boys of the business outsourcing world.

Tactical planning have also made these call centre units realize that they have a better chance of making an impression in help desk solutions, along with telemarketing. More value for less is the mantra that they are sticking to.

Landing Pages for Greater Lead Generation

Landing pages serve greater purposes for lead generation. That is the new Web 2.0 trend that call center units are looking at with considerable interest. BPO units have always looked up to telesales outsourcing calls to get leads. That remains intact because that is still paying rich dividends for the call centre firm. But with increased demands for web leads, they are also trying out website marketing and optimization.

In the course of their research, call centre managers have decided to work more with landing pages for the websites of their client. Landing pages have certain advantages over a website which they want to turn to their advantage.

A landing page works great for lead generation because traffic is directed straight to the offers and prices of products/services that the clients have. This prevents traffic from getting lost in transit. Call center firms realize that web users are an impatient lot. They would be more interested in getting straight to the point rather than surf around for stuff that they feel they don’t need to know.

BPO managers are being careful about the landing. Help desk solutions designers are asked not to ask for too much information on the landing page. The idea is to move in for lead generation without spending much of time in gathering information. Experts feel that any added information, other than the basic contact details for the telemarketing team, is superfluous on a landing page.

BPO Inroads Continue in African Lands

The drive for BPO companies to spread out their network is working well. The latest company to join the fray is Satyam Computer Services Ltd. The call center firm will tie up with Direct Channel Holdings Ltd. The aim of this partnership is to offer call center services to the continent of Africa.

The business processing wing of the company, called Mahindra Satyam BPO, is going to offer several back office solutions to the business firms in Africa as well. It won’t be just telemarketing services that will be on offer. The clients of the company in Africa will surely receive a boost in terms of answering service support as well, with many of their clients and customers based in Africa.

This is just another instance of a BPO company breaking out of a set channel. That has been the trend as of late. Several call center services are now moving out of their domestic shell to make a mark for them on the global platform. Africa is a preferred destination because there are ample scopes for establishment and growth.

The price of setting up a call center firm and running it isn’t that high as compared to the other countries. Yet, you can get manpower to feel your business outsourcing business. It’s now a matter of speculation to check how many answering service units will be set up there because getting voice-call agents can be tougher than many of these companies think.