vCustomer Corporation, a BPO player is scaling up its presence in India and opening one more center of excellence in Mumbai, to target domestic Indian companies scouting outsourcing options.

The company that started India operations in 1999, already has three CoEs in Delhi and Pune. vCustomer chiefly catered to call volumes and customer contact from its clients in the US and UK till early 2007. It decided to tap the Indian market in March and today has about 200 people to cater to four of its domestic clients.

At present, the company is focused on providing `the same level of quality service’ that it provides offshore clients, to its Indian clients.

But there are challenges to be met. According to Sanjay Kumar, CEO, vCustomer, different cost structures pose a major challenge. “We have adapted a lot our processes and automated those. We started with CRM and HR applications. Today, we have a complete call center suite. It is a self driven process where customers learn about our services.”

The company is using a similar module for recruitments at its India office. Said Kumar, “HR is not all involved in the recruitment process at vCustomer. A candidate has to flash the ID before a kiosk and the candidate’s historic data gets filled into the form. Reviews are done online through flash presentation. The candidate learns about our services and then responds to a quiz, which helps us understand whether the person has understood our company policy, business, services, his role, etc. This system provides a lot of consistency and mistakes are also fewer.”
 
Training is also online. It lasts between 15 and 30 days. Courses are broken in modules and the candidate has to appear for tests to ascertain mastery of the material. “This motivates people to learn versus sitting in a class. Instead of trainers, we have mentors who are assigned to people who are hired,” said he.

The company is evaluating opportunity on two fronts: Domestic market client more sophisticated to outsource call centers. Level of analysis was previously limited to international clients. It is based on issues such as how to reduce time to answer a call, segment the call, and move the traffic online. What used to be relatively small number for many companies is now significantly more. As cost rises, you need to think about the systems you want in place to manage it, he said.

“We differentiate ourselves. This is really about expertise over eight years with Fortune 50 clients. We use the same concepts and processes in India; use case studies, live demos to show the value of the platform. Over the last five years we have spend 5$m, 6-8m$ on telephony, IVR, redundancies, etc in India Now we will leverage this investment.”

In consumer oriented industries, the volume of calls is more as people try reach out to services. Consumer oriented industries have to outsource to deal with the volumes. Companies that have historically not invested in call center capability are doing so since clients are forcing them to do so, said Kumar.

Customer contact in telecom, insurance, mutual funds and retail banking are being driven through phone and web. In India, phone continues to be the primary mode. Telecom and BFSI are the largest outsourcers of services. “On our part, we provide phone support and also Web-based solutions for future customers who want to migrate to the Web, CRM applications, Web chats, setting up FAQs, content management,” he said.

He said that where US clients have gone from phone to web, our Indian clients can benefit from our knowhow and experience. Even India is expected to transition from phone to web because it is more convenient. Moreover, customer also receives the information without being put on hold. “We want to work with clients to implement what they feel will work with their customers. The central government is one of our clients. They took time to evaluate the web options.”

On vCustomer’s go to market strategy in India, he said, “We have predictive analysis tools based on historic data as part of process which helps customers redefine existing processes. Stage wise process; we give customers visibility and get them to transition. Not many international players are competing with us. There are a couple of large domestic players but we have advantage of technology at our side.”

While the company refused to disclose investments for expansion, it said that it would be a rolling investment. And its aim: 30 per cent of work force by 08-end for domestic market.