'India needs to shore up productivity'

Growth expected in innovation, tech adoption in 2007

India is expected to up its contact centre seats by 16 per cent (around 40,000 seats) in 2007, according to a study by Asian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report. The number of seats will then touch 312,500 in 2007 compared to 270,000 seats in 2006.

Along with India, the other Asian countries seeing a double digit growth are Philippines and Thailand. Both are projected to grow around 33 per cent per annum while Singapore and Malaysia are both growing around 32 per cent per annum. China's growth rate is projected to be 22 per cent in 2007, the report said.

callcentres.net has been conducting the Asian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Reports every six months since 1997. The report surveyed 747 contact centres across Asia (India, Philippines, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand). This includes 107 contact centres in India.

The study examines contact centre strategy, operations, human resource management, technology, customer service, channel management, outsourcing, key performance indicators and management challenges.

Sharing details of the study, Catriona Wallace, Managing Director, callcentres.net said: "The Asian contact centre industry is in a period of strong growth and it is exciting to see newer contact centre markets like Malaysia, China and Thailand leading the growth rates."

"The mature markets like India are likely to see the outsourcing sector driving growth in innovation and technology adoption in the region," she added.

According to Wallace, since there is no sizeable English-speaking population in China, it may take another five years or more for it to rival India. While in terms of productivity China is way ahead of India, India has to shore up its work quality and productivity. Indian productivity suffers from higher absenteeism and attrition, and shorter working hours.

The average level of agent absenteeism in Asian contact centres is 11 days of sick leave per annum. This is highest in India, at 15 days per annum and lowest in Singapore and Malaysia at eight days per annum. Whereas in China it is 11 days, she pointed out.

The mean rates of pay (annual base wage) for an experienced agent in each country is: India $3,334, China $2,558, Malaysia $5,442, The Philippines $3,348, Thailand $3,656 and Singapore $13,677.

Along with the rising wage costs, challenges faced by the Asian contact centre managers are: human resources -- recruitment and agent turnover; technology -- upgrading existing; customer service -- improving customer satisfaction; sales -- business development; finance -- budget constraints and organisational change -- restructuring.

The growth in the industry is also reflected in strong technology purchasing and upgrading plans for Asian contact centres. About 54 per cent of the Asian contact centres plan to purchase new contact centre technology in 2007 and 62 per cent plan to upgrade their existing technology.

In India, the top contact centre technologies to be purchased in 2007 will be Workforce Management, Electronic Records Management Systems, IP telephony and Call Recording systems, she predicted.

A majority of Asian contact centres (56 per cent) are established as customer service centres, 15 per cent are dedicated to outbound sales, 14 per cent to technical support, 12 per cent to inbound sales and 2 per cent to collections.

A majority of Asian organisations' customer interactions (73 per cent) are handled via the contact centre. This constitutes 62 per cent of contacts handled by phone and 11 per cent handled by email or the web. About 26 per cent of an organisation's contacts are handled by the branch/retail network or sales force.

The average level of agent turnover in Asia is 22 per cent per annum, with a high of 38 per cent in India and a low of 15 per cent in Thailand.

Of all the agents who left Asian contact centres in 2006, only 38 per cent moved to work in another contact centre. Disturbingly, 62 per cent of agents left the contact centre industry altogether. In Asia, on an average, it costs $1,411 to replace an agent.