Tag Archives: BPO Industry

All about the BPO Industry

June 22, 2016 by 123outsource
Categories: BPO | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The BPO industry is an industry with many different types of BPO companies in different countries doing various types of tasks. There is no normal in business process outsourcing.

BPO Projects
Many BPO companies are in a constant state of desperately looking for projects. The companies looking for work are usually the ones you don’t want to hire as they often lack language and communication skills. In my experience, if you write broken English, your work will probably be broken too which is why nobody will hire you. But, there are literate BPO companies out there looking for BPO projects too. They advertise on the web, send customized emails, and are pleasant to talk to on the phone.

Genuine Processes
Indians like to use the word “genuine process.” I’m not sure why they use this term. Are people normally offering them non-genuine processes? BPO work or BPO jobs should be genuine by definition and the nature of the work needs to be researched. Without a contract, the vendor is not protected from customers who are playing games.

Indian BPO Company / India BPO Companies
Many people in India want to work for a multinational company. The smaller Indian BPO companies have trouble retaining workers once the workers have four or five years of experience under their belt. If you work for an Indian BPO company, if you stick around and are any good, you might be promoted to manager after a few years. Do you want to be a big fish in a small India BPO company, or a small fish in a big pond at Oracle or Infosys? The India BPO scene seems to never be boring as new companies are sprouting up like weeds. However, every company I call has horrible phone skills and sloppy work skills. If India BPO companies would just clean up their act, they could gain so much market share it would be unbelievable!

Medical Transcription
Medical transcription companies in the US often hire companies in the Philippines or in India to do their work during the night. When Americans return to work in the morning, the work is done (hopefully). Accuracy rates are well documented in this industry, so there is no room for shoddy workmanship otherwise your BPO will go under quickly.

Software Development
The software BPO industry is a much more disturbing one as there are no definitive standards for the quality or speed of work. Hopefully, someone will set the score straight and create a blue book for costs of particular programming tasks of which there are zillions of.

How to start a BPO company?
If you want to start a BPO company in India or elsewhere we recommend working in management for someone elses for many years so you become an expert. Owning a business from the business angle is hard, but without basic skills you would learn managing someone else’s BPO, you don’t have a chance. Create a solid foundation for yourself before attempting the impossible.

20 Seat BPO
Many people want to start their 20 seat BPO by renting an office. Without customers, or at least without steady customers, your business will not last. Start off with one seat, and then work your way up, getting to know your workers, customers, and processes well until you develop a very steady base to build on. A 20 seat BPO is 19 seats too many when you are just starting out. It is better to rent a seat or two in a big call center that has empty seats, or share an office with someone.

You might also like:

How to get more clients for your BPO or Call Center (compilation)
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/08/20/how-to-get-more-clients-for-your-bpo-or-call-center-compilation/

18 ways to boost your social media marketing in 10 minutes a day
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/05/05/18-ways-to-boost-your-social-media-marketing-in-10-minutes-day/

Developing your hiring intuition
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/06/14/developing-your-hiring-intuition/

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Do you see opportunities where others don’t in BPO?

July 29, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: BPO | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

I am not running a BPO, so I am not in touch with your reality. But, seeing opportunities is a skill you need. Many in BPO just want to start a call center or data entry firm without knowing what a real opportunity is. They know what they want to achieve, but are out of tune with what the clients want. I’ll tell you what the clients want. They want call centers in Manila, not in Mumbai, so move to Manila and hire local staff if you want to get ahead in the call center world.

There are many niches in the BPO industry a person could get into. The skill here is to be able to identify niches and then later to see if you can be effective at doing the work and gaining clients in that niche. The main skill here is to be able to identify what clients want, and you do that by talking to lots of clients or prospective clients and asking them about their experiences without trying to sell the something.

If your entire philosophy of life is, “give me job, give me job” and you lack grammar, skills or personality, then you won’t succeed. Someone who says, “give me job” is a beggar who only thinks of himself, who doesn’t care what the customer is thinking and doesn’t even know it is important to be in tune with that. Get this mentality out of your head if you want to have a chance.

What if you have a call center, but realize that there might be limited competition in certain niches. What if you learn Mortgage Process Outsourcing? What if you learn where prospective clients are, how to contact them, and how to sell to them. What if you learn how to process the documents like a pro? You might do really well because there is very limited competition in this niche! On the other hand, what if you excel in technical support for particular types of products. You might beat out the competition since nobody else can do what you do. If your offerings are too general, you might not survive the competition. On the other hand, if you are versatile, and can learn to do anything, then if you only have a few clients, they might use you for everything, and you might make tons of cash from them.

So, how should you define your niche? I feel it should evolve over time, and your skills should also be a huge factor in deciding your specialty. If you have superior skills in a particular area of the industry, nobody will be able to beat your service! Good luck!

Six Problems That Only Individuals Working In A BPO Industry Would Understand

June 15, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: BPO, Call Center, India, Popular Posts | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Six Problems That Only Individuals Working In A BPO Industry Would Understand
Anyone who has been working in a call centre, or has already worked there knows that there is no other psychological trauma quite like it, say for example hooked up on a phone call that would never end for the majority of your life, and is been subjected to the worst kinds of humanity.

Time is everything in a BPO Industry. We come across situations where you would have military walking in, your breaks being monitored, strict call length control, monitoring toilet breaks, etc. with each and everything being controlled and monitored. Welcome to the world of robots. Given below are some of the trials and tribulations one would have been experiencing in a call centre and lucky are the ones who escaped from it.

Being shouted at the entire day: You know what could make your clients angry for the things you are about to say. And things like it would take two weeks, or you do not have an account with us, or I would have to transfer your call, or my boiler has not been working and it’s definitely your fault. These are things that would sound like a red rag to a bull. So if you are lucky enough you would be getting a response like this I know it’s not your fault but before things go worse….and is something that’s unlikely to happen.

Being asked to work overtime: Each and every one of us have been doing this. We would have to work overtime in order to pull the given targets. We cannot let our customers down and would require someone who could answer their calls.

Taking up calls that you cannot deal with:These kind of things continue to happen a lot in the BPO Industry and is something that is never funny. Weeping people come forward and tell you their story whereas screaming customers would claim that they are going to come commit suicide with sexually inappropriate comments. And when such things happen you would here need to remember that you would have to wrap up the calls in 2 minutes or else would be fired.

Having to come up at 8.30 and starting your computer: You have been told that you need to be at your desk by sharp 8:30 am and it’s already 9.30. And it’s obvious that certain programme that you would need at your job would take half an hour of time to load. And off course you would not be paid for your extra half an hour then why would you choose to work for an extra hour.

Not wanting to be a part of clients call during day off: Do not try of contacting your customer success team during weekends, it would never ever happen. So try and use whats up, gmail, Viber, and Facebook instead.

Getting Back Home and Noticing That Your Friends Have Been On Facebook The Entire Day: Most of the times we come across situations where we did not have much work to do. And you could just read articles online with a limited access to internet like the fact of the day been written by your manager and your weekly column where your CEO would be describing the holiday he would be going on.
Author Bio:

Abhishek Jain has over 10 years of experience within the BPO Industry and Finance and Accounting outsourcing services. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Services India delivers and manages various offshore/onsite projects in various technologies and domains

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You might also like:

Marketing your BPO outsourcing firm from A to Z
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/05/22/marketing-your-bpo-outsourcing-firm-from-a-to-z/

Is it time to Uber-size your outsourcing business?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/05/10/is-it-time-to-uber-size-your-outsourcing-business/

How to start an outsourcing company
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/12/29/how-to-start-an-outsourcing-company-2016/

If you invested in training your BPO employees, what skills would you teach them?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/03/28/if-you-invested-in-training-your-bpo-employees-what-types-of-skills-would-you-teach-them/

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Thinking outside the box or the BPO in your business….

January 21, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: BPO | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Are you in business? Do you handle business decisions in some methodical way? In my experience, most business problems are very complicated, involved, and have many unknown wild cards. To solve business problems, you can’t just have some run of the mill way of thinking. You need to try out some unconventional thinking.

You might need to brainstorm different ideas. You should ideally think of many really wild ideas just to get your brain to open up. Incorporating trying things out into your innovation process is critical as your brain will come up with more ideas as you are testing things out.

Thinking outside of the box is a common American expression. Unfortunately, we have very few innovators in our country. It seems that India, the land of the BPO industry has even fewer creative thinkers due to the nature of the school system there which focuses on memorizing and not on creation.

Some types of thinking are just not taught at school, or are not taught enough. When I was at school, they did teach creative thought, but they didn’t teach creative thought in business. In my opinion, all of us entrepreneurs need to invest a lot of time in developing this skill within ourselves.

When I come up with solutions to BPO business problems, the list looks more like a list of ideas and then variations on ideas. It sometimes takes over a year to try all the ideas and during the process I often think of many more variations or refinements on ideas. The business thinking process is like this, and all entrepreneurs should become comfortable with all phases of the brainstorming, implementing, measurement and refinement stages of the process.

Good luck, and also it is recommended to meditate and bathe before making important business decisions for your BPO. Some very Hindu advice from someone not raised Hindu. (Ganga water not included)

Who is using 123outsource.net?

June 14, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Who is using 123outsource.net?
 
The answer to this question is very bizarre.  When 123outsource.net outsourcing directory was started, it was supposed to be a directory to help American and U.K. companies find Indian software and BPO companies to help them with their work.  I figured that the majority of the clicks would come from India, the Philipines, and perhaps about 10-20% of the clicks would come from America.  The findings are completely different.
 
The Arabian Gulf
Most of the companies who use our directory are looking for service providing companies in their own country. Filipinos are looking for Filipino companies, mainly call centers in the Philippines, and Indians are looking for BPO companies in India. Americans were slow to even query foreign pages for service providers which was a shock to my system.  My whole business model was taken off track by zenophobic Americans.  Our country is the most diverse on earth, so why are we resistant to look overseas for services?  It is five countries in the Persian Gulf, namely: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar that are using foreign companies the most.  
 
Africa
We were not advertising in Africa much until quite recently.  Kenya is now our 8th largest browser on our site.  It was actually #3 for a while right behind the Philippines if you can believe that.  It is such a small country, with not much presence in the outsourcing industry.  But, I believe that they will grow to be prominent in the call center and BPO industry.  People speak English well there and have good social skills.  It is just that the economy and financial markets are so backwards there.  The infrastructure and internet connections are really behind schedule in Kenya.  But, over time things will change.
 
A bizarre happening
Our facebook is showing up on google more in it’s Korean version than its English version. Its very strange.  When I look up blog posts, they show up on google in the Korean Facebook, but the actual blog entries are not yet showing up.  Maybe in a few weeks they will start to show up.
 
India
Indian companies are using our site the most.  They are hiring other Indian companies to do their back office work.  Data conversion and data processing tasks are the most common.  Surprisingly, the software page in India was going to be our most popular page, but it is actually one of our least popular pages.  People are looking for data entry and call centers, not programmers.  It is my belief that India will lead the world in programming one day.  But, maybe today is not that day — at least not for us.
 
Looking for outsourcing jobs
It seems that a huge portion of browsers on our directory are looking for jobs. We get resumes sent to us all the time. We are creating a database where job seekers can enter their information and specialties.  Maybe one day it will be a popular page for companies to search for prospective employees in their area. We’ll find out!

Cebu Call Centers in the News

September 5, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Call Center, Philippines | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Call Center Cebu News issues
 
Expanded Broadband for the Philippines
As PLDT completes its expansion of the domestic fiber optic network, Cebu’s potential as an outsourcing destination gets better and better.  Broadband costs could get lower too.  An increase in call center investments is expected to create many new jobs in the Philippines that will likely mean that the 60 BPO companies in Cebu could expand and that new Cebu call centers could arise.  The new network goes through eleven islands and underwater and is expected to ensure uninterrupted broadband coverage for the entire nation.
 
Asiatown IT Park
In addition to Cebu call centers, there is an Asiatown IT Park in Cebu which is the Philippines second largest concentration of IT industries employing an excess of 15,000 individuals.  
 
BPOs including Indian companies are outsourcing to Cebu!
Wipro, a Bangalore based company, set up a call center in Cebu in 2007.  eBusiness BPO is ready to hire 350 employees for its new headquarters in Cebu in December 2010.  Additionally, the Radisson Blu has opened a 400 room hotel in Cebu.  
 
Hoax bomb threat near Cebu Call Centers
There was a false bomb threat that lead to the vacating of a Cebu city Asiatown IT Park building.  An unidentified caller was the individual who made the threat.  Two K9 teams were unable to find any explosives.
 
To summarize, Cebu, in the Visayas region, is a major economic hub in the Philippines which caters to the call center and BPO industry. As time goes on, you can expect large businesses to be setting up branches in Cebu, especially if they need to have a high quality call center.

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How to write a resume for a call center job

Mumbai Call Centers in the news!

India and China compete for outsourcing revenues