The Call Centre Grows Up

India’s BPOs, which once performed mundane backoffice chores, are now undertaking sophisticated analytics tasks and keeping the industry’s revenue metre ticking. Case in point: WNS Holdings

- Harichandan Arakali

KESHAV MURUGESH, THE CEO OF Mumbai-based WNS Holdings Ltd, recalls a time when senior executives of large American corporations never once visited the BPOs (Business Process Outsourcing firms) to whom they offshored their back-office work—or, as BPO executives would quip, transferred their “mess for less”.

The first BPO jobs appeared in India in the early 1990s and covered tasks like resolving customer complaints on the phone, mostly for rich, global organisations.

But, by the late ’90s, the BPOs had become ambitious, attained international quality certifications, built larger call centres and undertook more complex business processes to be managed from India. They even expanded operations with local centres close to their clients.

A case in point is WNS. In 2002, the company was by and large a call centre with the staff answering calls of their clients’ end-customers and providing basic services like helpdesk. Today, its employees are equipped to perform more sophisticated tasks like advising on a caller’s insurance policies.