Bots storm BPOs, but hiring on the rise for complex jobs

In India's call centres, the first level of calls are increasingly being handled by bots. And so, companies are now hiring employees who can do what bots can't speak several languages, understand complex financial processes, upsell products, and work across platforms.

Arjun Ramaraju, chief executive of Conneqt Business Solutions, said, "The IT, BFSI and retail sectors have some of our top clients in India. The bots help with first-stage, transaction-level communication with customers and are taken over by people when the processes become more complex." Three years ago, the digital IT and business process management services provider employed 20,000 call-center agents. Today it has 30,000 agents, which is symbolic of the shift that is happening.

Interestingly, the push to recruit more agents is coming in from non-metros. "Tier II and Tier III towns are prominent drivers of the growth of call centres, as people from these places still want to interact with customer service in regional languages," Ramaraju said.