Indian voice-based BPOs decline

Indian contact centers are now facing some serious challenges as the quality of English spoken by most of their employees is declining leading more clients to move their voice-based services to other rival countries where people have a higher level of English skills.

Call centers in India are now being surpassed by their counterparts from other countries that have more cultural similarity with Americans. This compels other companies in the industry to shift to non-voice based services and some of them are elevating to more sophisticated voice-based services wherein problem-solving capabilities and technical knowledge are required.

As the challenge continues to affect the Indian call centers, the Philippines becomes an option for many customers since it has been more culturally similar to the US than India has. In 2007, India had more than 300,000 call center agents, while their Asian rival only had half of that. However, both of them now share equal figures in voice-based BPO services.

Indian BPO pioneer Raman Roy was quoted by the Economic Times of India as saying that insufficient training platforms in smaller cities result in quality decline, therefore affecting voice services in the country.

Aditya Birla Minacs CEO Deepak Patel also said that only one of 100 sales or loan recovery calls made from India would be a successful call, unlike the Philippines which would make four to six. He added that Indians could not always successfully handle irate calls from foreign customers.

Patel also admitted that they would not be able to address service premium markets, although they may still be able to service areas where immigrant population is high.

However, other industry leaders see growth in niche areas such as analytics, accounts receivable and health care insurance services where accent is not very much a concern.