Introduction

In a mature economy a call centre is an essential part of any company’s customer relationship strategy, be it related to trying to sell new or existing products to the customers, proposing a product or service or even for handling after-sale enquiries made by the customers. Also with the recent emphasis on belt tightening most corporate houses are looking for ways to reduce cost. It is this combination of twin needs that is driving the growth of BPO/call centre industry in India.

Call centres in India are prospering with the rise in businesses who trying to allure their customers through inbound and outbound calling facility. The business has realized that shifting their call-centre operations to India would heavily cut down their costs. Also customized solutions through customer interactive programs are very popular today and this kind of strategic business development requires acquired skills for customer queries, solutions etc. In this regard Indian call-centres are at par with the best in the world in terms of marketing requirements and come at a much lower cost.

Some of the reasons for the rapid growth of this industry are as follows
•    The quality of English is at par with the international standards.

•    Indians are technically literate and comfortable with new technologies arising in the industry.

•    Indian call centres work round the clock and provide 24-hour support for customers of their customers.

•    Qualified professional talent with fluency in English and a neutral accent and the ability to shift to different accents have made India, a preferred destination for offshore clients.

•    Business settlement laws in India are very favourable to alien firms to settle in the Indian soils.

•    The costs of operating in India are substantially lower than operating in a mature economy like US or UK.

From the concept of being just a voice based medium of customer support, today call centres are referred to as 'Contact Centres’ which are capable of handling customer queries over phone or the online medium. Also call centres not only handle the task of interacting with customers but also provide a wider base for official tasks of inventories, bill handling, web-solutions and various other business requirement proceedings.

According to a study by Information Technology research firm IDC India, India’s domestic business processing outsourcing (BPO) market that has close to 500 players will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.3 per cent, to reach revenues of US$ 6.82 billion by 2013, up from US$ 1.62 billion in 2008.


What is the work done in a Call centre?
Before discussing the BPO/Call centre industry as a career option one needs to understand the actual kind of work that is done there. A call centre is mostly a centralised office where a large volume of telephone related sales/customer support and similar business processes are handled. The work done can be broadly classified into incoming and outgoing calls. Incoming calls mostly deal with handling product support or information inquiries from consumers; where as outgoing calls can vary from telemarketing clientele to product services and even debt collection.

It is a common misnomer that all work in a call centre is related to voice but in actuality in addition to voice based work, non-voice work like collective handling of letters, faxes, live chat, and e-mails is also done.

The actual kind of work that you end up doing will heavily depend on your project team, your customer and your skills proficiency. But the basic skill set required is broadly the same.

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