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Business News/ News / India/  BPOs are looking for digital experiences, says Tata Communications' Gangwani
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BPOs are looking for digital experiences, says Tata Communications' Gangwani

The number of calls has increased as consumers are spending more time online
  • The company enabled calls to come directly to the agent's mobile phone and the data to go through laptop
  • When an agent logs into the client, everything gets recorded on screen, so the same kind of security and compliance is maintained whether the agent is working from office or home, Ankush Gangwani, global director of product management, business collaboration at Tata Communications, said. (Bloomberg)Premium
    When an agent logs into the client, everything gets recorded on screen, so the same kind of security and compliance is maintained whether the agent is working from office or home, Ankush Gangwani, global director of product management, business collaboration at Tata Communications, said. (Bloomberg)

    NEW DELHI: Covid-19 has forced the BPO (business process outsourcing) industry to discard many of the established practices and embrace solutions that can enable their customer care agents to work remotely without compromising on quality of service and security of customers. Speaking to Mint, Ankush Gangwani, global director of product management, business collaboration at Tata Communications, throws light on how Indian BPO industry is gearing up for the new normal and the role his company is playing in facilitating the change.

    Q. How are BPOs in India adapting to the new normal?

    Work from home is not a temporary solution. It is going to be permanent. BPOs are increasingly looking for digital customer experiences. Captive BPOs (a subsidiary with offshore operations) are going heavily on digital customer experience and trying to automate things. They are working on a branch at home experience where the whole discussion between customer and agent can take place over a video call. This is especially happening in MNCs outsourcing to India. Third party BPOs (handle calls for multiple clients) are being pushed to operate 24x7 by their clients. The number of calls has increased as consumers are spending more time online. We have migrated 104 customers using our cloud customer experience product to a secure work from home environment. There are like 7 to 8 technologies that we have bundled to offer a complete solution to BPOs.

    Q. What were the key hurdles in shift to remote working?

    Bandwidth crunch is a big problem in India. If the broadband connection at agent’s home isn’t good, the call quality will be poor. We enabled calls to come directly to their mobile phone and the data to go through laptop to ensure the customer experience wasn’t compromised. We designed solutions to ensure there was no security, recording or compliance breach. When an agent logs into the client, everything gets recorded on screen, so the same kind of security and compliance is maintained whether the agent is working from office or home.

    Q. What is the other big transition that has happened in BPO industry?

    Earlier all the BPOs had an on-premise contact centre where everything would sit on their own data centres. The solution we have is already on cloud, which allows it to be configured from any location. Cloud adoption is becoming new normal as no one has time to take a back up or maintain a data centre. We are expecting a huge adoption of cloud contact centre in India as BPOs are realising that if they are not on cloud they are missing a lot.

    Q. How can BPOs ensure performance of agents is of the highest levels?

    We have deployed quality monitoring solutions which allow supervisors to monitor all calls. The calls are also recorded and can be used to train agents regularly so there is no vacuum in skill set. For customer’s security we provide the option of two factor authentication. When a customer signs in through a mobile app or browser a pop up will show on screen with a message from a relationship manager asking if he/she wants a face to face discussion over a video call. If the customer accepts, an OTP is sent on mobile. The session starts only after the customer has entered the OTP.




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    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Abhijit Ahaskar
    Abhijit writes on tech policy, gaming, security, AI, robotics, electronics and startups. He has been in the media industry for over 12 years.
    Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
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    Published: 27 Jul 2020, 09:26 AM IST
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