Frequemtly Asked Questions (F.A.Q.)

1. What does BPO stand for? What does it mean?
BPO stands for Business Process Outsourcing. Major corporations in the US and Europe are outsourcing their back office operations to India to save costs. E.g. employee payroll is maintained in India for their employees worldwide. Although these jobs usually are not directly IT-related, their data-based orientation often means that they require IT departmental support to be successfully outsourced.

2. What does ITES stand for? What does it mean?
ITES stands for IT-enabled services. IT-enabled outsourcing can be defined as,

Those outsourcing services that use information technology in the processing and delivery of the service.

Services are typically delivered through a telecommunications or data network, or other electronic media

3. What are the reasons for outsourcing?

Reason	Savings
Cost reduction	43%
Focus	35%
Access to special enterprise	32%
Resource related reasons{relieve resource constraints, reduce IT staff and augment IT staff}	51%

4. What exactly does the BPO market comprise of?
There is a disagreement as to what exactly constitutes BPO. With the rapid expansion of the BPO industry and the extent of its reach, it is becoming increasingly difficult to define what a BPO exactly means. It encompasses a wide variety of activities such as human resource, accounting, financial research, marketing, sales, legal work, logistics and so on. Software services are also regarded as a part of the BPO market by many firms.

5. Why is it important to have the call centre in multi-locations?
BPO clients would not like their work to be disrupted. To ensure continuity it is essential to be multi-locational, at times this could mean in different countries also.

BPO companies need to constantly evaluate where they can get the best value for their money. Low-skill jobs like data entry could be outsourced to countries where labor is cheaper than in India.

Few countries have data access legislation that prevents databases and information from crossing geographical boundaries. The best way to solve this problem is to have a BPO centre in that country itself. At times BPO client can take permission from the appropriate authorities and move the database outside the country. For e.g. in the case of EDS [Enhanced Directory Service] the operator needs to access a database which has the information of the residents/businesses of the client country. Usually you are not allowed to ship this database outside that country, however clients have taken special permission to ship this database to countries like Philippines.

6. What is IVR?
IVR stands for Integrated Voice Response. IVR systems are automated systems installed in customer contact/service centers that help automate routine tasks such as account information, product information, schedule etc. IVR systems help automate many transactions that free employees tedious repetitive tasks. Customers can input their query using touch tone phones and these days advanced IVRs support speech recognition.

7. What is glocalization?
Glocalization is basically globalization plus localization, your ability to take the best from the world's systems, best practices, best ideas, best brands, and meld them with your own culture in a balanced way so that you don't feel overwhelmed by them.

8. What are key performance measurements in a call center?
A significant amount of information is required to effectively manage a call center. We need, for example, data on caller needs and expectations, the queue and caller tolerance, the load on the system, agent activities and performance, call patterns, cost components, the activities of other parts of the organization and conditions in the external environment. But we must also be able climb above the detail and assess overall performance, without the need to review dozens of reports. The question is, what measures can adequately summarize the numerous activities of a call center? While any measure by itself has the potential to mislead, the ten reports summarized below generally give a good synopsis of the call center's performance when they are interpreted together.

A. Average Call Value (Sales and Reservations Only)

This measure is generally calculated by dividing total revenue generated by number of calls. This has historically been, and continues to be, a top priority in sales and reservations environments.

B. Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is, without doubt, a top priority. Most call centers conduct surveys via either outbound calls or mail to randomly selected callers. Some call centers contract with outside firms to conduct surveys and prepare the results, while others do the surveys themselves. And a growing number of call centers are automating some surveys; callers are transferred into a VRU that guides them through a series of questions and allows them to respond via touch-tone.

C. Service Level

Service level takes the form of X percent answer in Y seconds (such as 80 percent of calls answered in 20 seconds), and is a high level measure of how fast callers get through to reps. The best managed call centers take service level seriously, and strive to meet it as consistently as possible. An appropriately selected service level objective should mean that answering calls less quickly (or a lot more quickly) would actually cost money, not save it.

D. Percent Abandoned

Abandonment is an ongoing concern in incoming call centers. If callers hang up before we get a chance to talk to them, we are missing the opportunity to make them happy, sell to them and solve their customer service problems. However, abandonment is difficult to accurately forecast (and, therefore, staff around) and is often a misleading indication of the queue callers experienced. In the final analysis, we can control how accessible we are -- how many trunks we have, how many skilled reps are plugged in. But we can't control how callers will react or the myriad of circumstances that influence their behavior. Accordingly, be sure to view abandonment in light of the other measures, and in consideration of the callers' circumstances.

E. Cost Per Call

There are various ways to calculate cost per call (i.e. what factors to include in staff costs, how to allocate equipment, how to value the building) but the basic formula is to divide total costs by total calls received for a given period of time (usually a month). The potential in following cost per call is to identify the variables that are driving it upwards or downwards, and the impact they have.

A climbing cost per call can be a good sign, depending on the variables driving it up. For example, process improvements may result in fewer calls than would otherwise be necessary (e.g. eliminating the need for customer callbacks, improving the VRU and coordinating with other departments to eliminate problems that generate calls). As a result, the fixed costs (in the numerator) get spread over fewer calls (in the denominator), driving cost per call up. But, of course, total costs will go down over time, because the elimination of waste and rework will drive down variable costs. (Similarly, cost per call usually goes down during the busy times of the year, and up during the slower times of year).

F. Errors and Rework

A major theme of the quality movement is that good service pays for itself because of the elimination of things that come with a lack of quality: doing work over, correcting mistakes, handling complaints, increased public relations costs, canceled orders or subscriptions, costs of closing accounts, costs of inspection, and others. Errors and rework are often part of a cycle. For example, errors and rework consume valuable staff time, which can lead to insufficient staffing to handle the incoming workload; insufficient staffing tends to lead to high occupancy, unhappy callers and increased stress on the staff -- which contributes to errors and rework. So, reducing errors and rework has a positive impact on service level, morale, customer satisfaction and costs. A variation on errors and rework is a measure of the percent of calls completed on the first attempt, which has become an increasingly important measure in many call centers.

Errors and rework can be measured in a number of ways. For example, the database may allow you to track repeat calls, unresolved issues and errors in data entry. Monitoring or side-by-side coaching should detect and track specific problems that are occurring during call handling. Call coding in the ACD (where reps use codes to track specific types of calls and issues) can trace problems. And transferred calls, escalated calls, customer complaints and correspondence (both to and from customers) can be additional sources of information.

G. Forecast Call-load to Actual

Underestimating calling demand will mask and defeat all other efforts to provide good service, and overestimating demand results in waste. Good forecasting comes from constantly tracking results and making improvements to the forecasting process. Common practice is to blend quantitative "time series" forecasting (projecting out existing call patterns) with judgmental forecasting (for example, what is marketing about to do? new terms and procedures? process changes? interest rates? the weather?). If the forecast is off by much, we need to identify which variables caused the problems, and factor them in (or out) in the future.

H. Scheduled Staff to Actual

This measure is independent of whether we actually have the staff necessary to achieve a targeted service level. How well do the staffs we have adhered to schedule?

I. Adherence To Schedule

Adherence factor is a measure of how much time an individual is on the phone, available to take calls, and generally consists of all plugged-in time, including talk time, wrap-up time, waiting to receive calls, and necessary outgoing calls. Generally, when adherence factor improves (goes up), service level goes up and occupancy goes down. Adherence factor is not just an issue of how much, but also an issue of when -- when during the course of the day, are reps is plugged in and available to take calls?

J. Average Handling Time

Average handling time brings together two components: talk time and after call work (wrap up). Talk time is everything between "hello" and "good-bye." After call work is that work that must immediately follow the inbound call. The ratio of talk time to after call work varies significantly from one call center to another.

An erratic average handling time often points to the need for more training, especially on how to use the after call work mode. To be true after call work, three criteria must be met- 1) The work is related to an inbound call, 2) It follows the call, 3) Immediately or shortly thereafter.