Recruitment in voice biz slows

(The Economic Times (India) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge): After having increased the voice business to over 70-80% of their portfolio, the business process outsourcing (BPO) companies are now slowing it down. Industry-wide attrition is over 60% for voice processes and billing rates have eroded to under $12 per hour from about $15-16 per hour couple of years ago.

In fact, today voice work is a commodity business with over 100 companies claiming to be experts in handling calls. No wonder then that recruitment for voice processes has shown a marginal decrease in the past six months. This is also in part due to an increased focus on acquiring non-voice processes. It's a no surprise then that companies are not hiring people as frequently as they used to.

There are primarily three types of voice processes. Low-end, involving basic calling in non-specialised areas, requires low level of expertise such as answering bank account queries. Then there is mid-tier, where employees work on specialised customer services and technical support and need to have good quality in voice, but medium level of complexity such as handling travel-related or credit card queries and last of all is high-end that involves complex voice processes with high level of expertise.

These could include technical help desk for routers or servers. Running voice business, especially for mid-tier and high-end, is not easy. "This is because voice process is a perpetual activity and by nature it is extremely capital intensive and risk prone," says Susir Kumar, CEO, Intelenet Global Services.

Key challenges in voice are operational excellence, attrition, profitability of the business and scale of operations. It requires a lot of operational management bandwidth and expertise with hands-on focus on day-to-day operations. All voice business is real time and hence running voice processes demands sharp focus, which can be quite a strain.

"Managing voice processes is like managing a Formula-1 car at 300 kmph speed while ensuring that there are no leaks. This is not easy. The moment of truth is in every second of delivery, impacting operations on a daily basis," says Shanmugam Nagaranjan, COO, 24/7 Customer.

Now, that a number of companies have finally realised it is a different ball game than initially conceived, they have slowed down and started focusing on relatively "non real time" business. This in turn has relatively slowed down recruitment.

Over the past one year non-voice processes have increased by almost 75%. Just few years back when the industry was still in the early stages of growth, companies didn't have a choice but to go on a hiring spree as they built up voice capability.

But now, with non-voice gaining ground and various voice processes becoming consonant, companies just don't care that much. In fact, if employees from a certain voice process leave, BPOs simply transfer employees from another process to manage the load. This can now be easily done as processes are becoming increasingly similar.

According to Sunil Mehta, vice president, Nasscom: "The number of voice processes have reduced dramatically. As such, the industry as a whole is focusing more on non-voice processes. Therefore, not too many people are being recruited for voice processes." He further added that this decline had just started and the recruitment rate for voice processes will drop dramatically in the coming months.

The labour pool available for voice processes is very limited. Also, earnings from voice processes are much lower compared to non-voice. They are also less sticky and frequent ramp ups are not possible. "Further, voice processes are more monotonous and repetitive in nature and hence attrition levels are higher in the voice processes," Ranjit Narasimhan, CEO, HCL BPO.

Therefore, this could help companies reduce attrition rates. "The changing market conditions, especially pertaining to global economic scenario, are forcing companies to outsource more of non-voice to India," says Sam Chopra, president, Call Centre Association.

However, companies completely dependent on voice processes could find the going tough. According to Mr Kumar: "Companies who have been overly dependent on the voice piece of the business are likely to feel the heat when there is a drop in business and a subsequent drop in recruitment."