Call Center Services in Bangladesh

Md. Ansar Ali

Preamble

Liberalization of Telecommunications Market by awarding the PLMN Licenses to the private operators in Bangladesh has evolved a new era and gave the sector an enormous thrust. With in a half of the decade, subscription reached to 38 millions in PLMN sector. Almost all over the country are now under the network coverage and peoples from all classes are enjoying the modern means of telecommunications. Obviously this new infrastructural development has set a positive impact in the economical progress of the country. It has released the tremendous pressure of demand on POT services provided by BTTB, the only state own organization.

Although the liberalization of the market having numerous positive impacts, needless to say, the process of market liberalization was not question free. Newly devised Fees Less method of awarding licenses, later the role of the mobile giants in the issue of suspicious Call Terminations, Deficient efforts to establish strong parallel presence of state owned organization in the mobile market raised a lot of questions. Though the flaws were present in the process of market liberalization, indeed the decision of liberalization of the market has important role to grow the market.

BTRC has opened another door of opportunities in the field of ICT by offering the companies for different categories of Call Center licenses.

What is call center?

In the web based free encyclopedia “Wikipedia” it is defined as a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. In our aspect we are much more interested with the inbound call related Call Centers. Here the Call Centers are operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. But outbound call related centers are also available. Outgoing calls are made for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection.
Although the calls are initially intercepted and queuing or distributing to the proper place by the machines but to end a call productively, human intervention is a must. The person, who is behind this is known as Customer Support Agent or Customer Support Representative (CSR). Other then this a Supervisor is controlling & pursuing a call and supervising the Queue. In this structure at the peak of the tier a Manager is sitting to run the call center in productive, effective and profitable way.
In a Call Center, customer support agents are equiped with the workstation connected with Corporate Computer Network comprises of Servers, Routers and Switches. Telephone sets or Head sets are also required for each position, connected with Telecom Switch. Voice & Data are linked by the technologies called Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). Other network elements are also used like, for initial call interception - Interactive Voice Response (IVR), to distribute calls automatically – Automatic Call Distributor etc.. Plenty of Software and Hardware are used in a Call Center. To set and run a commercially profitable Call Center, choice of proper combination of Hardware and Software is indeed a vital issue. These can be procured easily from the competetive market in stipulated time frame. But the skilled Manpower is the prime concern about the Call Center. Because, our focus is to employ our jobless huge manpower to this sector to improve our socio-economic condition. Unfortunately this is time consuming and long term issue and can not be overcome with in short period, as Call Center needs the specially trained people. Without addressing this problem our main aim to earn significant foreign currency as a service provider is not possible. It’s like a vicious circle and wouldn’t be torned out by any individual’s enthusiasm, perseverance and endeavors. Rather the whole society should work shoulder to shoulder to come out from the circle. The role of all in this context should be complementary.
BTRC has inserted some rigid terms and conditions at the offer for acquiring Call Center licenses. Most probably BTRC want to prevent the potential licensees from doing malpractice of illegitimate international call terminations. For these initiatives BTRC should get appreciation, as Call Center Service is a very vital segment of ICT, flourishing of which may put positive impact on the socio-economic condition of the country. But in the prevailed environment this is not easily attainable. We know that Call Center Service is a well defined and matured service and a plenty of service providers are active in the international market. A big market share has already been captured by our neighboring countries. They have already developed a well structured infrastructure to cater the service. Back linkage facilities like to develop the technologies (both software & hardware) and improvement of manpower are present in those countries. So, it is really hard to enter the market and acquire a significant market share from the incumbent service provider.

Call Center Service is a technology dense skill manpower oriented service. Hence only establishing some standalone Call Centers with out skilled CSRs will not serve the purpose of strong presence in the market and earn a considerable amount from the sector. Arranging the proper skilled manpower is a big challenge to establish a world class Call Center, which may help us to grasp the business.

Corporate Organizations, Giant companies want to reduce their production cost to cope with the competitive environment by outsourcing their some jobs like Marketing, Customer Service etc., are the main buyer of the Call Center Services. Whatever the share of Production Costs they spent for outsourcing the jobs are very much lucrative among the Service Provider of third world countries. Already huge competitions to grab the market share are present in this region. So to establish our strong presence in the market is possible only by installing world class Call Centers in our country.

Requisites for establishing a successful Call Center

To establish a world class Call Center we need to address several issues along with the technologies. We need to establish a standard model of Call Center where the fallowing topics to be analyzed and adopt the suitable procedures so that we can succeed. We know Call Centre service is a matured one and a plenty of works were done over it. Understanding and follow them is the key of success to start a Call Center effectively.

Before the commencement of a Call Center the following methods and procedures to be properly addressed.

Strategy
Processes
Technology
Human Resources and
Facilities

Strategy
For a successful business organization, business strategy is the critical starting point. Before selecting prime issues of a call center like site selection, designing processes, systems or organizational structures, it is needed to define the role of a call center. To do so emphasizing the following points are required.

Vision and mission of the call center.
Needs and expectations of customers.
The performance goals and objectives of call center.
Beside these one thing should be kept in mind that grabbing the market share in not enough rather contention of the same is more important. To achieve this overall contact center strategy should be revisited and updated on a regular basis.
Processes
For a successful business organization the core thing is to set a proper business process, following them strictly would lead a Call Center to succeed.
Business processes including hiring, training, quality monitoring, workforce management, performance management, systems maintenance and disaster recovery, should be well-documented and up-to-date.
Contact routing and contact handling processes should be well-documented and up-to-date.
Performance measures to be assigned to each business process and each customer contact process, and data should be collected and analyzed on a regular basis to indicate current performance levels and trends. Continuous process improvement methods should be in place.
Collection of customer satisfaction data, and benchmark the performance against competitors and non-competitors are desired in order to set performance goals.
Technology
Technology will play an essential role in the success of a Call Center. The following Technology related issues to be addressed for a successful Call Center.
Technology architecture should be modular as well as layered so that Call Center escalation and transformation to new technology should be possible with out or with a minimum hassle.
Effective technology should be used throughout the Call Center to route customers to the right agents, to enable agents to access information easily and quickly, and to gather data on the performance of contact processes.
Technology should have diversity so that customers would choose their preferred media (voice, email, text chat, web, fax or mail) or self-service as an option for interacting with the call center.
To support performance management processes, data should be easy extractable from the systems and capable to make effective use of reporting tools.
Human Resources
Human Resources (HR) will lever the people-aspects of a Call Center to utilize the other resources and facilities of the center in order to achieve the set goal defined in the strategy. Put stress on the following points will place a bridge between the HR to the other resources.
Organizational design and reporting structure should not make any hindrance in the way of achieving objectives defined in strategy and processes.
Job descriptions should clearly outline the job responsibilities and should be updated time to time as per the requirement of the organization.
Hiring and recruiting processes should support the Call Center strategy and goals, and processes and tools should be applied to improve employee retention.
Managers should help develop career paths and professional development plans, and use fair performance evaluation procedures.
Facilities
Another vital element of the Call Center is to arrange proper facilities and logistic support for the organization. Items associated with facilities described bellow should be pursued carefully.
Access to network and availability of labor is the prime issue to run a Call Center. The location of a Call Center should meet the availability of the above and the expenditure plan of the organization.
Working atmosphere also important for a Call Center as the Call Center agents and other working personnel needs to stay in the center for a long time. Proper building, furniture, lighting and other utilities should be arranged for the Call Center employees.
Adequate facilities to cover common outages including power black-outs and cut utility lines like network or phone lines.

Conclusion
Needless to say, in the prevailed atmosphere of Bangladesh the procedures, methods and techniques described above to establish a successful Call Center is not enough. Political, Administrative & Regulatory bodies’ suitable and active guidance are required. Beside these to capture a market share and retention of that in this sector is not possible for the investors by themselves. Obviously the regulator, relevant government entities should eyeing over it keenly and need to react promptly to weed out any hindrances on the way to achieve the goal. In a word to enter this potential market with appropriate strength is essential to work the relevant government and regulatory bodies with proper co-operation. Other wise we may have a nice dream but would not be possible to convert it in reality.