Tag Archives: Data Entry Clerk

How do you train a BPO worker?

March 20, 2012 by 123outsource
Categories: BPO | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

How do you train a BPO worker?
 
I have a very small company, and we do tasks very similar to what people in BPO companies do.  We do call center work in small quantities — perhaps an average of two hours a day of outgoing calls, and then we have one dedicated full time incoming phone attendant.  We do about two hours a day of data entry work filling in online forms.  We even do KPO type tasks (we meaning myself individually) such as SEO analytics which includes keyword analysis.  Content writing is another specialty which I personally engage in, etc.
 
The hard part is how to train others to do all of the 20 types of tasks that I do daily.  Training BPO call center workers is not easy.  The manager has to create a SCRIPT for the call center worker to use when doing outbound calls. 

Hi, this is Don from ZYX company, we are calling in reference to your account with us … etc.
 
The script is easy to write, and to say.  The tone of voice that you require for reading the script might require a special personality.  Perhaps a strong man, or a caring woman.  Or, perhaps a tough woman, or a sensitive guy!  The hard part is training them to answer questions. There are so many questions that someone could ask, and how do you train a worker to answer all of the possible questions?  I think that creating an online cheat sheet is super, where all of the answers to common questions are there, and you can search by keyword.  Workers should be trained in the main topics, and be quizzed regularly to make sure they understand things well.
 
The next question is, how often do you check up on your workers?  Some people get better with experience, while others keep making the same mistakes endlessly no matter how many times you correct them.  There should be periodic checking up on workers, and regular evaluations.  If someone has been on a project for three weeks, and hasn’t mastered the basic questions after receiving regular coaching, maybe it is time to say good bye! On the other hand, perhaps your star employee is having trouble dealing with some of the finer points of answering more subtle or less common questions.  How detail oriented should your staff be before handing a question over to the manager?
 
If you are training a BPO data entry clerk, it might make sense to show them the process, have them repeat it a few times in your presence, and then to do a few hours on their own, and then have a reevaluation.  Data Entry seems to me to be less involving than call center work because there are no incoming questions — the complexity of the work is hence, more limited which makes it easier.  But, how do you teach a disorganized person good formatting skills?  You are on your own! Good luck!
 
Training for KPO work is much more sophisticated, and I don’t want to touch that topic today!  Let the folks in Bangalore deal with that — there are so many highly qualified KPO workers there.

Training for Outsourcing Jobs

July 12, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Getting a Job | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

We get many people applying for non-existant jobs at our company.  My company consists of myself and one other person. We do all the work. We have no other jobs, and don’t understand why someone is applying for a job, that we never claimed to have?  This clueless behavior is why many are out of work and can’t find any work. Nobody wants to hire someone who can’t think and who wastes others’ time.  Additionally, most of the job applicants can’t spell and are very sloppy in their communication skills. I would never hire anyone to even pour me a cup of coffee if they were sloppy.  So, what is the solution?  Training!
 
What do you need to know?
To work in outsourcing, there are various types of skills you need to know.  For call center work, you need to be able to speak clearly and listen well. For data entry work, you need to have good English skills and good formatting skills.  If you don’t know how words are spelled, you will not be able to correct other people’s errors when transcribing data.  In data entry, you might have a hand written document and type the information into a database.  You are expected to format addresses correctly and find errors in spelling. If you can’t spell yourself, how can you possibly find errors in other people’s spelling? 
 
Catching errors
You might need to notice inconsistancies in data too as a data entry clerk.  If you are looking at addresses and you realize that the zip code (PIN code) is from Delhi, yet the rest of the address seems to be in Cochi, Kerela, you just caught an error. A good data entry clerk is watchful and sharp and can catch mistakes with ease. Sometimes, the name of a neighborhood might erroneously be put in the city field.  In India, addresses often include names of areas like Jayanagar, or Shivaji-nagar.  If the database you are using has a separate field for city and street address, you need to make sure the right information is in the right place.  What if the name of the road is all mushed together?  Springhillroad for example. Do you know when the names should be separated and when they should be together?  Sometimes you need to google this information.  Should Shivaji-nagar have a hyphen, or be separate words? Maybe it should all be one long word.  As a data entry clerk you have to be sharply aware of these issues and have a way of solving them, otherwise you will be the most mediocre data entry keyer in the industry.
 
Schools
If you live in India, the king of the outsourcing industry, you will have no lack of schools for many different outsourcing professions.  Just look in the local classified section of your local newspaper and you will find dozens of schools that will teach you how to work at a call center, data entry company, or medical transcriptioning.  Rather than bothering hundreds of companies for a job when you are not qualified, you are advised to get highly trained so that you are an asset, and not a liability.  Companies in the West want to outsource to save money, but if there are multitudes of errors in the work produced, the errors will cost the companies more money than they are saving.  Many companies that outsourced to the Philippines, or India found that the error rate was sometimes so high, that they were willing to pay ten times as much to have companies in America do the work for them.  On the other hand, if you can provide faster and better service in India, than any American company can provide, you will make a handsome living in the long run.  In the long run quality of work, and good customer service will win you high paying work and steady work as well.

Data Entry, Data Mining Information

December 27, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Data Entry, Popular Posts | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Data Entry General Information

Data Entry Clerk – job description
What is data entry and what does it involve? Data entry involves a data entry clerk or typist who reads hand-written or printed records and manually types them into a computerized database. Some data entry clerks are temp workers, while others are regular employees. Larger companies have enough data entry work to keep full time employees busy.

Typical jobs for data entry clerks might involve typing in tracking numbers of shipped goods, typing reference numbers for shipped goods that didn’t reach their destination, data input of medical information.

Optical character recognition technology allows a data entry clerk to read a report generated by an optical character scanning machine. The data entry clerk is still responsible for reviewing the results of the report for incorrect or omitted information.

Data entry work outsourcing is done heavily in many parts of the Philippines and India. Employees in those companies enjoy much higher than average salaries which affords them a lifestyle that includes restaurants, travel, entertaining, and other niceties that are not possible for the average person in their respective countries.

Many BPO companies in India do only Data Entry and data related services. But, many other BPOs in India offer a mixed bag of services including call center, data entry, and a variety of other back office services.

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Data Mining Introduction
Data mining is the process of extracting patterns from particular data and is commonly used for marketing, surveillance, and fraud detection. One example of data mining is when a computer program or human extracts email addresses from a large directory type website, and compiles a list of email addresses to spam. Data mining has been used for centuries to find hidden patterns in data. One interesting example include the computer programs that look for mystical word and letter combinations / patterns in the Torah which originally was a really long scroll of letters with no spaces between the words.

Data Mining in Business
Data mining is used heavily in customer relationship management. Many businesses realize that identifying patterns of customer tastes and behaviors can help them to provide better and more targetted services to their customers. Since its expensive to contact customers, it is practical to identify which customers would be ideal to contact for specific purposes. If you are having a special on hotel rates, contacting customers who travel once per year might not be as efficient as contacting customers that travel once per month. If you are offering a discount on drinks at a bar, contacting teetotaling vegetarians will net you a big fat zero, while contacting avid wine connoisseurs might work better assuming your wine list is up to par. Mass mailings are done with the same principle – by identifying individuals who would be most reponsive to a particular message.

Identifying Ideal Customers or Employees
If you crunch the numbers, you might be able to create algorithms to identify which employee is the best and why. You have to look through data of many employees to find this information. Certain customers are worth more than others too. Some customers spend more than other on high profit items, while other customers spend very little and tie up your phone lines with endless bickering. Data mining can help you determine who is who which can help you figure out who to target to be your customer or employee, and can even tell you how much effort its worth to win someone over. Unfortunately, through data mining, we can put a price tag on everyone’s head. By the way, you (the reader) are worth exactly $5.28 to me! Just kidding – you are worth much more than that!

Profiling
Customer data can be analyzed to learn about spending trends and customer profiles. This is why supermarkets such as Ralphs have Ralphs cards. It helps them develop not only customer loyalty, but helps them analyze who is buying what. Are you a single white male who buys lots of Gatoraid and Ramen noodles? Or are you the head of an Asian American family who purchases twenty pounds of pasta sauce per year? You may think that Asians eat won-tons, but those who understand data mining and data analysis know that behind closed doors, Asians are really eating pasta with marinara sauce and cheesecake in unbounded proportions– at least in California (just a hypothesis based on observation). That way, after interpreting customer data, a company who is advertising in an Asian neighborhood in California can have a smiling Asian lady who is devouring pasta; and display a bottle of tomato sauce with the name of the company on it. That, my friend is market segmenting and profiling in a nutshell — or in a pasta sauce jar.

Other Uses
Data mining can also be used to study educational research to see how students learn most. It can also be used to study drug safety issues, equipment testing, and even genetics. Gene mapping can be studied with techniques that include data mining.