Human Resource Management: Case Study on Indian Call Centres

This case study discusses the problems faced by Indian call centres due to lack of HRM involvement, improper hiring, high attrition rates, and lack of training. It also provides solutions and recommendations to improve the working conditions and keep the agents motivated. The study is relevant to Human Resource Management and courses related to it.

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Human Recourse Management: Case study

INDIAN CALL CENTRES 1
Contents
Task I......................................................................................................................................................2
Short Summary of the case Study..........................................................................................................2
Background, problems, aim and objectives...........................................................................................2
Case study background......................................................................................................................2
Statement of the problem.................................................................................................................3
Research questions............................................................................................................................3
Aims and objectives...........................................................................................................................4
Description of situation.....................................................................................................................4
Analysis of the case...............................................................................................................................5
Lack of involvement of HRM in Indian call centres............................................................................5
Improper process of Hiring................................................................................................................6
Attrition rates increased....................................................................................................................6
Lack of Training..................................................................................................................................7
Finding from the analysis.......................................................................................................................7
Solution and recommendations............................................................................................................9
References...........................................................................................................................................10

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Task I
Short Summary of the case Study
In past after the studies conducted by two organisations NASSCOM and MIT, many major
players of call centres industry outbound their work to Indian call centres to earn money. The
companies thought that the work at Indian call centres will include less cost and they can earn
high profits but the conditions are not as predicted. The Indian call centres are facing various
problems like less involvement of HR department in Indian call centres, high attrition rate,
improper hiring and lack of training. This research paper contains the problems which the
Indian call centres are facing, find the reason behind the problem and in end provide a
solution for the problems which are linked with the Indian call centres.
Background, problems, aim and objectives
Case study background
Initially in 1970, in US the trend of call centres stared when the hospitality and travel
industry centralised their reservation centres. Afterwards with the rise of outbound
telemarketing and catalogue shopping, call centres become necessary for many industries. In
1999, the Indian market considered the most opportunist market for teleworking industry. It
was expected that the IT service sector is going to boost the GDP of India by trillion dollars.
In 2000, NASSCOM and MIT forecasted that by 2008, the Indian call centres will attain
great heights and the revenue of the IT sector was projected to grow from 24 billion to 200
billion. After these studies the major players like Deutsche Bank, American Express, Bank of
America HLL, BPL and many more has established their call centres in India to make money.
Soon they realise that the predictions are just a myth.

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Statement of the problem
When the major players entered the Indian market to establish their call centres they just
thinking about earning more money from call centre wave. Soon they come to know the
Indian call centres are facing many issues these are:
 The agents who entered into the field are not having proper knowledge regarding the
technology involved, marketing aspects and they do not have any idea about the
business.
 The major issue link with Indian call centres is poor client service.
 The Indian call centres are not able to manage details shown in Service Level
Agreements
 The Indian call centres are lacking in providing proper training to the agents.
 The work place, working hours create the stressful working environment for agents.
 One big issue is labour turnover (Budhwar, et.al. 2010).
Research questions
 Is the condition of Indian call centres are same as projected by NASSCOM and
forecast by MIT scholar, Michaels.
 What are the major problems or issues the Indian call centres are facing?
 How the Human resource department will manage the conditions at call centres?
 Why the European and U.S are showing their unwillingness in providing business to
Indian call centres?

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Objectives and Aims
The aim of this research is to recognise the major problem the Indian call centres are facing
like the improper training not hiring suitable agent for the job, the knowledge and skills of
agents, the agents are not capable to manage SLAs details, labour turnover.
The objective of this research is after identifying the major problems related to Indian call
centres to analyse the situation and afterwards need to find the solutions, which can help the
human resource department of Indian call centres to boost the working conditions and to keep
the agents motivated to do work effectively and efficiently.
Description of situation
When the study of NASSCON and MIT stayed that the Indian market is the best, most
opportunist market for call centres and the revenue of IT industry is going to grow from 24
billion to 200 billion by 2010, and the sector will boost the GDP of the country by trillion.
Many major players like Citibank, ABN AMRO, Global trust, American express, British
Airways, HLL, BPL, ICICI Banking Corporation, Wipro, Godrej Soaps, GE and Swiss Air,
Global Tele-system, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Bharati BT and Airtelhas outbound
their work to Indian call centers to make money from call center wave. Soon the conditions
of Indian call centers are come in front of the company that what they are expecting and the
actual performance of Indian call centers are not matching.
The people who entered the field are not having any idea about the working of call centres
they are not aware of technology used, and marketing aspects. The client service is very poor.
It is expected from Indian call centres that they are going to match the details provided by the
clients in Service Level Agreements but they are not been able to match the details (Jaiswal,
2011). Because of these issues, the companies of U.S and Europe are showing their less

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interest in the out bound their business to Indian call centres. They do not want to take risk by
giving business to less skilled employees at the price of losing their consumers.
The employees who work at call centres were leaving their job very frequently the main
reason behind the industry did not offer growth opportunities and creative work to keep the
agents motivated. The scope of growth while working at call centres is very limited. The
company did not have enough time to training their employees (Russell and Thite, 2010).
Workloads at call centres are very much the employees are not allowed to take break during
working hours because of that the work environment become very stressful especially at
night shift.
Analysis of the case
Lack of involvement of HRM in Indian call centres
The human resource department is responsible for the administrative functions within an
organisation. The Human resource department manages benefit administration, recruitment
selection, and payroll and employee relations. The Human resource management work as a
link between employees and management (Noronha and D'Cruz, 2011). However, the Human
resource department in Indian call centres not allowed taking active part in the activities of
the call centres. They only wok, which is been assign to the HR of Indian call centre is hiring
the employees for the process. They do not show much interest in the working of business.
They just were focusing on hiring employees (Nath, 2011). They do not take actively in
issues like employee’s motivation, employee’s retention, and training and development. The
system of Indian call centre is planned in such a way, which not allowed or the HR itself did
not want to perform extra work or task. The HR department is not fulfilling the work, which
is assigned to them.

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Improper process of Hiring
The main problem if Indian call centre is, the human resource department is not able to hire
the suitable agent for the business. All most every agent who is been hire for working at call
centre are not having proper knowledge of technology involved in the process, about the
marketing aspects and they provide very poor clients service to the end user (D’Cruz, and
Noronha, 2012). The prescribed entry norms for agents at call centres were- minimum
qualification is university degree, maximum age limit 25 years, English medium school
candidates with upper middle class family were preferred for the job. However, the human
resource department are neglecting these norms while hiring agents. Initially the people show
interest in working at call centres but soon they realise that the growth chances and
opportunities are very less while working at call centres and afterwards the lea number of
well-educated personal were applying for the jobs at call centres (Guchait, and Cho, 2010).
The job of HR manager is to hire the employees and they are hiring less suitable employees
for business.
Attrition rates increased
The attrition rates at Indian call centres were increasing at high rate and the two main reasons
behind high rate attrition are- they provide less chances of growth and opportunities the scope
of growth at call centre are very less and another reason is the typical call centre agents were
overworked, unpaid, stressed-out and thoroughly bored (Noronha, and D'Cruz, 2013). The
Indian call centres are facing issue of labour turnover from past few years in 2000 the average
attrition rate in the industry was 40 to 45% including 10-15% of agents are quitting the job
within the first two months. The attrition rate is high in this industry throughout the world.
Agents who are working at call centres are has a shift of eight and half hours, they had to
receive calls for seven and half hours , the work is extremely tedious and stressful with

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numerous night shifts (Russell, 2010). The odd working hour provide bad impact on the
health of the employees and disturb their personal lives.
Lack of Training
It was noticed that the employees whom the human resource department was hiring for the
call centre work are not skilled and having proper knowledge of work, technology, and
market. The main reasons behind the lack of knowledge are firstly the HR department of
Indian call centres were not hiring properly skilled staff and second main reason is they are
not providing them a proper training (Mirchandani, 2014). If the proper training is not
provided to the new joiner, they are not been able to understand the working process and
because of that, their productivity will be affected. The less skilled or amateur employees are
liability for the company. For human resource department it is very important to provide
effective training to the existing as well as new employees of the company (Morgan and
Ramanathan, 2012).
Finding from the analysis
In 2001, the call centres were established to facilitate the large companies by handling their
large volume of outbound and inbound telephonic calls. The agents (persons who work at call
centres) manage the calls at call centres. At some call centres the cost of calls are born by the
clients and at some call centres, the caller and the call centres bear the call cost. The
requirement of call centres rise in US when its hospitality/travel industry began to centralise
their reservation centres. Later on with the rise in the outbound telemarketing and catalogue,
shopping call centres become the important part for many industries. Every industry has their
own standards to run these call centres. The call centres can be for sales, technical support,
customers and marketing. Call centres started the large volume of traffic and communication.

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For the given case study it is been found that the conditions of the Indian call centres are not
working as was predicted. In 1999, the two studies were published and both studies predict
that in India, the teleworking industry has good opportunities and by 2008, the sector is going
to attain new heights. Michael Dertouzos, MIT scholar has observed that Indian economy
will boost its GDP by trillion dollars. After knowing these two theories many major players
of world become the host players of Indian call centres. The major call centre work process
provider in India are Citibank, ABN AMRO, Global trust, American express, British
Airways, HLL, BPL, ICICI Banking Corporation, Wipro, Godrej Soaps, GE and Swiss Air,
Global Tele-system, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Bharati BT and Airtel. The main
reason behind their investment in Indian call centers are the two studies and due to those
studies these major players want to earn money. After US, India has a largest English
speaking population and has a vast educated workforce with reasonable tech-savvy personnel
(Shankar and Kasturi, 2016). The manpower cost in US is one tenth of India’s manpower
cost, per agent cost in US is $40000 and in India it is only $5000.
The trust behind all visible profits is very different, the agents whom the HR departments hire
are not having idea about the business, regarding technology involved, marketing aspects.
The call centers are having very poor client servicing. The call centers in US follow all
details provided by clients in the service level agreements but majority call centers in India
are not able to manage service level agreement details (Bain and Taylor, 2016). Under this
circumstance the US companies shows their unwillingness provide business to risky and
amateur call centers that might revert in losing their clients.
The average attrition rate at Indian call centers is 40-45%, which includes 10-15% employees
left their jobs in first two months. The reason behind the high attrition rate is the workload
and stress, agents has to attend calls for seven and half hour in eight and half hour shift. Other

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reason behind high attrition rate is the industry did not offer growth, opportunities and any
creative work. One more reason behind attrition rate is lack of proper training.
Solution and recommendations
After analysing the case study the following solution is been evaluated:
Leverage ideal time: it is been noted that the people who work at call centres were s8itting
ideal by waiting for call to answer but they do not receive calls the said the ideal time cost $
75-100 million to industry. It is the responsibility of the HR manager to save the ideal time,
by makes the best use of ideal time. The HR manager can arrange off phone activities to
utilise the unproductive ideal time by deploying to improve productivity and profitability
(Thite and Russell, 2010).
Frequent short break: the work at call centre is very stressful and hectic agents get bored
while continuous work on phones and laptops. The HR department at call centre need form
new policies, which will allow employees to take short break to keep agents relax.
Provide incentive and rewards: to motivate employees it is a duty of HR manager introduces
the reward and incentive program (D'Cruz, and Noronha, 2010).
Increase awareness of employee’s impact on end consumers: HR can apply additional
strategy to enhance the efficiency by raising awareness about the impact of their actions on
the end customers. Involving agents directly with end-customer, displaying consumer photos,
sharing consumer stories and having agents define their own positive experience with the
consumers as all can increase efficiency (Budhwar, et.al. 2011).

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References
Bain, P. and Taylor, P., (2016). Work organisation and employee relations in Indian call
centres. In Journal of Developments in the call centre industry (pp. 54-75). UK: Routledge.
Budhwar, P.S., Varma, A., Malhotra, N. and Mukherjee, A., (2011). Insights into the Indian
call centre industry: can internal marketing help tackle high employee turnover?. Journal of
Services Marketing, 23(5), pp.351-362.
Budhwar, P.S., Varma, A., Singh, V. and Dhar, R., (2010). HRM systems of Indian call
centres: an exploratory study. The International Journal of Human Resource
Management, 17(5), pp.881-897.
D’Cruz, P. and Noronha, E., (2012). High commitment management practices re-examined:
The case of Indian call centres. Journal of Economic and Industrial Democracy, 33(2),
pp.185-205.
D'Cruz, P. and Noronha, E., (2010). Experiencing depersonalised bullying: a study of Indian
call-centre agents. Journal of Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, 3(1), pp.26-46.
Guchait, P. and Cho, S., (2010). The impact of human resource management practices on
intention to leave of employees in the service industry in India: the mediating role of
organizational commitment. The International Journal of Human Resource
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Jaiswal, A.K., (2011). Customer satisfaction and service quality measurement in Indian call
centres. Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, 18(4), pp.405-416.
McMillin, D.C., 2006. Outsourcing identities: Call centres and cultural transformation in
India. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.235-241.

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Mirchandani, K., (2014). Practices of global capital: gaps, cracks and ironies in transnational
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