Attrition, key challenge for Indian contact centres

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The primary challenge for the Indian contact center industry for 2008 is employee attrition, recruitment, agent training and implementing new service channels, according to the Indian contact center industry reports.

Indian contact center executives are attempting to improve human resource management results by offering financial incentives, reward and recognition programmes and better career planning for agents.

However, average tenure for an Indian contact center agent is lowest in the region at nine months.

Callcentres.net Pte Ltd released the 2008 Asian contact center industry Benchmarking report today. The report details results from contact centre industries in India, Singapore, China, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.

The research, sponsored by Autonomy etalk and Genesys, involved interviewing 539 contact centers executives representing 2,488 contact centres and 259,699 contact center seats across Asia.

The study assessed contact center strategy, revenue generation, operations, human resource management, technology, customer service, channel management, outsourcing, key performance indicators and management challenges. A total of 107 Indian-based organisations were involved in the study.

Improvements in human resource management

The study, which included 72 per cent outsourced contact centers  and 28 per cent in-house or captive centres, reported that agent absenteeism or sick leave in Indian contact centres had reduced on average from 15 days in 2007 to 9 days per annum in 2008.

Despite this, employee tenure remains a critical problem. Length of tenure for agents who have left the contact center in the last 12 months is nine months, and the average length of tenure for all agents in Indian contact centres is 11 months.

This is the lowest length of agent tenure in the region with Philippines 22 months, Malaysia 20 months, Singapore 18 months, Thailand 17 months and China 12 months tenure (for agents who have left their contact center in the last 12 months).

The smaller Indian contact center (<100 seats) have lower lengths of agent tenure at about 10 months on average, compared to the larger centres (>100 seats) where tenure is closer to 15 months.

This may suggest that the larger center are recruiting agents from smaller centres, or that they are able to provide greater investment in human resource management, thereby holding onto agents for a longer time.

Contact center managers stated that the most successful agent retention strategies they had implemented in the last 12 months were paying financial incentives, reward and recognition programmes, and career planning.

A 32 per cent increase in contact center managers' base salaries also demonstrated that the Indian contact center industry recognizes that rewarding good leadership is an essential component of effective operations.

Industry shifting from cost to profit centers

Results reveal that the Asian contact center industry is in a period of transition from the provision of traditional service and support to being service and sales or revenue generation focused.

The report shows in India 92 per cent of all customer contacts in the country are handled by contact centers.

Moreover, the study shows that 67 per cent of contact centers in India recognize the opportunity to up or cross-sell during an inbound call, creating opportunities to generate revenue in addition to revenue generated from outbound calls.

Ninety one per cent of the contact centers in India are already measured as profit centers.

This is in stark contrast to other contact center industries such as Singapore or Malaysia where only one-third of contact centers are profit centers.