July 2008 Blog Posts (21)

Talent and Attrition: The never ending battle ?

In January 2008, Nasscom pointed out 4 key challenges before the BPO industry They were 1. Talent and Attrition–Cost of Retention have increased

2. Currency Dynamics

3. The Sub prime crisis in the US

4. Extension of the Tax Holiday

Of the above four , almost 3 have been somewhat tackled(or will be) , though slowdown in US economy still remains a cause of concern. The first one (Talent and Attrition) seems like… Continue

Added by Amit Saxena on July 31, 2008 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Is Workplace Romance Really Taboo?

You might have heard the warnings "don't dip your pen in the company ink," "don't go fishing off the company pier," in the U.S., and "don't mix business with pleasure," but for today's worker, that advice is considered outdated. With more time spent on the job, an emphasis on group collaboration and increased socialising with colleagues, today's workplace fosters more personal relationships among employees.

These days, more and more people have… Continue

Added by Vikram Prasad on July 30, 2008 at 3:30pm — 1 Comment

50% of the BPO Pros don’t smoke !!!

Shocked!

Disgusting!!

How do they live!!!

We won’t talk to them for the rest of our lives….

Alright, just to cut the crap, there was this not so new research report that I chanced upon which made this sensational disclosure that “"Smoking is common in BPOs” (sorry for being sarcastic but did they really need a research for this?)

Here is the extract

“The two-year-long study was launched in August 2007… Continue

Added by Amit Saxena on July 29, 2008 at 12:34am — 5 Comments

For a change, Some Good news

There might be forces at work to derail the Indian economy but the fact remains that we are well ahead of others and it won’t be easy for them to catch up any time soon. Last two days have been quite disturbing because of the blasts in Bangalore and Ahmadabad, we thought about sharing some positive stories about our industry to cheer you up. NASSCOM and Everest India have recently launched their Study on the Indian BPO sector, which evaluates the… Continue

Added by BPO Voice on July 27, 2008 at 12:30am — 2 Comments

How about some individual specific awards...?

Couple of days ago one of our member Amit Merwar pointed out some rankings of Indian BPO by Brown & Wilson Group and asked some relevant questions in one of the discussions…. 1What is the industry acceptance of this?

2. Is there a parallel benchmarker or is this the only one in the industry?

3. How much of value add does this ranking mean to your organisation?

Todays while I was surfing the net I also chanced upon… Continue

Added by Amit Saxena on July 23, 2008 at 8:30pm — 6 Comments

7 Habits To Win In Office Politics

Hi Found this interesting article on the net, thought about sharing it.

Office politics - a taboo word for some people. It’s a pervasive thing at the workplace. In it’s simplest form, office politics is simply about the differences between people at work; differences in opinions, conflicts of interests are often manifested as office politics. It all goes down to human communications and relationships.

There is no need to be afraid of office politics. Top performers are… Continue

Added by Pooja Sharma on July 22, 2008 at 2:00am — 5 Comments

Change of perception : Need of the time !

At the concluding session of Nasscom's BPO Strategy Summit in Bangalore recently, 24/7 Customer's co-founder S Nagarajan made an unusual and passionate plea. He asked the large audience to write letters to newspapers whenever they found articles that portrayed the BPO industry in a negative light. "If you have different experiences from that stated in the articles, you should all write to the editors concerned," he said. The reference was clearly to… Continue

Added by Amit Saxena on July 20, 2008 at 11:30pm — 3 Comments

BPO Industry...thoughts on the reputation

who are responsile for giving bad reputation to bpo industry? (a) the manaagers, who started this industry without any culture/values? (b) the people who join bpo only to earn money till they get the job they are looking for? (c) the people who joins the industry for having fun? (d) media - who always picture bpo industry in a bad frame?

Added by Sumeet on July 20, 2008 at 6:33pm — No Comments

Think Different !

It's a decade old apple's ad which still continues to inspire me...The more i see it, the more i like it and the more i feel inspired. not making any attempt of self bragging, i know.... haven't done anything path breaking ...just did something slightly different and Yet to see if it would change anything... ; ) take a look at this video, u might like it...

and

Keep sending your ideas, suggestions, and criticism ...

Stay Connected… Continue

Added by Amit Saxena on July 19, 2008 at 8:00pm — 2 Comments

New feature : Events

Hi Guys Starting a new feature called “Events” here you can post events of your interest and send invites to your friends to join u. We have posted some events just to give you an idea about how the entire thing would look like. You can either post events like your team party, R&R ceremony, Office Party or some local gig, concert etc.

This is a beta feature, if we see that it is not being used much , we might pull it out, no point crowding… Continue

Added by BPO Voice on July 17, 2008 at 11:30pm — 4 Comments

IT firms ape Toyota: Do more work with less people

Saw this in ET, thought about sharing it...

Since August 2007, employees of LogicaCMG India have been maintaining hourly logs of their activities at work. This includes the nature of work, the status of the work, tasks completed, meetings attended; indeed, just about everything, including the time spent at the cafeteria. We guess that on January 31, three employees of the company filled in that they spent 9am to 11am talking to this correspondent.

What all of this… Continue

Added by Ankush Wadhwa on July 17, 2008 at 12:00am — 2 Comments

Don't Change your job unless you have a valid reason...

Saw this report in HT, thought about sharing it with you all "This is not the time to switch jobs, unless you have a compelling reason to do so. India Inc is slowing down on recruitments as the Indian economy loses steam.

Aviation, BPO and financial services, which went on a hiring spree during the economic boom, seem to have developed cold feet. Fresh recruitment in manufacturing and infrastructure has also hit a rough patch, according to… Continue

Added by Pooja Sharma on July 15, 2008 at 2:00am — 1 Comment

The day after Super Sunday!

All right guys we had a blast yesterday… Congratulation calls, emails etc. poured in from unexpected corners… Even though it’s a small beginning, It was the kind of a stuff dreams are made up of… Now that the dust has settled down it’s time to focus back on work!

To start with, first thing that we need to know is

Do u want this network to stay “open for all” in terms of membership or do u want to keep it private i.e. one can… Continue

Added by BPO Voice on July 14, 2008 at 3:00pm — 5 Comments

Don't Panic !

There are some reports that 24/7 customers have done some layoffs which has triggered the debate on “If the Indian BPO Boom is over?”

The reports starts off with “For the first time the BPOs in India are conducting large-scale lay offs and the industry agrees that with the US economy slowing down India's call centre boom may finally be over.

Gurgaon's call centres have for years been the first choice of college graduates, who don't… Continue

Added by BPO Voice on July 14, 2008 at 1:30am — 1 Comment

Now media has started talking about us…

Today around 7 am in the morning Amit got a call from one of his friends referring to a report which appeared in TOI on page 14 asking if that’s him.. He sheepishly said YES… I guess none of us were prepared for such a spotlight but it will feels good when media talks about u and your ideas…

We may be small in numbers right now however we are big on dreams. We need to make it Big not just in terms of numbers, in terms of high quality… Continue

Added by BPO Voice on July 13, 2008 at 10:00am — 3 Comments

The art of online networking in BPO

Some time back I asked one of my close friend, why do you like social networking sites. He said quite spontaneously just like that. I grilled him some more and his reply was to meet my old friends over there or join groups of interested communities…. And again just like that. I guess this “just like that” is the main reason why people keep joining new networks i.e. they don’t have any real purpose or reason to join it, however out of sheer curiosity… Continue

Added by Amit Saxena on July 11, 2008 at 3:00am — No Comments

How to get promoted in the next six months?

So you haven’t been promoted yet! This has started frustrating you like anything! I can certainly understand this for even I wasn’t promoted for four years. You don’t feel like going back to office.

Blame it on the call center industry but here the general perception is, by the time it is 3-4 years you should have one promotion & should be on the verge of the second one!

But the matter of fact is most of them are still on that level… Continue

Added by Rajat Verma on July 10, 2008 at 12:00pm — 1 Comment

Is a live-in is far more honest than a marriage?

The other day one of my friend asked me , whats wrong with live in ?

I said "NOTHING". In fact I think, it's better than a marriage!

If you are sensible & mature enough to handle it, there's no relation better than a live-in. If your are still wondering let me tell you why

People say it is for those people who can't make commitments

The reality is, it is for those people who can't make fake commitments.

It's strictly… Continue

Added by Rakesh Patel on July 9, 2008 at 12:30pm — 2 Comments

Common frauds and Quality issues...

When agents are trained for a sales campaign they are told about many “don’ts” including not to keep any confidential information of the customers because any such thing would cost us our job.

However, sometimes things were way different on the operational floor. Some people just don’t care about any don’t do(s) what so ever. In fact, some of agents even store customer's crucial information. They treat it lightly saying “ you never know when can… Continue

Added by Priya Verma on July 8, 2008 at 12:30am — 3 Comments

BPO employees fight for rights on the net... Why ?

Yesterday most of you might have seen this news piece . it was covered in times of India. here are the excerpts

"It is redefining the way employee unions function. This 'e-union', that was formed last month on the Internet for BPO employees, does not plan to fight companies and managements the conventional way. That is, through strikes and sloganeering on the streets. Instead, they plan to hit where it hurts the companies most.

The… Continue

Added by Sunny Singh on July 7, 2008 at 2:00am — 6 Comments