'We never saw a slowdown in India'

vCustomer is a provider of customer care contact center solutions and services. It provides CRM services to the finance, e-retail, technology, telecommunications, travel and related Industries.

The company’s services include call center consulting, inbound and outbound services, loyalty management, up-sell and cross-sell services, technical support, back-office services, marketing, and pre-sale research and support.

vCustomer is now focusing more on technology to provide and assist customer of its client on multiple channels of communication such as voice call, web, social networking sites, SMS etc, in an automated manner.

Sanjay Kumar, founder and CEO, vCustomer Care, in an interaction with Prasoon Srivastava of CIOL, gives insight in to the business of the company in present economic environment and technology adoption that the company is primarily focusing on. Excerpts:

How had been the market dynamics for your business in the last one year?

There are certain verticals that were severely impacted by the global slowdown. One is BFSI, particularly banking and finance, and the other is retail. Both the sectors had severe setback in terms of business volume. However, among the companies, there is a trend of moving towards automation because it is the fastest and sustainable way to cut cost in most effective way.

Now clients are not only keen on price point but also on the capability of platform as to whether it can automatically handle queries coming from web, e-mail, phone and other platforms. If you want a customer to get some information you can send them an SMS through automated system and simultaneously provide them with IVR (Interactive Voice Response) support. You need to bring in multiple technologies to achieve an automated way of allowing customers to get information with almost no cost.

On phone, you are able to provide instant customer service. How much does it take in providing service on the web?

It is just the opposite. While making a call a customer care executive has to be on phone most of the time. In automation mechanism, there is no hold.

There are websites which provide live chat service on their web page but it takes time for their executive to reply. How do you make sure that in such cases the services are provided in least time?

In the automated service there is no need of an agent. The delay on web chat happens when there is an agent involved in it. But in IVR, there are no agents. This is what we have in our offering to the client. For example, in the case of airline clients, we deal with them by sending SMS. We do this in one go to all the passengers.

In the normal case, many of the passengers immediately start calling the airline. We, instead of just sending an SMS, give them options like re-book the ticket on a particular date or refund with code in the message. Therefore passengers don't need to call and can solve their problem through an SMS itself. In this case, all passengers can be handled in an automated manner without involving any agent.

How convenient are these kinds of services as far as technical problems are concerned?

This kind of service cannot be implemented without technical support at the moment. At present we need to involve agents.

Which are the segments where you are seeing increase in adoption of automated customer service?

We have implemented automated solutions in banking system. In retail sector, the automated system helps customer in checking product availability, purchase, price of products, booking of product and so on.

How is this kind of retail practices working among enterprises in India?

They are very much interested. I am surprised that in India, people are starting to see the value in making payment upfront in the automation system.

What would be the return on investment like, if you prefer automated system over manual system?

There is a huge cost difference. In providing manual service, the client incurs cost in the way of salary. In the case of automated system, a client can make up the cost in three to four months.

How many of your clients have shown willingness to adopt automated service system?

At this point of time, I would say that out of our 25 clients there are two who have gone for automation. Most clients have an IVR but there are two kinds of IVR. One is which that only provides information, while the other one is capable of transaction. We have four clients who have adapted transactional IVR.

We have been seeing recovery in Indian market. How is this being reflected in your business model?

For our business, there was never a slowdown in Indian market, because the customer base of our clients had been growing. What may have happened is that they may have cut down some of the marketing cost but on customer service side there had been no cut.

What had been the impact on the business in your overseas market?

At international level, as I mentioned, we saw slowdown in retail and banking segment. Geographically we have UK, Europe and US market. The condition was more or less the same in these markets. All these were impacted by the slowdown.

Do you have any consolidation plans in your chart?

No, we don't have any strategic plans as such. We will only like to open some of our US centers in the coming days. This would be our primary focus.

There are some BPOs who have moved in to rural India to reduce cost. Do you have any such plans?

It (going to rural areas) does not make sense for us. We are not looking at just adding people. We need to focus on adding technology. We are looking for clients who are more interested in having less agents and more technologies.

What are the major issues that lie before you in running BPO in India?

I don’t think that there are any significant barriers in doing business in India today. There may be some regulatory limitations that don't make any sense but it is not tough to run BPO business in India.

How do you see Home Agents concept picking up among BPOs in India?

I think this concept is not fit for India at present. We have been trying it for a while but it probably is not a strategic focus for us. The fundamental challenge is that most of the agents in metros don't have their own home. They share with friends or colleagues a house where they don't have space to have uninterrupted, quite and safe environment. Power situation in India is also very uncertain.

What about housewives having their own home and coming forward as home agent?

Housewives are possibilities but we have not seen them coming forward. Most of our employees are young students. Theoretically it all work but practically speaking it is very unlikely. This concept can go down well in KPO sector but not suitable in the case of BPOs. Today, we pay our employees between Rs 8000 to Rs 20000. If someone has his home, then that person would like to make somewhere between Rs 40000 to Rs 50000 per month. Then in such case it would be a different industry like KPO.

How is the adoption of BPO service in government sector?

We are involved in health projects like disease prevention helplines. We are also working on population management projects and are trying to find some work which has social values attached to it.