US protectionism will have little impact on Indian IT: Shanmugam Nagarajan

Co-founder of 24/7 Inc believes services can be globalised too, like products

Technology-based back office service provider 24/7 Inc, which claims to have the biggest team of 7,000 chat agents globally, deliver customer engagement services in the US and other markets, says Indian companies may not see a major impact due to Trump's policies as they are more embedded with their customers.

The firm, which has unit in Philippines offer voice based service, hired  more agents in India after it saw shift in adoption to chat in services like customer engagement.

"If products could be globalised. We buy the best why should it be different in case of services. Job displacement did not happen just because of outsourcing. We need to move on. On one side we are looking at automation, it is not going to drastically change things and a lot can be done in India," said Shanmugam Nagarajan, co-founder and chief people officer, 24/7 Inc, in an interview.

The firm said a combination of "largest" human chat agents and artificial intelligence-based tools would help it solve problems of customers better, thereby boosting growth. AI-enabled chat services over services like IVR has played an important role in reducing the firm's attrition significantly.

Nagarajan said that the technology-based services industry need both human manager and bots (automation) to shape the future of delivery. "There are a lot of companies still not automated to the level they want, there are still mainframes running. AI can also be adopted by people in India."

24/7 Inc has not been able to make inroads in India mainly because brands here do not focus on customer retention. Nagarajan rues the lack of investment by biggest Indian companies.

"Companies in India including big players, whatever investments they are making in Australia or in the Europe, they are refusing to do that in India. Lower revenue per user on one side and on the other side customer centricity is not a great concept in India yet, even the best brands do not treat their customers, the way the not-so-great brands do in the western countries," he said.