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When the Indian offshoring wave started, the only large American customer services firm which embraced it with open arms was Convergys. So the first few years saw rapid growth. That was largely possible because the then president of Convergys Customer Management Group, Jack Freker, saw it as a strategic opportunity. After his departure, despite knowing fully well that India is such a competitive labor market, the company could not localize practices enough to cope with that.

The recruitment strategy, centered around consultants, led to high attrition which led to some doubts about whether betting so much on India was the right strategy. After an exodus of top Indian managers such as the then HR head, Nandini Aggarwal and country head Jaswinder Ghumman in 2005, operations stabilized to some extent in 2006, but the last few months again saw some exits in top management.

So, not surprisingly, the single-biggest mantra for the company last year was employee retention. The result: a drop of twenty points in attrition in the last 12 months, though it still remains high. The early warning system and the CIS University initiatives formed the core of the companys employee retention strategy. Interestingly, both are home grown programs, designed and developed by Convergys India operations. The early warning system tracks distinct triggers identified as likely to lead to agent attrition. It then compiles that to indicate the agent's likeliness to leave, followed by intervention from team leaders to address the agents issues. Convergys University, on the other hand, is an in-house educational initiative that teaches Convergys employees aboutand prepares them forthe advanced career opportunities available to them within the companys Customer Care business. Both the programs are being globally implemented.

After a sedate last two years wherein no new delivery centers were added, the company finally got into an expansion mode as it announced its eighth contact center with a full staffing of up to 1,000 employees expected over the next few months. DQ

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