|
Call
centres seen 15% over-staffed
Business
Standard, December 23, 2002
The call centre
sector in India is currently overstaffed by around 15 per cent, calling
for an immediate reduction in workforce to bring overheads to a realistic
level. This is over and above the 40 per cent attrition rate that
most of the companies face.
“According to
our data, the call centre sector in India is about 15 per cent excess
staffed. This is mainly due to the improper planning of staffing
of the floor,” said Umesh Vyas, consulting partner, QAI, a
firm that assists Indian call centre companies achieve global standards.
One of the biggest
problem that the Indian call centre companies face is the inability
to predict call traffic and as a result of this the companies tend
to hire more agents.
“The companies
are not able to predict the call traffic and deploy agents accordingly.
The staffing at the floor and scheduling is a major problem that
the companies are dealing with now,” he said.
He pointed out
the high attrition rate as the main reasons for high rate of hiring
seen in the sector.
Besides, the
companies are also finding it difficult to plan the call handling
shifts, which leads to over hiring and deploying people more than
required.
Another problem
call centres are dealing with is their highly qualified agents.
Most of the agents handle jobs which does not require such high
level of sophistication.
“With over qualified
people handling jobs that do not require high levels of sophistication,
it leads to agents losing interest. Besides, it also leads to higher
levels of absenteeism,” Vyas said.
According to
QAI’s analysis, the Indian call centre companies see a very high
level of absence of agents.
“The companies
need to come out with innovative methods to handle this,” he pointed
out.
According to
Vyas, one of the major problems that the call centre sector faces
at the moment is the lack of highly qualified middle management
and team leaders.
“We have very
high quality top management, which is comparable with anywhere in
the world or better than the rest of the world. The industry also
has highly qualified world class agents. But it lacks high quality
middle management team,” he said.
“The main reason
behind this is the nascent stage that the industry is now. Most
of the companies are dealing with a situation where they are promoting
agents with six months of experience as team leaders. But they do
not normally have the experience to be team leaders,” he said.
Back
|
