Work Processes and Emerging Problems in Indian Call Centres

Introduction

Over the last decade or so, the services sector has witnessed significant changes in the context of service delivery. Call centres (CCs), providing the benefits of cost savings and customer service efficiency have now become an integral aspect of the services sector. The existing literature highlights the existence of a number of studies related to work organisation and management of human resources in CCs operating in different parts of the world (for example, see special issue of Human Resources Management Journal, 2002; The Global Call Centre Report by Holman et al. 2007). However, most of these studies have been conducted in CCs operating in developed countries (for example, Deery and Kinnie 2004; Holtgrewe et al. 2002).

Over the last eight years or so, India, due to the availability of a large number of skilled and cheap human resources (HR) along with developed software and information technology industry and established infrastructure has been successful in developing a strong business process outsourcing (BPO)/CC sector and attracting a significant amount of work from Western countries [mainly from the United Kingdom (UK) and the [Page 60]United States (US)]. For example, over 400 of the Fortune 500 and more than 70 of Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 companies are now outsourcing businesses to Indian CCs. At present, US and UK together account for nearly 80 per cent of the existing outsourced work to centres in India (see Das et al. 2007; Ravichandaran 2005). Due to economic reasons (for example, UK firms can save around £10 million for every 1,000 offshored jobs to India), the interest of foreign companies in outsourcing work to Indian CCs is expected to continue (see Willmott 2006; The Hindu 2005).

At present, there are around 500 BPOs/CCs operating in India (NASSCOM 2007). In a short space of time, the exports from this sector have grown from US$ 565 million in 2000 to about US$ 7.3 billion in 2005. They were projected to increase to US$ 20 billion by the end of 2007 and employment in the sector is expected to rise from its current level of 300,000 to over 1.2 million by 2008 (NASSCOM 2007). Further, Morgan Stanley reports that outsourcing to India is expected to earn export revenues of US$ 62 billion by 2010 (Punch 2004; Ravichandran 2005). Given the current forecast of 40–50 per cent annual growth for the next five years, clearly the Indian outsourcing industry seems to have a tremendous future.

With this rapid growth there have also been emerging issues related to management of HR in the sector, such as high attrition rates, motivation, efficiency and the well-being of employees (Budhwar et al. 2006b; Punch 2004). If not addressed, these could adversely affect the growth of Indian CCs and also impact the UK and US businesses that are outsourcing work to India (Taylor and Bain 2005; Willmott 2006). In the absence of reliable research evidence it is not clear how serious these issues are and accordingly it would be difficult to propose any cure for the same. The existing literature does provide information about the nature of work systems and issues related to HR for CCs operating in developed countries (for example, Deery and Kinnie 2004; Holtgrewe et al. 2002). However, there is little empirically reliable research available for the Indian context. Considering the unique Indian business context (such as [Page 61]management systems that do not converge either with the West or East, see Sparrow and Budhwar 1997), one should not be surprised if the pattern of work practices of CCs in India and the logic surrounding the same turn out be different to CCs operating in the West. In the absence of reliable information such assumptions cannot be tested. Considering the strong growth of this sector and the interest of many in the same, it is important to conduct robust research and highlight the work systems relevant for CCs operating in India. This should contribute to both better theory and practice development.

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