It was in the late 1990s that Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) jobs emerged as an attractive and lucrative profession, especially for youngsters. Global majors such as GE, EXL and HCL pioneered the concept, setting up BPO offices in Delhi and adjoining areas like Noida and Gurgaon. While most of these initial BPOs had international processes that required an Englishspeaking crowd, by the mid-2000s, domestic BPOs exploded into the scene. It did not take the domestic BPOs much time to overtake their international counterparts in call volumes and employee strength. The focus for domestic BPOs was to hire people with good knowledge of Hindi or other regional languages.
With more and more companies in India wanting to personalise their customer engagement, BPOs offer a significant operational and strategic value-add. These companies provide in-bound and out-bound services for processes that include sales, after-sales, customer service, collection and customer feedback. Delhi NCR remains one of the biggest hubs for BPOs in India. The availability of a vast pool of young, educated people is a huge driving factor for these companies to stay put in Delhi. Moreover, many clients have their regional/national offices in Delhi, enabling BPOs to align their working processes conveniently.
Most youngsters get attracted to the hip office culture in BPOs, but once inside the system, their job requires using multiple skill-sets. Clear deliverables are expected from each employee.
They are, in turn, monitored rigorously for efficient business operations.
To ensure efficiency, every new hire undergoes rigorous skill & process training. These training sessions involve combinations of soft skills and technical detailing based on the processes they are hired for. For instance, hiring for chat processes will have to undergo intense speed typing training, while those in technical voice processes spend more time learning about their products/services. In addition, many a time, intelligent evaluation tools are used to channel the new hires into processes based on their demonstrated skills during the training. These training sessions usually last about two weeks, after which the agents are assigned teams and go live.
The qualifications needed primarily depend on the client and their process. While technical processes with international or domestic clients often require graduates, other processes like sales and customer services look for candidates who have just passed their 12 standard or PUC exams. You can start looking for BPO jobs in Delhi after you have cleared your 12 standard or PUC.
BPO salaries depend on the process that you are hired for. For example, the wages for fresh candidates hired for domestic processes can range from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 5,000. In contrast, entry-level salaries at international call centres range from Rs. 25,000 – Rs. 35,000.
In addition to base salaries, you are eligible for incentives again based on your process. For instance, the sales process is heavily incentive-driven, while customer care processes offer incentives on output quality. In addition, many companies split the incentives based on personal and team performance to increase operational efficiency.
The most in-demand jobs in BPOs are always the first-line executives. Their designations vary from that of a customer care executive, telecaller, business executive, etc. Nevertheless, they make up the most significant chunk of any BPO team. Next come team leaders who manage teams of first-line executives. They are responsible for achieving team targets. The team leaders report to cluster heads or process managers if the BPO structure is flat. The cluster manager/head is responsible for multiple teams under him and ensures efficient process operations.