Convergys: Beyond India
What’s the future of the BPO industry in India? Not too bright, if you ask Jean-Herve Jenn, President (International), Convergys Corporation. Although India is currently the third-largest centre for the American BPO giant outside of the US and Canada, he isn’t sure if it will retain the position three or five years down the road.
“It is a big question mark right now since there is a continuous upswing in both attrition and wage inflation. India remains the best alternative right now but China is emerging as an equally good destination for us and they are more committed towards education and training than India,” says Jenn.
The customer care, HR and billing services firm has around 12,000 call centre employees and another 1,300 for its software development unit in India. It is spread across five Indian cities—Gurgaon, Mumbai, Thane, Pune and Bangalore—and is considering Kolkata for another back office, but Jenn says they have yet to find a client who is willing to invest in a centre in the city.
The Cincinnatiheadquartered firm says it has saturated the metros and would be looking at the smaller cities now but feels that India’s resources are limited and certainly not large enough to meet the company’s global demand.
This is perhaps why Convergys is looking at the Philippines as an alternative to India. The company has around 10,000 people in the Philippines and considers it to be on par with India. “It’s a thin top (trained workforce) in India now and without active private education initiatives in the country, manpower crunch is going to pose a huge challenge,” said Jenn. Commenting on the burden of high expectations of employees, Jenn says it is getting scary. “The young workforce here expects to get promoted every 6-12 months. In a globally competitive environment, you have to play by the rules and in no other geography do promotions happen so often,” he says.
On the question of servicing the domestic market, Jenn feels that in terms of billing there is more potential in the Chinese market than in India. While the company has no plans to enter India in the HR vertical as Indian companies are too low-cost to compete against, offshoring is one vertical that might be exciting for India, as the company already has the infrastructure in place (US processes happen at night so the company can service domestic customers during the day). Jenn says the company will take a decision about catering to the Indian market by next year, although it already serves Videsh Sanchar Nigam.
Let’s hope that Jenn’s assessment of the Indian BPO market serves as a wake-up call to the policy makers.
