T. Zamlunmang Zou
zoulun77@yahoo.co.in
What is Call Centre? How is it being conducted? Why people of these days talk so much of it? What are its advantages & disadvantages and how people who are working in those firms used their life? We shall now elaborate them point by point so that we can take our decisions whether to opt for it or not. It is of course a place to make fast money but a place where there is no social life. You are working while your surrounding is fast asleep and sleeping while your friends are enjoying their life in day time.
What is Call Centre?
Call Centre or Call Center is a centralized office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. A Call Centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a Call Centre, collective handling of letters, faxes, and e-mails at one location is known as a Contact Centre. In short, we can say, ‘it is the link between multinational companies around the world’.
A Call Centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace, with work stations that include a computer, a telephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies called Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). Most major businesses use Call Centres to interact with their customers. Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through Call Centres. Examples of this include help desks and sales support.
IT-enabled services are support functions and services for customers provided either through the telephone and web based channels. Where as, BPOs are companies, which provide similar functions and services but not from the country where the products have been sold. So, what is Call Centre job all about and why is it becoming a dream job for thousands of young people, many of whom are not even completing their graduation.
Call Centres, inspite of its many disadvantages, has been the fastest growing sector in the Indian IT industry-both in terms of the number of people being hired and revenues generated-is the IT enabled services segment comprising Call Centres and Business Process Outsourcing (ITES-BPO) sector. This sector added 70,000 jobs in the last financial year, according to NASSCOM, the apex industry body of software and service companies in India. NASSCOM also estimates that by 2008, these will be 2, 70,000 jobs in the customer interaction service sectors.
The recent examinations conduct by the Delhi Times shows that, Call Centres is no longer an alternative place to work in. The attraction has seemingly boomeranged into repulsion for Gen. X. Today the dropout rate among the 20-30-age group at Call Centres is as high as the industry’s growth and the profile of the pros working there is in a state of transition.
The industry is growing at a lightning speed, but the call of Call Centres does not sound as sweet to Gen. X. What’s wrong, Why and How? Who’s Mr. Call Center’s Associate? It’s simple, he is an employee working under strict rules but sleeping whole daylong. He is the one who does not have time to see the beautiful daylight. No time to breathe fresh air and no time to interact with people and love ones. He has no future in education life and no time to glare at the books but time to close his eyes. Oh! What a boring and irritating life!
Types of Call Centre
There are various types of Call Centres. Any company can set up its own Call Centre to deal with its own customer’s (i.e. a Captive Call Centre) or they can hire a professional firm (i.e. a Their-party Call Centre) to do the job for them. Function-wise too, they are divided into Inbound and Outbound Call Centres. Outbound Call Centres are places where operators or Customer Service Associates, as they are called-make calls to the existing or prospective customers or where agents place calls to potential customers mostly with intentions of selling or service to the individual. Where as, at inbound Call Centres, the process is reversed and the Customer Service associates takes or received calls from the existing or prospective customers Or calls that are made by the consumer to obtain information, report a malfunction, or ask for help.
Call Centre staff are often organized into a multi-tier support system for a more efficient handling of calls. The first tier in such a model consists of operators, who direct inquiries to the appropriate department and provide general directory information. If a caller requires more assistance, the call is forwarded to the second tier, where most issues can be resolved. In some cases, there may be three or more tiers of support staff. If a caller requires more assistance, the caller is forwarded to the third tier of support; typically the third tier of support is formed by product engineers/developers or highly-skilled technical support staff of the product.
Call Centres can also be classified into Domestic and International. In the former, you work for an Indian based companies and deals with its Indian customers alone. The later deals with foreign customers of foreign companies, where you have to pretend yourself a foreigner besides flawless spoken English.
Mode of Selections
The selection process for the job of Call Centre Associate is not an easy task. Since the bulk of growth is happening in the BPO category, fluency in English is an absolute must. Your spoken English has to be flawless; its not just a matter of grammar, the way you talk must be void of any regional accent or MTI-Mother Tongue Influence (This is what we the North East people finds it difficult to over come as we tune our English to our mother tongue). To be an associate, one has to acquire standard XII as a minimum qualification, but graduate is preferred. BCA, B. Sc. (Computer Sc.) can also apply for technical support jobs. Some firms take BE or B. Tech graduates too. You will need to undergo at least 2 to 3 round of interview. Now-a-day, GK along with simple mathematics has been added as a part of interview process.
Most Call Centres offered 24/7 (24 hours a day and 7 days a week) support function round the clock. Willingness to work night shift is a must. In metros, the salary for fresher is anywhere between Rs. 8000 – Rs. 10,000 per month as advertised in the daily esteems, but the said amount is hardly paid to any newly recruited person instead, less amount is being paid to them. People in marketing get sales-based incentives. With 6 months experience, you can get another job and a hike of Rs. 1000 to Rs. 3000. Interestingly moving up the ladder, with 2 years experience, you can become Team Leader, Voice Coach or Quality Analyst, etc. with a salary of above Rs. 15,000 per month. Managerial positions are also available after a few more years of experience.
Provided you satisfied the above criteria, you will be call for an interview. Not only that, there are several elimination rounds you have to undergo. Firstly, you will face the preliminary round of interview. The next step is to answer the written test. This could be anything-from simple English Test with Analytical/Logical Reasoning thrown in or a complex Technical Aptitude test or both. Some Firms also administer psychometric tests. The next step includes a Group Discussion, where the applicants are judged for their ability to talk clearly and with poise and a Listening Comprehensive test, to judge listening skills. If you go through all these, you will have at least two rounds of personal interviews. Once you are hired, you will receive training before going to “LIVE”. This process of selection is not always the same in every Call Centre; however, these are the common norms being followed.
Accommodation
The centralization of call management aims to improve a company's operations and reduce costs, while providing a standardized, streamlined, uniform service for consumers, making this approach ideal for large companies with extensive customer support needs. To accommodate for such a large customer base, large warehouses are often converted to office space to host all Call Centre operations under one roof.
Centralised offices mean that large numbers of workers can be managed and controlled by a relatively small number of managers and support staff. They are often supported by computer technology that manages measures and monitors the performance and activities of the workers. Call Centre staff are closely monitored for quality control, level of proficiency, and customer service. Typical contact centre operations focus on the discipline areas of workforce management, queue management, quality monitoring, and reporting. Reporting in a Call Centre can be further broken down into real time reporting and historical reporting. The types of information collected for a group of Call Centre agents typically include: agents logged in, agents ready to take calls, agents available to take calls, agents in wrap up mode, average call duration, average call duration including wrap-up time, longest duration agent available, longest duration call in queue, number of calls in queue, number of calls offered, number of calls abandoned, average speed to answer, average speed to abandoned and service level, calculated by the percentage of calls answered in under a certain time period.
Many Call Centres use workforce management software, which is software that uses historical information coupled with projected need to generate automated schedules. This aims to provide adequate staffing skilled enough to assist callers.
The relatively high cost of personnel and worker inefficiency accounts for the majority of Call Centre operating expenses, influencing outsourcing in the Call Centre industry.
Inadequate computer systems can mean staff takes one or two seconds longer than necessary to process a transaction. This can often be quantified in staff cost terms. This is often used as a driving factor in any business case to justify a complete system upgrade or replacement. For several factors, including the efficiency of the Call Centre, the level of computer and telecom support that may be adequate for staff in a typical branch office may prove totally inadequate in a Call Centre.
Technology
Call Centres use a wide variety of different technologies to allow them to manage the large volumes of work that need to be managed by the Call Centre. These technologies ensure that agents are kept as productive as possible, and that calls are queued and processed as quickly as possible, resulting in good levels of service.
These include;
● ACD (automatic call distribution: In telephony, an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is a device that distributes incoming calls to a specific group of terminals that agents use. It is often part of a computer telephony integration system.)
● Agent performance analytics
● BTTC (best time to call)/ Outbound call optimization
● IVR (interactive voice response: It is a computerized system that allows a person, typically a telephone caller, to select an option from a voice menu and otherwise interface with a computer system. Generally the system plays pre-recorded voice prompts to which the person presses a number on a telephone keypad to select the option chosen, or speaks simple answers such as "yes", "no", or numbers in answer to the voice prompts.)
● Guided Speech IVR: The Guided Speech IVR approach for call centers is a hybrid model that integrates live call center agents with all the advancements of speech in a new real-time approach for callers. This new approach creates a "safety-net", as the new role for the agent as a guide who assists the automation invisibly helps the caller using human intelligence and transcription to ensure the correct computerized service is provided.
● CTI (computer telephony integration: Computer telephony integration (CTI) is technology that allows interactions on a telephone and a computer to be integrated or co-coordinated. As contact channels have expanded from voice to include email, web, and fax, the definition of CTI has expanded to include the integration of all customer contact channels (voice, email, web, fax, etc.) with computer systems.)
● Enterprise Campaign Management: All Predictive dialer solutions require customer data (usually referred to as 'call records') in order for them to work. At the most basic sense, these call records are simply a list of phone numbers to dial, however in practice companies will also provide with those phone numbers information such as the Customer Name, Address, Account Number and other information about why you might be calling that person. This data has two basic uses, 1. The dialer uses the phone number(s) provided to make the actual calls, and 2. To populate the 'screen pop' that is displayed to the agent when the call is connected (so that the agent knows who they are talking to and what about).
● Outbound predictive dialer: The autodialer preceded the predictive dialer. While the basic autodialer merely automatically dials telephone numbers for call center agents who are idle or waiting for a call, the predictive dialer uses a variety of algorithms to predict both the availability of agents and called party answers, adjusting the calling process to the number of agents it anticipates (or predicts) will be available when the calls it places are expected to be answered.
● CRM (customer relationship management: Customer relationship management (CRM) covers methods and technologies used by companies to manage their relationships with clients. Information stored on existing customers (and potential customers) is analyzed and used to this end. Automated CRM processes are often used to generate automatic personalized marketing based on the customer information stored in the system.)
● CIM (customer interaction management) solutions (Also known as 'Unified' solutions)
● Email Management, Chat and Web Collaboration, Desktop Scripting Solutions, Outsourcing, Third Party Verification (Third party verification), TTS (text to speech), WFM (workforce management), Virtual queuing, Voice analysis, Voice recognition, Voicemail, Voice recording, VoIP, Speech Analytics
Call Centre Dynamics
Owing to the highly technological nature of the operations in such offices, the close monitoring of staff activities is easy and widespread. This can be argued to be beneficial, to enable the company to better plan the workload and time of its employees. Some people have argued that such close monitoring breaches human rights to privacy. Yet another argument is that close monitoring and measurement by quantitative metrics can be counterproductive in that it can lead to poor customer service and a poor image of the company, and an ability to keep within the "stats" while still doing horrible things.
Many Call Centres in the UK have been built in areas that are depressed economically. This means that the companies get cheap land and labour, and can often benefit from grants to encourage them to improve employment in a given area. There has also been a trend to move Call Centres to India, where there is a large pool of English-speaking people. However, there has been widespread dissatisfaction from consumers, who are unable to understand Indian Call Centre staff and vice versa, owing to differences between British and Indian English, and some companies, such as the bank Abbey, are closing their Indian Call Centre operations.
This trend is on a decline as India rapidly absorbs most of the highly educated people who are qualified in the science and mathematics streams, and, like in other countries, Call Centre jobs are increasingly viewed as stopgap jobs rather than as careers.
Another popular Call Centre site is the Philippines, owing to its abundant English speakers that are college graduates and Americanized when it comes to English accent and cultural affinities. The Philippines was an American colony for almost 50 years. The Philippines is said to be the best outsourcing site outside North America since the accent of Filipinos is nearer to that of American consumers as compared to other ethnicities.
For the Asia Pacific region, from India to Australia and New Zealand, Malaysia is emerging as one of the top locations for setting up Call Centres. The country has a history of ties with the English-speaking world and English-language education, as a former British colony.
Canada is also a popular Call Centre site, with the relatively low Canadian dollar and low telecommunication rates.
Around the world, there are a number of professional organisations forming to develop and promote Call Centre best practice management and operation, to overcome the negative aspects of a Call Centre.
Management of Call Centres
Management of Call Centres involves balancing the requirements of cost effectiveness and service. Callers do not wish to wait in exorbitantly long queues until they can be helped and so management must provide sufficient staff and inbound capacity to ensure that the quality of service is maintained. However, staff costs generally form more than half the cost of running a Call Centre and so management must minimise the number of staff present.
To perform this balancing act, Call Centre managers make use of demand estimation, Telecommunication forecasting and dimensioning techniques to determine the level of staff required at any time. Managers must take into account staff tea and lunch breaks and must determine the number of agents required on duty at any one time.
Call Centre Performance
There are many standard traffic measurements (performance metrics) that can be performed on a Call Centre to determine its performance levels. However, the most important performance measures are:
● The average delay a caller may experience whilst waiting in a queue.
● The mean conversation time, otherwise referred to as Average Talk Time (ATT).
● The mean dealing time, otherwise referred to as Average Handling Time (AHT - equal to ATT plus wrap-up and/or hold time).
● The percentage of calls answered within a determined time frame (referred to as a Service Level or SL %).
● The number of calls / inquiries per hour an agent handles (CPH or IPH).
● The amount of time spent while an agent processes customer requests while not speaking to a customer (referred to as Not Ready time/NR, or After Call Work/ACW, or Wrap-Up.).
● The percentage of calls which completely resolve the customer's issue (if the customer does not call back about the same problem for a certain period of time, it is considered a successful resolution or FCR - First Call Resolution).
● The percentage of calls where a customer hangs up or "abandons" the call is often referred to as Total Calls Abandoned or Percentage of calls abandoned. Calls are often abandoned due to long hold times when a Call Centre experiences a high call volume.
● Percentage of time agents spend not ready to take calls, often referred to as Idle Time.
● Quality Assurance monitored by a quality assurance (QA) team.
Refinements of Call Centres
There are many refinements to the generic Call Centre model. Each refinement helps increase the efficiency of the Call Centre thereby allowing management to make better decisions involving economy and service.
The following list contains some examples of Call Centre refinements:
● Predictive Dialing – Computer software attempts to predict the time taken for an agent to help a caller. The software begins dialing another caller before the agent has finished the previous call. This, because not every call will be connected (think of busy or not answered calls) and also because of the time it takes to set up the call (usually around 20 seconds before someone answers). Frequently, predictive dialers will dial more callers than there are agents, counting on the fact that not every line will be answered. When the line is answered and no agent is available, it is held in a retention queue for a short while. When still no agent has become available, the call is hung up and classified as a nuisance call. The next time the client is called an agent will be reserved for the caller.
● Multi-Skilled Staff – In any Call Centre, there will be members of staff that will be more skilled in areas than others. An 'Interactive Voice Response' (IVR) Unit can be used to allow the caller to select the reason for his call. Management software, called an Automatic Call Distributor, must then be used to route calls to the appropriate agent. Alternatively, it has been found that a mix of general and specialist agent creates a good balance.
● Prioritisation of Callers – Classification of callers according to priority is a very important refinement. Emergency calls or callers that are reattempting to contact a Call Centre are examples of callers that could be given a higher priority.
● Automatic Number Identification – This allows agents to determine who is calling before they answer the call. Greeting a caller by name and obtaining his/her information in advance adds to the quality of service and helps decrease the conversation time.
Additional Issues in Call Centres
There are many other issues that have to be planned for when managing a Call Centre. A few of these issues are listed below:
Call Center Noise Hazards, Planning for failure of equipment, Need for flexibility in meal-times, Need for job variety and training, Job exhaustion and stress, Staff turnover (high attrition rates are common in the Call Centre industry)
Call Center Noise Hazards Place Operators at Risk
Many employers are unaware of the hazard of acoustic shock, despite the fact that up to 3,00,000 victims have been paid over $15 million worldwide.
Acoustic shock is a sudden spike of noise; a hazard faced by 1 million Call Center operators. It can lead to physical problems such as tinnitus, and emotional problems, such as anxiety and depression.
Research by the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) showed 30 percent of Call Center employees interviewed claimed symptoms of acoustic shock. Potentially this suggests that 300,000 UK operators may be acoustic shock victims.
"Call center operators are becoming the modern victims of noise at work. In a study we conducted, 39 percent of operators were concerned that their hearing was damaged as a result of noise exposure at work and 30 percent said that work tasks left them with tinnitus," said Keith Broughton, former principal specialist inspector for Noise and Vibration, HSE. He noted that the call center workers said they were given little information about noise at work, and were told nothing about acoustic shock.
In fall 2000, a 34-year-old woman, exposed to acoustic shock several months before, complained of tinnitus, sleep disturbance and an increase in a pre-existing migraine condition. In summer 2001, she was absent from work with persistent tinnitus and anxiety relating to working at a call center. By spring 2002, her anxiety had reduced with medication and she had returned to work, though not on the phones, but she continued to complain of persistent, intrusive tinnitus. In early summer 2004, she continued to have tinnitus, disrupted sleep and ongoing problems with migraines. Litigation against her employer is now in progress.
"The health of operators has been at risk for far too long and there is a great misunderstanding between what constitutes acoustic shock as opposed to trauma, and to what extent employers are required by law to mitigate against this risk," said Marcus Quilter, chairman of the UK's Call Centre Management Association (CCMA).
The recent examinations conduct by the Delhi Times shows that, Call Centres is no longer an alternative place to work in. The attraction has seemingly boomeranged into repulsion for Gen. X. Today the dropout rate among the 20-30-age group at Call Centres is as high as the industry’s growth and the profile of the pros working there is in a state of transition.
Call Centres, inspite of it many disadvantages, has been the fastest growing sector in the Indian IT industry-both in terms of the number of people being hired and revenues generated-is the IT enabled services segment comprising Call Centres and Business Process Outsourcing (ITES-BPO) sector. This sector added 70,000 jobs in the last financial year, according to NASSCOM, the apex industry body of software and service companies in India. NASSCOM also estimates that by 2008, these will be 2,70,000 jobs in the customer interaction service sectors.
IT-enabled services are support functions and services for customers provided either through the telephone and web based channels. Where as, BPOs are companies, which provide similar functions and services but not from the country where the products have been sold. So, what is Call Centre job all about and why is it becoming a dream job for thousands of young people, many of whom are not even completing their graduation.
According to psychiatrist Samir Parekh. “Those who work in the graveyard shift suffer from the Shift Mal-adaptation Syndrome. With the rest and activity cycles reversed, the biological clock is confused; such people are prone to physical illness and suffer from depressive and anxiety symptoms. They are also prone to substance abuse. Most importantly, their social life gets disturb. This is why Call Centres tap people whose needs are higher, like those of from small towns and elderly people”.
As with every industry, there are downsides to working in Call Centres, some people face health problems because of the cycled routine of day and night shifts. Others face psychological problems because they are pretending to be someone else. The most complaint put up as per the survey is the effect on family and social life since the Call Centre employee is working while the world they live in is fast asleep and they are sleeping while people are busy socializing.
This problem, however, does not seems to be deterring the increasing number of young people making a beeline for the interview. It is mainly due to poor financial conditions being face by most young and old people. Not only that, Call Centre gives a handsome amount of salary to its employee and that can make people forget the pains.
Variations on the Generic Call Centre Model
The various components in a Call Centre discussed in the previous sections are the generic form of a Call Centre. There are many variations on the model developed above. A few of the variations are listed below:
● Remote Agents – An alternative to housing all agents in a central facility is to use remote agents. These agents work from home and use a Basic Rate ISDN access line to communicate with a central computing platform. Remote agents are more cost effective as they don’t have to travel to work, however the Call Centre must still cover the cost of the ISDN line. VOIP technology can also be used to remove the need for the ISDN, although the desktop application being used needs to be web enabled or VPN is used.
● Temporary Agents – Temporary agents are useful as they can be called upon if demand increases more rapidly than planned. They are offered a certain number of quarter hours a month. They are paid for the amount they actually work, and the difference between the amount offered and the amount guaranteed is also paid. Managers must use forecasting methods to determine the number of hours offered so that the difference is minimised.
● Virtual Call Centres – Virtual Call Centres are created using many smaller centres in different locations and connecting them to one another. The advantage of virtual Call Centres is that they improve service levels, provide emergency backup and enable extended operating hours over isolated Call Centres. There are two methods used to route traffic around Call Centres: pre-delivery and post-delivery. Pre-delivery involves using an external switch to route the calls to the appropriate centre and post-delivery enables Call Centres to route a call they’ve received to another Call Centre.
● Interaction Centres – As Call Centres evolve and deal with more media than telephony alone, some have taken to the term, "interaction centre". Email, Web Callback and more are gradually being added to the role.
Criticism of Call Centres
Criticisms of Call Centres generally follow a number of common themes:
From Callers:
● Operators working from a script.
● Non-expert operators (call screening).
● Incompetent or untrained operators incapable of processing customers' requests effectively.
● Overseas location, with language and accent problems.
● Automated queuing systems.
● From Staff:
● Close scrutiny by management (e.g. frequent random eavesdropping on operator's calls).
● Low pay.
● Restrictive working practices (e.g. there isn't much space for personal creativity since many operators are required to follow a pre-written script).
● High stress: a common problem associated with front-end jobs where employees deal directly with customers.
● poor working conditions (e.g. poor facilities, poor maintenance and cleaning, cramped working conditions, management interference)
As detailed above, none of these are inherent in the Call Centre model, although many companies will experience some or all of the above while implementing a Call Centre approach. As the science suggests, done properly, a Call Centre can offer the quickest route to resolution of customer queries, capitalising on the ready availability of highly skilled and intelligent people in some areas.
References
Paths to Union Renewal. Broadview Press. ISBN 1551930587.
Kennedy I., Call Centres, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, 2003.
Masi D.M.B., Fischer M.J., Harris C.M., Numerical Analysis of Routing Rules for Call Centers, Telecommunications Review, 1998..
HSE Web site at www.hse.gov.uk/lau/lacs/94-1.htm for guidelines about call center working practices.
Delhi Times, January 2007
zoulun77@yahoo.co.in
What is Call Centre? How is it being conducted? Why people of these days talk so much of it? What are its advantages & disadvantages and how people who are working in those firms used their life? We shall now elaborate them point by point so that we can take our decisions whether to opt for it or not. It is of course a place to make fast money but a place where there is no social life. You are working while your surrounding is fast asleep and sleeping while your friends are enjoying their life in day time.
What is Call Centre?
Call Centre or Call Center is a centralized office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. A Call Centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a Call Centre, collective handling of letters, faxes, and e-mails at one location is known as a Contact Centre. In short, we can say, ‘it is the link between multinational companies around the world’.
A Call Centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace, with work stations that include a computer, a telephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies called Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). Most major businesses use Call Centres to interact with their customers. Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through Call Centres. Examples of this include help desks and sales support.
IT-enabled services are support functions and services for customers provided either through the telephone and web based channels. Where as, BPOs are companies, which provide similar functions and services but not from the country where the products have been sold. So, what is Call Centre job all about and why is it becoming a dream job for thousands of young people, many of whom are not even completing their graduation.
Call Centres, inspite of its many disadvantages, has been the fastest growing sector in the Indian IT industry-both in terms of the number of people being hired and revenues generated-is the IT enabled services segment comprising Call Centres and Business Process Outsourcing (ITES-BPO) sector. This sector added 70,000 jobs in the last financial year, according to NASSCOM, the apex industry body of software and service companies in India. NASSCOM also estimates that by 2008, these will be 2, 70,000 jobs in the customer interaction service sectors.
The recent examinations conduct by the Delhi Times shows that, Call Centres is no longer an alternative place to work in. The attraction has seemingly boomeranged into repulsion for Gen. X. Today the dropout rate among the 20-30-age group at Call Centres is as high as the industry’s growth and the profile of the pros working there is in a state of transition.
The industry is growing at a lightning speed, but the call of Call Centres does not sound as sweet to Gen. X. What’s wrong, Why and How? Who’s Mr. Call Center’s Associate? It’s simple, he is an employee working under strict rules but sleeping whole daylong. He is the one who does not have time to see the beautiful daylight. No time to breathe fresh air and no time to interact with people and love ones. He has no future in education life and no time to glare at the books but time to close his eyes. Oh! What a boring and irritating life!
Types of Call Centre
There are various types of Call Centres. Any company can set up its own Call Centre to deal with its own customer’s (i.e. a Captive Call Centre) or they can hire a professional firm (i.e. a Their-party Call Centre) to do the job for them. Function-wise too, they are divided into Inbound and Outbound Call Centres. Outbound Call Centres are places where operators or Customer Service Associates, as they are called-make calls to the existing or prospective customers or where agents place calls to potential customers mostly with intentions of selling or service to the individual. Where as, at inbound Call Centres, the process is reversed and the Customer Service associates takes or received calls from the existing or prospective customers Or calls that are made by the consumer to obtain information, report a malfunction, or ask for help.
Call Centre staff are often organized into a multi-tier support system for a more efficient handling of calls. The first tier in such a model consists of operators, who direct inquiries to the appropriate department and provide general directory information. If a caller requires more assistance, the call is forwarded to the second tier, where most issues can be resolved. In some cases, there may be three or more tiers of support staff. If a caller requires more assistance, the caller is forwarded to the third tier of support; typically the third tier of support is formed by product engineers/developers or highly-skilled technical support staff of the product.
Call Centres can also be classified into Domestic and International. In the former, you work for an Indian based companies and deals with its Indian customers alone. The later deals with foreign customers of foreign companies, where you have to pretend yourself a foreigner besides flawless spoken English.
Mode of Selections
The selection process for the job of Call Centre Associate is not an easy task. Since the bulk of growth is happening in the BPO category, fluency in English is an absolute must. Your spoken English has to be flawless; its not just a matter of grammar, the way you talk must be void of any regional accent or MTI-Mother Tongue Influence (This is what we the North East people finds it difficult to over come as we tune our English to our mother tongue). To be an associate, one has to acquire standard XII as a minimum qualification, but graduate is preferred. BCA, B. Sc. (Computer Sc.) can also apply for technical support jobs. Some firms take BE or B. Tech graduates too. You will need to undergo at least 2 to 3 round of interview. Now-a-day, GK along with simple mathematics has been added as a part of interview process.
Most Call Centres offered 24/7 (24 hours a day and 7 days a week) support function round the clock. Willingness to work night shift is a must. In metros, the salary for fresher is anywhere between Rs. 8000 – Rs. 10,000 per month as advertised in the daily esteems, but the said amount is hardly paid to any newly recruited person instead, less amount is being paid to them. People in marketing get sales-based incentives. With 6 months experience, you can get another job and a hike of Rs. 1000 to Rs. 3000. Interestingly moving up the ladder, with 2 years experience, you can become Team Leader, Voice Coach or Quality Analyst, etc. with a salary of above Rs. 15,000 per month. Managerial positions are also available after a few more years of experience.
Provided you satisfied the above criteria, you will be call for an interview. Not only that, there are several elimination rounds you have to undergo. Firstly, you will face the preliminary round of interview. The next step is to answer the written test. This could be anything-from simple English Test with Analytical/Logical Reasoning thrown in or a complex Technical Aptitude test or both. Some Firms also administer psychometric tests. The next step includes a Group Discussion, where the applicants are judged for their ability to talk clearly and with poise and a Listening Comprehensive test, to judge listening skills. If you go through all these, you will have at least two rounds of personal interviews. Once you are hired, you will receive training before going to “LIVE”. This process of selection is not always the same in every Call Centre; however, these are the common norms being followed.
Accommodation
The centralization of call management aims to improve a company's operations and reduce costs, while providing a standardized, streamlined, uniform service for consumers, making this approach ideal for large companies with extensive customer support needs. To accommodate for such a large customer base, large warehouses are often converted to office space to host all Call Centre operations under one roof.
Centralised offices mean that large numbers of workers can be managed and controlled by a relatively small number of managers and support staff. They are often supported by computer technology that manages measures and monitors the performance and activities of the workers. Call Centre staff are closely monitored for quality control, level of proficiency, and customer service. Typical contact centre operations focus on the discipline areas of workforce management, queue management, quality monitoring, and reporting. Reporting in a Call Centre can be further broken down into real time reporting and historical reporting. The types of information collected for a group of Call Centre agents typically include: agents logged in, agents ready to take calls, agents available to take calls, agents in wrap up mode, average call duration, average call duration including wrap-up time, longest duration agent available, longest duration call in queue, number of calls in queue, number of calls offered, number of calls abandoned, average speed to answer, average speed to abandoned and service level, calculated by the percentage of calls answered in under a certain time period.
Many Call Centres use workforce management software, which is software that uses historical information coupled with projected need to generate automated schedules. This aims to provide adequate staffing skilled enough to assist callers.
The relatively high cost of personnel and worker inefficiency accounts for the majority of Call Centre operating expenses, influencing outsourcing in the Call Centre industry.
Inadequate computer systems can mean staff takes one or two seconds longer than necessary to process a transaction. This can often be quantified in staff cost terms. This is often used as a driving factor in any business case to justify a complete system upgrade or replacement. For several factors, including the efficiency of the Call Centre, the level of computer and telecom support that may be adequate for staff in a typical branch office may prove totally inadequate in a Call Centre.
Technology
Call Centres use a wide variety of different technologies to allow them to manage the large volumes of work that need to be managed by the Call Centre. These technologies ensure that agents are kept as productive as possible, and that calls are queued and processed as quickly as possible, resulting in good levels of service.
These include;
● ACD (automatic call distribution: In telephony, an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is a device that distributes incoming calls to a specific group of terminals that agents use. It is often part of a computer telephony integration system.)
● Agent performance analytics
● BTTC (best time to call)/ Outbound call optimization
● IVR (interactive voice response: It is a computerized system that allows a person, typically a telephone caller, to select an option from a voice menu and otherwise interface with a computer system. Generally the system plays pre-recorded voice prompts to which the person presses a number on a telephone keypad to select the option chosen, or speaks simple answers such as "yes", "no", or numbers in answer to the voice prompts.)
● Guided Speech IVR: The Guided Speech IVR approach for call centers is a hybrid model that integrates live call center agents with all the advancements of speech in a new real-time approach for callers. This new approach creates a "safety-net", as the new role for the agent as a guide who assists the automation invisibly helps the caller using human intelligence and transcription to ensure the correct computerized service is provided.
● CTI (computer telephony integration: Computer telephony integration (CTI) is technology that allows interactions on a telephone and a computer to be integrated or co-coordinated. As contact channels have expanded from voice to include email, web, and fax, the definition of CTI has expanded to include the integration of all customer contact channels (voice, email, web, fax, etc.) with computer systems.)
● Enterprise Campaign Management: All Predictive dialer solutions require customer data (usually referred to as 'call records') in order for them to work. At the most basic sense, these call records are simply a list of phone numbers to dial, however in practice companies will also provide with those phone numbers information such as the Customer Name, Address, Account Number and other information about why you might be calling that person. This data has two basic uses, 1. The dialer uses the phone number(s) provided to make the actual calls, and 2. To populate the 'screen pop' that is displayed to the agent when the call is connected (so that the agent knows who they are talking to and what about).
● Outbound predictive dialer: The autodialer preceded the predictive dialer. While the basic autodialer merely automatically dials telephone numbers for call center agents who are idle or waiting for a call, the predictive dialer uses a variety of algorithms to predict both the availability of agents and called party answers, adjusting the calling process to the number of agents it anticipates (or predicts) will be available when the calls it places are expected to be answered.
● CRM (customer relationship management: Customer relationship management (CRM) covers methods and technologies used by companies to manage their relationships with clients. Information stored on existing customers (and potential customers) is analyzed and used to this end. Automated CRM processes are often used to generate automatic personalized marketing based on the customer information stored in the system.)
● CIM (customer interaction management) solutions (Also known as 'Unified' solutions)
● Email Management, Chat and Web Collaboration, Desktop Scripting Solutions, Outsourcing, Third Party Verification (Third party verification), TTS (text to speech), WFM (workforce management), Virtual queuing, Voice analysis, Voice recognition, Voicemail, Voice recording, VoIP, Speech Analytics
Call Centre Dynamics
Owing to the highly technological nature of the operations in such offices, the close monitoring of staff activities is easy and widespread. This can be argued to be beneficial, to enable the company to better plan the workload and time of its employees. Some people have argued that such close monitoring breaches human rights to privacy. Yet another argument is that close monitoring and measurement by quantitative metrics can be counterproductive in that it can lead to poor customer service and a poor image of the company, and an ability to keep within the "stats" while still doing horrible things.
Many Call Centres in the UK have been built in areas that are depressed economically. This means that the companies get cheap land and labour, and can often benefit from grants to encourage them to improve employment in a given area. There has also been a trend to move Call Centres to India, where there is a large pool of English-speaking people. However, there has been widespread dissatisfaction from consumers, who are unable to understand Indian Call Centre staff and vice versa, owing to differences between British and Indian English, and some companies, such as the bank Abbey, are closing their Indian Call Centre operations.
This trend is on a decline as India rapidly absorbs most of the highly educated people who are qualified in the science and mathematics streams, and, like in other countries, Call Centre jobs are increasingly viewed as stopgap jobs rather than as careers.
Another popular Call Centre site is the Philippines, owing to its abundant English speakers that are college graduates and Americanized when it comes to English accent and cultural affinities. The Philippines was an American colony for almost 50 years. The Philippines is said to be the best outsourcing site outside North America since the accent of Filipinos is nearer to that of American consumers as compared to other ethnicities.
For the Asia Pacific region, from India to Australia and New Zealand, Malaysia is emerging as one of the top locations for setting up Call Centres. The country has a history of ties with the English-speaking world and English-language education, as a former British colony.
Canada is also a popular Call Centre site, with the relatively low Canadian dollar and low telecommunication rates.
Around the world, there are a number of professional organisations forming to develop and promote Call Centre best practice management and operation, to overcome the negative aspects of a Call Centre.
Management of Call Centres
Management of Call Centres involves balancing the requirements of cost effectiveness and service. Callers do not wish to wait in exorbitantly long queues until they can be helped and so management must provide sufficient staff and inbound capacity to ensure that the quality of service is maintained. However, staff costs generally form more than half the cost of running a Call Centre and so management must minimise the number of staff present.
To perform this balancing act, Call Centre managers make use of demand estimation, Telecommunication forecasting and dimensioning techniques to determine the level of staff required at any time. Managers must take into account staff tea and lunch breaks and must determine the number of agents required on duty at any one time.
Call Centre Performance
There are many standard traffic measurements (performance metrics) that can be performed on a Call Centre to determine its performance levels. However, the most important performance measures are:
● The average delay a caller may experience whilst waiting in a queue.
● The mean conversation time, otherwise referred to as Average Talk Time (ATT).
● The mean dealing time, otherwise referred to as Average Handling Time (AHT - equal to ATT plus wrap-up and/or hold time).
● The percentage of calls answered within a determined time frame (referred to as a Service Level or SL %).
● The number of calls / inquiries per hour an agent handles (CPH or IPH).
● The amount of time spent while an agent processes customer requests while not speaking to a customer (referred to as Not Ready time/NR, or After Call Work/ACW, or Wrap-Up.).
● The percentage of calls which completely resolve the customer's issue (if the customer does not call back about the same problem for a certain period of time, it is considered a successful resolution or FCR - First Call Resolution).
● The percentage of calls where a customer hangs up or "abandons" the call is often referred to as Total Calls Abandoned or Percentage of calls abandoned. Calls are often abandoned due to long hold times when a Call Centre experiences a high call volume.
● Percentage of time agents spend not ready to take calls, often referred to as Idle Time.
● Quality Assurance monitored by a quality assurance (QA) team.
Refinements of Call Centres
There are many refinements to the generic Call Centre model. Each refinement helps increase the efficiency of the Call Centre thereby allowing management to make better decisions involving economy and service.
The following list contains some examples of Call Centre refinements:
● Predictive Dialing – Computer software attempts to predict the time taken for an agent to help a caller. The software begins dialing another caller before the agent has finished the previous call. This, because not every call will be connected (think of busy or not answered calls) and also because of the time it takes to set up the call (usually around 20 seconds before someone answers). Frequently, predictive dialers will dial more callers than there are agents, counting on the fact that not every line will be answered. When the line is answered and no agent is available, it is held in a retention queue for a short while. When still no agent has become available, the call is hung up and classified as a nuisance call. The next time the client is called an agent will be reserved for the caller.
● Multi-Skilled Staff – In any Call Centre, there will be members of staff that will be more skilled in areas than others. An 'Interactive Voice Response' (IVR) Unit can be used to allow the caller to select the reason for his call. Management software, called an Automatic Call Distributor, must then be used to route calls to the appropriate agent. Alternatively, it has been found that a mix of general and specialist agent creates a good balance.
● Prioritisation of Callers – Classification of callers according to priority is a very important refinement. Emergency calls or callers that are reattempting to contact a Call Centre are examples of callers that could be given a higher priority.
● Automatic Number Identification – This allows agents to determine who is calling before they answer the call. Greeting a caller by name and obtaining his/her information in advance adds to the quality of service and helps decrease the conversation time.
Additional Issues in Call Centres
There are many other issues that have to be planned for when managing a Call Centre. A few of these issues are listed below:
Call Center Noise Hazards, Planning for failure of equipment, Need for flexibility in meal-times, Need for job variety and training, Job exhaustion and stress, Staff turnover (high attrition rates are common in the Call Centre industry)
Call Center Noise Hazards Place Operators at Risk
Many employers are unaware of the hazard of acoustic shock, despite the fact that up to 3,00,000 victims have been paid over $15 million worldwide.
Acoustic shock is a sudden spike of noise; a hazard faced by 1 million Call Center operators. It can lead to physical problems such as tinnitus, and emotional problems, such as anxiety and depression.
Research by the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) showed 30 percent of Call Center employees interviewed claimed symptoms of acoustic shock. Potentially this suggests that 300,000 UK operators may be acoustic shock victims.
"Call center operators are becoming the modern victims of noise at work. In a study we conducted, 39 percent of operators were concerned that their hearing was damaged as a result of noise exposure at work and 30 percent said that work tasks left them with tinnitus," said Keith Broughton, former principal specialist inspector for Noise and Vibration, HSE. He noted that the call center workers said they were given little information about noise at work, and were told nothing about acoustic shock.
In fall 2000, a 34-year-old woman, exposed to acoustic shock several months before, complained of tinnitus, sleep disturbance and an increase in a pre-existing migraine condition. In summer 2001, she was absent from work with persistent tinnitus and anxiety relating to working at a call center. By spring 2002, her anxiety had reduced with medication and she had returned to work, though not on the phones, but she continued to complain of persistent, intrusive tinnitus. In early summer 2004, she continued to have tinnitus, disrupted sleep and ongoing problems with migraines. Litigation against her employer is now in progress.
"The health of operators has been at risk for far too long and there is a great misunderstanding between what constitutes acoustic shock as opposed to trauma, and to what extent employers are required by law to mitigate against this risk," said Marcus Quilter, chairman of the UK's Call Centre Management Association (CCMA).
The recent examinations conduct by the Delhi Times shows that, Call Centres is no longer an alternative place to work in. The attraction has seemingly boomeranged into repulsion for Gen. X. Today the dropout rate among the 20-30-age group at Call Centres is as high as the industry’s growth and the profile of the pros working there is in a state of transition.
Call Centres, inspite of it many disadvantages, has been the fastest growing sector in the Indian IT industry-both in terms of the number of people being hired and revenues generated-is the IT enabled services segment comprising Call Centres and Business Process Outsourcing (ITES-BPO) sector. This sector added 70,000 jobs in the last financial year, according to NASSCOM, the apex industry body of software and service companies in India. NASSCOM also estimates that by 2008, these will be 2,70,000 jobs in the customer interaction service sectors.
IT-enabled services are support functions and services for customers provided either through the telephone and web based channels. Where as, BPOs are companies, which provide similar functions and services but not from the country where the products have been sold. So, what is Call Centre job all about and why is it becoming a dream job for thousands of young people, many of whom are not even completing their graduation.
According to psychiatrist Samir Parekh. “Those who work in the graveyard shift suffer from the Shift Mal-adaptation Syndrome. With the rest and activity cycles reversed, the biological clock is confused; such people are prone to physical illness and suffer from depressive and anxiety symptoms. They are also prone to substance abuse. Most importantly, their social life gets disturb. This is why Call Centres tap people whose needs are higher, like those of from small towns and elderly people”.
As with every industry, there are downsides to working in Call Centres, some people face health problems because of the cycled routine of day and night shifts. Others face psychological problems because they are pretending to be someone else. The most complaint put up as per the survey is the effect on family and social life since the Call Centre employee is working while the world they live in is fast asleep and they are sleeping while people are busy socializing.
This problem, however, does not seems to be deterring the increasing number of young people making a beeline for the interview. It is mainly due to poor financial conditions being face by most young and old people. Not only that, Call Centre gives a handsome amount of salary to its employee and that can make people forget the pains.
Variations on the Generic Call Centre Model
The various components in a Call Centre discussed in the previous sections are the generic form of a Call Centre. There are many variations on the model developed above. A few of the variations are listed below:
● Remote Agents – An alternative to housing all agents in a central facility is to use remote agents. These agents work from home and use a Basic Rate ISDN access line to communicate with a central computing platform. Remote agents are more cost effective as they don’t have to travel to work, however the Call Centre must still cover the cost of the ISDN line. VOIP technology can also be used to remove the need for the ISDN, although the desktop application being used needs to be web enabled or VPN is used.
● Temporary Agents – Temporary agents are useful as they can be called upon if demand increases more rapidly than planned. They are offered a certain number of quarter hours a month. They are paid for the amount they actually work, and the difference between the amount offered and the amount guaranteed is also paid. Managers must use forecasting methods to determine the number of hours offered so that the difference is minimised.
● Virtual Call Centres – Virtual Call Centres are created using many smaller centres in different locations and connecting them to one another. The advantage of virtual Call Centres is that they improve service levels, provide emergency backup and enable extended operating hours over isolated Call Centres. There are two methods used to route traffic around Call Centres: pre-delivery and post-delivery. Pre-delivery involves using an external switch to route the calls to the appropriate centre and post-delivery enables Call Centres to route a call they’ve received to another Call Centre.
● Interaction Centres – As Call Centres evolve and deal with more media than telephony alone, some have taken to the term, "interaction centre". Email, Web Callback and more are gradually being added to the role.
Criticism of Call Centres
Criticisms of Call Centres generally follow a number of common themes:
From Callers:
● Operators working from a script.
● Non-expert operators (call screening).
● Incompetent or untrained operators incapable of processing customers' requests effectively.
● Overseas location, with language and accent problems.
● Automated queuing systems.
● From Staff:
● Close scrutiny by management (e.g. frequent random eavesdropping on operator's calls).
● Low pay.
● Restrictive working practices (e.g. there isn't much space for personal creativity since many operators are required to follow a pre-written script).
● High stress: a common problem associated with front-end jobs where employees deal directly with customers.
● poor working conditions (e.g. poor facilities, poor maintenance and cleaning, cramped working conditions, management interference)
As detailed above, none of these are inherent in the Call Centre model, although many companies will experience some or all of the above while implementing a Call Centre approach. As the science suggests, done properly, a Call Centre can offer the quickest route to resolution of customer queries, capitalising on the ready availability of highly skilled and intelligent people in some areas.
References
Paths to Union Renewal. Broadview Press. ISBN 1551930587.
Kennedy I., Call Centres, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, 2003.
Masi D.M.B., Fischer M.J., Harris C.M., Numerical Analysis of Routing Rules for Call Centers, Telecommunications Review, 1998..
HSE Web site at www.hse.gov.uk/lau/lacs/94-1.htm for guidelines about call center working practices.
Delhi Times, January 2007
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