As automation becomes increasingly popular in the business process outsourcing industry, players at the lower-end of the pyramid need to rethink their strategies.
Apart from facing backlash in the US and the UK, call centres in India face a new threat - automation software and tools, according to Raman Roy, chairman and managing director, Quattro BPO Solutions.
"In the last 8-9 years, Indian companies have achieved 15-20 percent of automation and in 2-3 years, they will achieve another 15-20 percent automation," Roy added.
Lloyds TSB group, one of the biggest provider of consumer loans in the UK, is a case in point. It recently stopped its phone-banking operations handled out of its Mumbai centre. The announcement is expected to affect 100-150 people who handled phone calls in India of the over 2,500 employees.
In a reply to Business Standard's query, the company in its email response said, "It (the closure of phone-banking operations) has been as a result of advances in technology, as outlined in our statement. The number of calls has been steadily falling since we introduced interactive voice response in August 2006. As a result we needed fewer staff to handle incoming calls."
According to the company release, the bank received 2.25 million calls each month. With the introduction of the automated answering service, the number of inquiries handled by the staff reduced by 26 percent.
Pointing out that automation is a relevant phenomenon worldwide, Sidharth Pai, managing partner, TPI India, noted that additional automation would be a direct competition to the BPO industry. However, increasing automation, does not mean job losses as automation creates the need for high-end skills for creating the software.
"The need is to train people on high-end skills and this has to be done at the educational level where modules on mortgage, infrastructure and such upcoming sectors need to be embedded in the syllabus," Roy said.
Lloyds TSB, for instance, maintained, "Operations in India remains an important part of Lloyds TSB group strategy. Over the next few weeks, the few remaining staff will transfer to other roles within the same centre." "Companies at the lower-end of the pyramid have to be focused on low costs and at the top-end have to have niche skills," said Roy.
The current level of automation available in the Indian call centre industry is very rudimentary with only the language assistance interface or the first level of the call being automated.
Globally, companies have also automated booking of tickets, lost luggage complaint, transfer of money from one account to another albeit a restricted amount, change of address and more complicated processes. "There is scope for at least 30-50 percent of the jobs to get automated," Roy said.
On the positive side, the high growth BPO industry will outdo the automation growth, thus only improving the quality of services and work done from the country and not reducing the demand for people in the people intensive BPO industry, noted Pradip Phadke, a BPO industry veteran who headed GTL's Pune operations and is now a consultant.
"Contact centres will play a major role in engaging the customers in the BPO industry," said MphasiS CEO Milind Godbole.