The recruitment pages are flooded with ads for call center agents. A welcome sign in the days when recruitment supplements of leading dailies are thinning at an alarming pace. Take a closer look and what hits you is that the ads invite applications from fresh graduates. Work experience is not a necessity. Besides, there is no mention of a requirement for trained agents. 

The reason? “We prefer fresh graduates because unfortunately, we do not trust the quality of training institutes. In several cases, we have to first get recruits to un-learn certain erroneous concepts before we actually begin training them on the job. We have also blacklisted a few training institutes,” says Spectramind eServices president and CEO Raman Roy. Roy specifies that he would certainly welcome professionals who are trained well and can be put on the job immediately. 

Like Spectramind, several companies today, have either set up their internal training divisions or brought in corporate trainers for the purpose. And despite the staggering costs involved, there are few takers for agents trained in the retail market. 

Shyam Vishwanathan, CEO of Icon Data Management, a call center initiative of the Dalmia Group and Gujarat Heavy Chemicals, accepts that people do not appreciate the effort and costs involved in training call centre agents. “It is imperative for the training and call center industries to work in tandem. Poaching is a short term solution and would be detrimental to the industry in the long term” he adds.

Spectramind’s Roy points out that it is imperative not just for the industry, but the country to focus on training. “Where are we going to find the million people for the much touted $17 billion industry? My firm belief is that vocational training has to be integrated in the secondary school level.”

What emerges is that the fledging training industry has an important bearing on the future of the call center industry. Although forums like the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Foundation and the Call Center Association do exist, clearly a lot needs to be done. 

The retail training industry needs to modify its curriculum in order to factor in the importance of correct accents, nuances of language, cultural behavior patterns and customer expectations in developed economies. The cultural issues are as important if not more in the call center industry and agents need to be made aware of them. Stress management is another very important issue that has to be addressed by the training industry. Also, specific project and customer oriented training is a must. 

There is a need to look at a higher age profile of workers. While workers in mature call center markets fall in the range of 18-75 years, in India, the age is between 20-30 years. The lower age profile not only affects the stability of the workforce, but it has been found that younger professionals are not equipped to cope with the stress levels that are part of the job. 

A lot of training institutes mushroomed with the initial buzz of the call center industry, all with the intent of making a quick buck. Out of these, few like Hero Mindmine, Holistic Enterprises and MindBank, have managed to survive. While Hero Mindmine is into retail training, the other two players are focussed on corporate training. 

Recently two big names in retail training Tata Infotech and Aptech have ventured into the call center training space. Justifying its foray into this space, Rahul Thapan, Head, Education and Training at Tata Infotech says, “We have conducted corporate training for call centers and clients now want us to undertake the entire recruitment process right from screening, interviewing and training. The need is for ready-made agents who can be deployed immediately.” 

Holistic Enterprises founder Ian Stern feels that retail call center training industry has a long way to go in India. Holistic has been providing call center training to captive centers like GE and Nestle. 

Call center agents are the life-blood of this industry and unless the human resource issue is addressed, the training industry might die even before it takes off.

Balaka Baruah Aggarwal  in New Delhi

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