Challenges Before Indian Call Centers

The major challenges faced by the Indian call center industry are:

• Market Maturity : India is one of the longest-serving markets for offshore contact center services. Because of this, western investors are aware of its capabilities, and many have already established operations there. Thus, the relatively slow growth is reflective of Indias mature positioning on the offshore product life cycle.
• Increased Competition : Philippines, South Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and North Africa are continuously making efforts to increase the market value of their call center industry.
• HR Issues : The call center industry currently employs more than 171,000 professionals compared to a 25,000 in 1999. However, India is running out of the supply of good quality managerial talent.
• Infrastructure : Most cities still face power outages and water shortages, and are heavily dependent on backup supplies.
• Increasing Labour Costs : Overall salary levels have gone up by 20-25% in the last 12-18 months in major Contact Centre clusters across India.
• Margins Under Pressure : With increasing competition and subsequent price dips, the margins these companies have come under tremendous pressure.
• Attrition : Indian BPO attrition rates are far too high, with levels over 50% p.a. This inevitably impacts service levels and impedes ongoing improvements.
• Security : Although India compares well with competing destinations on the security matrix, awareness about security issues is still low. Data security is an important issue and needs to be tackled on multiple fronts - regulation (to keep out unscrupulous players who spoil the fair name of India), robust processes, systems, and training.
• Health Concerns : One has to sacrifice social life, time and health. The odd working hours is a major issue. As health problems, arising from tampering with the biological clock of the employees, become more pronounced the lure of BPO and IT-enabled services will go away.
• Necessity Bilingualism : Apart from English, most Indian contact centers are unable to service other languages like Spanish, French, Mandarin and Cantonese.