Archive for category: Manpower Planning Process

A recurring theme in many call center conferences is the lack of quality manpower available in the business process outsourcing industry. Experts of the BPO sector want to cement the leak of manpower from the industry, but the rate of attrition is not something that you can control through one aspect. In other words, you will have to do something about getting a continued supply of manpower to replace the eroded employees at call centers. When it comes to replacing the loss of resources in the call center, the recruiters have a tough time getting quality people onboard. There is no respite even from hiring fresh graduates! Experts have opined that when they try to get marketing graduates on the team for telemarketing, things are far from ideal.

There are multiple problems for the telemarketing services team in hiring these grads. To begin with, the grads have rolled out of innumerable institutes that mushroom the cities in developing countries. These centers of supposed learning are not able to provide the required amount of telemarketing training that is needed in the agents. There are no proper equipments and gadgets that can help the students try out their hand at practical skills. As a result of this gap between what they are trained for and what they need to do at the call centers, their work falls hopelessly short of the desired mark. The call center trainers have to work on them from scratch to make them ready for the desks.

The lack of proper manpower is hindering the improvement in call center services. There is a strong need of the quality to improve if they are planning to compete with the BPO service offered by the developed countries like USA and UK. The call centers in the developing countries are working hard at getting the quality of work right because their other big advantage, costs, is slowly sliding away from them. Agents in the USA are willing to work for much lesser pay and are also opting for work-at-home schemes. Without the cost factor, the telemarketing chapter in the developing countries isn’t much of an entity. To realize their importance in the business process outsourcing world, the companies have to hike up the work quality.

This perennial problem of call center units is also becoming a deciding factor when it comes to the business firms hiring the offshore call centers. They are becoming hesitant about the telemarketing services that they will receive from the offshore BPO units. In the modern context of the business, no firm can allow to let their brand position dip due to any conceivable factor. It would mean a setback and once that happens, it sure takes a long time to claw back. Moreover, wrong BPO service would mean wastage of resources. It all boils down to the fact that the quality of the work has to improve. In-house training units are doing their best, but for these agents to acquire the correct accent or the right persuasive techniques, it would take awhile. The business process outsourcing unit sure hopes the change happens soon.