Hi Guys, I wanted to start this thread for a long time. I want to invite all those guys working in call centre to share their experience (good/bad) and your future plans. Things like whether you like the Indian call centre/BPO industry, how i…
Hi Guys,
I wanted to start this thread for a long time. I want to invite all those guys working in call centre to share their experience (good/bad) and your future plans. Things like whether you like the Indian call centre/BPO industry, how it can be improved, weakness/strengths of Indian BPO/call centre.
My own personal experience:
I have been in call centre industry for 2 yrs. 2 yrs pure Night shift with most shifts starting at midnight till 9:00 a.m. First i used to enjoy it and thought of making a career out of it but gradually i started to hate it. Burnout happened and i took a break from industry and then started again in US voice based collections because i thought may be i worked very hard in first call centre job and lets try for second time. No use. Again quit and now currently listening to one of US customer abuse while writing this in my third call centre job within 2 years. Good money but horrible life.
Its suffering. Pure suffering. Some times i just want to vomit before entering my call centre premises. Body is paining. Its low value added job and burnout comes after reading same script again and again at 2: 00 a.m in night 
. Money is good, facilities good but life productivity goes down with call centre. Abuses lowers confidence and you feel disgruntled.
Some thing is wrong fundamentally with call centre.Big problem with voice based project is abuses and night shifts. Little bit better are non voice based project.
I am calling it quit some where in last week of March 2006 and then focussing for CFA ICFAI to complete in 2 years flat and then look out for some suitable job.
Life is horrible in call centre at agent level. Any body who have moved from agent to TL/Quality/Training/HR deptt, i salue that person. Great achievement in sticking with one company, dealing with stress and getting promotion.
Call centre have also changed my personality. I am getting short tempered, feeling tired and thinking life as a failure. Fortunately, situation is in control and i am just putting all strategy in place to get out of it and never come back again in Indian BPO/call centre.
Salaries are good and i these 2 yrs i must have made an average of 16k-18 k per month with free transport and meals. Thats not a bad salary for fresher B.com guy.
All the best to all PG's working in Indian call centre. I know for some of them it is real frustation but still people stick to bring bread for their families. You should get gold medal who show patience in sticking with BPO to carve out career, paying loans etc.
Akhil.
no replies in world famous indian BPO industry thread???
Cmon guys, i am eager to hear some words from existing BPO guys/or who have worked earlier.
hey check ur pm. I have sent something for u.
Please confirm if the question was wrt the relevance of the BPO work ex for the MBA apps.
If yes life is not that bleak..... get hold of whoever works in the hiring deptt of your organisation or talk to one of the consultants and ask them to guide you for a better career destination within the BPO domain.... realise that the BPO as a group are one of the safest bet for the future owing to their growth prospects and the amount of entrepreneurship; and owing to the high C&B; and flexibility are the most promising destinations for any one .... BPO Ops have on their staff IIM alumnus as Ivy Leaguers and this population would continue to grow in future; your understanding of the ground level ops would actually help your apps.
If no then I would strongly advise you to limit your impression of your employers to your personal blog(s).
H.
PS. I've been thru what you are going thru; PM me I might actually be able to guide you.
If yes life is not that bleak..... get hold of whoever works in the hiring deptt of your organisation or talk to one of the consultants and ask them to guide you for a better career destination within the BPO domain.... realise that the BPO as a group are one of the safest bet for the future owing to their growth prospects and the amount of entrepreneurship; and owing to the high C&B; and flexibility are the most promising destinations for any one .... BPO Ops have on their staff IIM alumnus as Ivy Leaguers and this population would continue to grow in future; your understanding of the ground level ops would actually help your apps.
If no then I would strongly advise you to limit your impression of your employers to your personal blog(s).
H.
PS. I've been thru what you are going thru; PM me I might actually be able to guide you.
Hi guys!
me working in an international contact centre from 3 yrs..from 1 yr as a Team Lead operations..how about you all post your profiles..
great to see this thread!
Thanks for your responses. Its great to see BPO guys posting at 3:30 a.m in night
I am currently in convergys as customer care officer and working for last 2 yrs.:
It is a great idea if we can also exchange company name. I see no major problem in it. By this way we will come to know more about BPO companies present in India.
Hi,This is good thread actualy. I hv been working in this Call Center Industry for the last one year. I started of with the Australian process, for the last four months I've been in the US process, of course voice. Well, what I feel is its a good career option for those who can speak english with no sound academic qualification to speak of. And also for people like me taking this as a short term career option, while preparing for MBA entrance exams. But talking about the kind of work, I should say its just horrible specially with the abuses that r hurled by the customers at u. One really has to know how to separate this work life from personal life. Like as soon as I walk out of my office door I try to forget whatever happens in office. Thats the way it goes..
Guys, I would like to put a piece of advice to all u BPO workers ................
ME to working in Operations of a Off-Shore Company ( slightly better than a BPO )..................
When u enter this industry, dont just enter for the money, plan out ur career as well...............
I mean, chcek the job profile before u enter, the work hours, the facilities............... plan this and enter a call centre which will provide u this .........................
Also, try working in a process which has value like insurance, finance etc........... and not some household job or mobile services....................
It can add value to ur profile then...................
Hope I made sense ..................
CHEERS
Hey guys I am putting an article over here just go through it. I simply adore it and have read it million times. Here it is:
Will BPOs face a staffing crisis?
One of the key reasons why India is doing well today is the revolution in services exports, where white-collar staff in India are plugged into globalisation, thanks to improvements in telecom.
Today, there are probably a million people working in export-oriented IT and IT-enabled services, giving exports of roughly $15 billion, for an average rate of roughly $15,000 per man-year.
But this sector is experiencing acute problems with recruitment. Employers find that an Indian college education generally induces unacceptable skills, so there is a large mass of unemployable jobseekers, coupled with a shortage of skilled people.
Will high growth rates continue to come about, or will India's growth in this area get choked owing to the tiny output of a few good universities?
In this article, I argue that India will be able to grow from 1 million to 10 million workers in BPO; from $15 billion in revenues to $150 billion a year. But the rot in the universities hurts at two levels.
First, India will be unable to walk up the value chain, to reach higher pricepoints than $15,000 per man-year. Second, we are likely to experience acute pain, two moves ahead, when the needs of the global economy change, and a large mass of uneducated Indian white-collar technicians are unable to learn new skills.
In the 1980s, 150 people graduated every year from all IITs (put together) with a degree in computer science. There were few universities or colleges which even had computers. At that time, nobody thought that a million people would work in an export-oriented sector by 2005. It was felt that India could have a fantastic, high-revenue software exports sector which would employ a few thousand people.
Ideally, universities should see the changes in the country, and respond to them by building new departments, recruiting new kinds of people, and undertaking new activities.
But universities in India are stifled by the heavy hand of the state. They are unable to create or close down departments or programmes. They fail to pay the wages required to recruit good researchers, who get offers from universities worldwide. They lack the carrot and stick required to incentivise faculty members to work.
What happened in the following years? The traditional universities were, largely speaking, sunk in socialism and unresponsive to the needs of the country. But a new breed of training centres sprang up, in response to the high prices being paid in the labour market. These ranged from NIIT/Aptech in the private sector, to private engineering colleges.
The derogatory term "teaching shops" is applied to these purveyors of vocational education, and justly so. Students are taught job-specific skills, without a deeper understanding of why things work and how they can be done differently. But there was big demand for such lowbrow technicians. In addition, there was an enormous churning in the labour market. Many people who did not have a degree in computer science shifted into the IT-related sector in mid-career.
It was a great display of flexibility on the part of the Indian labour market. Can this story now repeat itself and get scaled up?
In order to think of low billing rates like $15,000 per year, I like to focus on the high schools. India has a good educational system, by world standards, at the high school level, in the form of the CBSE or ICSE examinations, which ensure foundations of English, science and mathematics.
There has been a huge expansion of private schools turning out 12th standard kids who can do algebra and calculus. As a rough estimate, roughly 200,000 students attempt the IIT entrance test every year -- these are the really excellent minds by world standards. There are probably 2 million students coming out of 12th standard every year with acceptable skills in English, science and mathematics -- who are good when compared with high schools elsewhere in the world.
A cohort leaves the 12th standard, every year, and lands at dismal colleges. Some go to pointless colleges, and then pick up job-specific skills at a teaching shop. Others go to an "engineering college" and pick up job-specific skills. The BPOs are starting to recruit 12th standard students and have them learn on the job, thus dispensing with the wasted years in college altogether.
Through these processes, big numbers of headcounts appear to be quite feasible. There seems to be enough of high-quality 12th-standard education in India, so that low-skill BPOs can go from 1 million to 10 million workers in 10 years. This corresponds to a 26 per cent growth rate of employment, and probably a 30 per cent growth rate of revenue, over a ten-year horizon.
Such growth in the BPO sector would have spectacular implications for India's growth. India can get from $15 billion a year to $150 billion a year even though the universities are languishing in socialism.
The damage we suffer owing to dysfunctional higher education lies in two parts. First, we will find it difficult to walk up the value chain, from $15,000/man-year to $30,000/man-year. In finance, tens of thousands of high-skill analytical jobs can easily move to India, provided the workers can be found.
But there is an absence of college graduates who have a first-principles understanding of microeconomics and probability. We have an abundance of technicians who can turn a wrench, but not people who understand which wrench must be used in what situation, and why.
The second kind of damage that we are suffering, owing to unreformed higher education, lies in building up a large stock of technicians in the labour force who will find it difficult to adapt to the changing world.
In the blue-collar world, a technician who could work a lathe lost his job when the world shifted to computer numerically controlled (CNC) lathes. In similar fashion, over the long term, there is a certainty that the evolving world economy will throw today's call centre workers out of job.
Higher education gives an understanding of first principles, and the ability to learn new skills. In the years to come, India will be stuck with millions of middle-aged, prosperous, bewildered technicians who are unable to grow their knowledge, who are unable to respond when the needs of the labour market change.
Avoiding these two predicaments requires putting millions of people through world-class universities.
Source- rediff.com
Cheers
Hitesh
Hey That was really Nice
Any one who from a B schold pool can tell us what kind of weightage is given to BPO experience and what kind of questions they ask in PI for the same
keshav
Very Nice Article Hitesh.
I guess most BPO guys have this confusion about experience relevance during MBA admission. BPO involves use of six sigma, project management, leadership and i think it depends on how you potray your experience to admission people.
I agree that non voice process much better then voice. If companies are thinking to move value chain from BPO to KPO, then i think individuals should also move up value chain by doing some additional courses etc.
Hey guys I am putting an article over here just go through it. I simply adore it and have read it million times. Here it is:
The damage we suffer owing to dysfunctional higher education lies in two parts. First, we will find it difficult to walk up the value chain, from $15,000/man-year to $30,000/man-year. In finance, tens of thousands of high-skill analytical jobs can easily move to India, provided the workers can be found.
The high end jobs are already India bound... as of now the people who are servicing the high end BPO work are either Qualified by way of experience (I have worked for XYZ bank's mutual funds' portfolio management arm and am now with one of the high end BPOs and work for an ABC company my clients are American Mutual Funds and I look at and recommend the best buys for them in the present day market... I don't buy I suggest the firangs give the go ahead to buy) or academics (I am an MBBS I work as a sales man for MRI scanners for hospitals in the US... the MRI scanners are made by my employers clients and my BPO looks at the sales and Customer Service of these MRI scanners).
But what would be the future and how would someone who is in the BPO-- low end BPO now benefit after an MBA .
I strongly believe that the high end BPOs would also behave the like the way our typical low end BPOs have in the past and in the next fiscal we would see the entry level staffers , in the high end BPOs who have been hired because they were trainable and scalable. For the people trying for a MBA today it might be a good idea to look for specialisations which would be in synch with the requrement of the future markets.
What say you all?
see this http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2005/mar/31bpo.htm this one made sense to me to get a bearing to the high end BPO.
H.
The high end jobs are already India bound... as of now the people who are servicing the high end BPO work are either Qualified by way of experience (I have
But what would be the future and how would someone who is in the BPO-- low end BPO now benefit after an MBA .
I strongly believe that the high end BPOs would also behave the like the way our typical low end BPOs have in the past and in the next fiscal we would see the entry level staffers , in the high end BPOs who have been hired because they were trainable and scalable. For the people trying for a MBA today it might be a good idea to look for specialisations which would be in synch with the requrement of the future markets.
What say you all?
Hey Harsh good point abt the high end BPO. Now let me come to the point that how a low end BPO worker explain and justify his work during the MBA interviews. Let me start with myself. I have an exp of 28 months in inbound technical support. I have worked with IBM Daksh and Nipuna Services- A Satyam Company in Hyderabad Presently I am looking for a job as I left it few onths before for preparing for CAT05. The question in disussion right now have bothered me a lot in the past. However I would say to all the people working in low end BPO to look for thier learnings working in any company. It is a very broad term and can include anything. It could be the way business is conducted in BPO, how incentives are paid, how our company earns from the client, what is the per hour charges per employee our company takes from the client, how is the operations handeled, how to keep a track of the call flows, what are the various departments of our company and how they supports us etc and it go on and on. What I want to say is that you should be able to tell the interviewrs that Sir I joined as a fresher and this is what I know after working for x years in this company, this is the way it has shaped me as a person, these are the things I know abt how to run a call center OR in short this is the way I am different from what I was before I joined a company.
Also one also always try to add value to ones resume by cashing on any oppurtunity like any sort of training, any ijp, anything which u did except call taking. In my case I have loads of things to say, I have loads to appreciation certificates and letters which I got from the management and also from the client. I am in a position to say in my interview that I have achieved a lot competing with thousands of employees of the same company. An achievement is an achievement no matter if it is gained among few hundred or few thousand people. All those people working in low end BPO U have to make ur own road. U have to work harder and harder to be among the top 10% of the performers always, U have to work hard to become Sr Customer care ex from a customer care excutive. So it's no point in crying that we are in a low end BPO but it is in ur hand to come out shining in that job. And beleive me U will have reasons to justify ur work and ur contribution to ur company.
I definitelt agree with Babu that the repetition in the work makes it boring and no valuee addition. After a certain point saturation comes and u cannot take it anymore. It has happend with me. Right now I am in that stage. I am awaiting the result of an interview for the position of Assitant Manager in an inbound tech support. I am confident that I will make it. But if I didn't I have decided to change the line and not to enter BPO again. I donot want to go to calling again because I know I will not learn anything new except the product knowledge which is of no use later in life. I thought abt KPO. I have applied in Evalueserve for the position of Market Research Analyst. But was sent back after writing an essay and answering few grammer questions. I was not even given a chance to say my part. No body talked to me except the receptionist. I really felt bad. I thought that I should have been given a chance to be interviewed and to say my part abt what I have achieved in the past and what I think I can do in future. I did called them later and asked abt the reason for my non selection. The concerned guy told me that my grammer was not good and the essay was not upto the mark. I said thank you and disconnected the phone. Later I laughed a lot because I was very confident abt the grammer questions and the essay. I got second highest marks in school in english in 10th class and was a topper in english in 12th. So guys nothing is low end or high end. It's always abt ur learnings from doing that thing and how it has shaped u as a person. Guys cheer up and prepare well for the interviews and please always keep introspecting abt ur achievements at ur work place no matter how small they may be.
Cheers
Hitesh
am taking the message off the board... the interaction was more in answer to Htesh's specific question and does not matter to the spirit of this thread.
Hitesh mere bhai...Evalueserve was oversubscribed when it's entry level openings came out... which is why they resorted to the eyewash routine with you...
when i last heard they were hiring as entry level analysts people with an A rung MBA and domain workex ( i know of a gent who got an offer he is XLRI-04 and Seagram Mrktg North India, he was offered a INR 7.5++ pa)..... Evalueserve bills @ 30x when you compare it with your usual EXL / Daksh etc and can afford to pay more per position hence you have a lot of more qualified reources per LOB in Evalueserve.
the only other entry level profiles I heard were for the foreign language processes.
If you applied via a consultant .. kill her
Really!!!!!!! I am shocked man Yes I applied through a consultant and before going thier I specifically asked that if they need MBA's or not. He said no sir they need simple gradutaes with 2 yrs exp in any BPO. I am gonna call that guy on monday and give him my piece of mind. Hey harsh can u suggest me some other KPO?. I will just pm my mobile to you. You can also do the same. I can call u if that is ok with u. U know my work ex now. I am looking for a job mate and asap.
Cheers
Hitesh
hiteshchadha SaysAll those people working in low end BPO U have to make ur own road. U have to work harder and harder to be among the top 10% of the performers always.
Understand this and free your mind(hate to sound like Morpheus)........your avg Employee of the Month is not a Seva Medal....... top performer tags, stack ranks, champions , star of the months etc etc are all "pat-on-the-back" fixtures which is yet another motivation tool ; furthermore any of the "pats-on the back" if mentioned in an interview would need to be substantiated with a dreamer routine (" i have achieved whatever there was to in my present capacity, i feel i am capable of much more, hence I want to do an MBA and then I would work for world peace")... it will fall flat on it's face
What your interview board would look at is a sustained performance the only indicator of that sustained performance is growth and the growth has to be across levels... not CCS to Sr CCS both with the same JD.. CCS to TL is growth.
Again, think what the board would be happier with...something like " i have been able to leverage my product knowledge to help train my staff to service my client's customers better" or " I am responsible for the careers of 20 young and ambitious and capable people who report to me and look upto me for guidance and direction... my achievement is that I have been constantly able to meet their expectations"
But if I didn't I have decided to change the line and not to enter BPO again. I donot want to go to calling again because I know I will not learn anything new except the product knowledge which is of no use later in life.
I thought abt KPO. Hitesh
Lateral movement across analogous functions ... from Calling ( voice based customer service) to MIS (Reporting) or Business Ops Planning ( Business Analytics) is growth again and a good work experience booster goes to prove that you have a more wholesome knowledge of BPO...... a domain jump if not in synch with a career rythem is not advisable (Customer service for say Orange today and portfolio analysis for Chase Morgan tomorrow... why did you join the CS if you were so much of a portfolio analyst )
You will simply have to explain too much to the board.
HI EVERYONE,
plz. tell me do B-schools consider the experience in BPO'S,AND me being an engineering graduate fresher while giving an interview has a phycological advantage of the HR on others who have no experience at all
Hey all,
I have worked with a leading BPO for 14 months.
And I hope to get some weightage for it at my PI's for MBA coz I was working in an Insurance Back-Office UK process as a CCE.
Was a fairly complex process (rated L3) dealing with maturity of life insurance policies. And apart from the normal work, I have been involved in a couple of Six Sigma Black Belt projects. The projects were aimed at reducing the overall TAT (Turn Around Time) of the process I was working for. And because of the inputs I (alongwith with 2 colleagues) gave, the TAT had actually come down from 7 days to 5 days.
Also assisted my TL's in preparing various MIS reports.
Was also awarded for `Exceptional Performance in Quality of Work'.
Left the job in September, to prepare well for CAT and other exams. And it has paid off !! Have got calls from SIBM, SCMHRD and NMIMS. Expecting some more calls.
Now, just wanted to know what are your views regarding my profile (work-ex).
And more importantly, if some of you have faced any MBA GD/PI last year, please let me know, what was the response like, and to what extent can BPO experience be capitalized upon, as far as MBA interviews are comcerned ?
Regards,
styleguy