BPOs hunt for German, Spanish speaking execs

"Domestic BPO companies are now looking towards non-English speaking markets, such as Eastern Europe and other countries. Thus, they need to provide native language support in French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Italian and so on," Saurabh Gupta, research director, Everest Research Institute, said.

Currently, various third party BPOs and KPOs, such as vCustomer, Patni, SmartCube, are providing services in multiple languages.

"Clients today want a standardised and seamless customer experience for their customers. So, be it a customer calling from China, the US, Europe, companies want that their customers should get a similar service quality," Sanjiv Kapur, senior vice-president and head, Patni BPO, said.

Patni currently has a multi-lingual support team of 50 people supporting clients in Japanese, French, Korean, Mandarin, German, Italian, and Spanish, Mandarin Korean. However, there are very few outsourcing companies providing multi-lingual services in India, Navin Joshua, executive director, vCustomer Corporation, said.

The growth is primarily driven by the existing clients who wants a one-stop solution, he said, adding even for the US market, some clients are looking for Spanish-language support services. VCustomer has a team of 50 language experts, which offers services in various foreign languages.

Recognising the potential that exists, there is now a trend within the Indian ITeS-BPO industry to address other foreign languages as well, said Sameer Walia, managing director, Smart Cube, a KPO firm that specialises in delivering high value and customised business research and analysis.

Most of the large players will need to expand their offering to include multi-lingual activities, so as to meet the needs of their existing customers, he added.

Talking about remunerations, Joshua said depending on experience and merit, a language expert's salary premium could be anywhere between 25 per cent to 40 per cent over their English speaking counterparts.

"Typically, a language profile may just mean a translation job. But at Patni BPO, foreign language professionals get a profile that involves technical support and language both," Kapoor added.

While the BPOs prefer recruiting a language graduate, other skills are priority for a KPO.

The KPOs prefer recruiting natives or a person with Masters degree in the language, Smart Cube added.