There is a desperate need for quality call center managers in all the major call centers of the world. In seminars and conferences on the BPO world, the discussion often veers towards managerial issues and the condition of management in the call center units. The general lament is that there is a serious need for managers who can tackle the mid-levels of the organizations skillfully. There will be the pressures of work and deadlines of the project. In that limited scope the challenge lies in keeping the employees motivated and focused. A quality manager must be able to do that and much more!

To meet the demands of the call center units, B-schools have to incorporate some of the BPO aspects into their curriculum. The business process outsourcing industry has come out of the stage where it was looked upon as a step-gap career arrangement. In the modern times, this industry is a prime industry that provides steady employment to professionals of all degrees. The business schools can provide the required talent for the call center outsourcing units. That will strengthen the management hierarchy and also put an end to overwork and exploitation of the BPO employees.

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The only way for call centers to stay afloat is to move ahead. They have to try and take one step higher than the previous one. As obvious, it is easier said than done! There are three ways in which a call center can forge ahead by brushing the challenges aside. One is creative thinking. The challenge for the BPO unit is to think something that is different from what the others have on their minds. Unique call center services will draw a line that will highlight your work against the others in the same domain. For example, the quality customer service of Fusion BPO Services makes clients choose us instead of other business process outsourcingunits that make loud claims.

The second way out for call centers is to create new models. Newer ways of doing things will impress the clients that you want projects from. These days clients are as much interested in the BPO processes that you follow as in the results that are obtained. You will have to get more of new-age call center services on the menu. Finally, you have to look for new markets. Telemarketing services have exhausted many of the traditional markets, both online and offline. Collecting revenue will be difficult for you in these sectors. For the growth of the business process outsourcing unit, you will have to look at fresh territories.

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For small business networks, the budget for marketing and promotion is important and binding. In cases of lead generation, they have to depend on low-cost methods that also pay back rich revenues for them. In this regard, the Internet is a great tool. Sales lead generation over the Internet does not require extensive budgets. The work can be done by careful use of resources. Call centers who take on such projects can rely on SEO and social media marketing to reach out to a wider range of customers. This is the only way for small businesses to stay on in the competition with larger firms that have the marketing budget to finance offline adverts and billboards.

Online surveys have revealed that the lead generation spending of companies will continue to grow this year. Small business owners who have stayed away from investing in BPO units because they didn’t feel the need to do so are now jumping on to the bandwagon. The cost effective call center services that are on the menu are also affordable to the small business owners. They have added to the revenue earning of the business process outsourcing industry. On the other hand, they have derived benefits by having professionals to deal with their telemarketing and sales lead generation processes.

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The key challenge that the BPO managers have to deal with is the attrition rate. In an industry where millions of talented professionals work, keeping them tied to a call center is difficult. On a macro level, the business process outsourcing industry is not threatened by the attrition because the professionals leave one to join another but remain in the same domain. But on the micro level, companies feel the pinch when a trained, seasoned agent decides to move out. The additional cost of hiring a replacement is just one of the worries. There are other concerns about how fast the new hire will adjust to the telemarketing project on hand.

Training new hires and making them rise up to the requirements of telemarketing services often put severe roadblocks. Call centers struggle to meet the deadline. Failure to adhere to certain quality in call center services is also seen as a breach of faith that the client has placed in your BPO unit. To cut it short, when an employee leaves, there is a void that is difficult to fill up. So the managers have to be careful about man management and leadership. Motivation is a prime ingredient in keeping the attrition rate low. Monetary rewards are a must, too.

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Many call centers are now using Facebook and Twitter for sales lead generation. But an equal number of them are leaving out LinkedIn. As opposed to this unhealthy trend, this professional networking site has all the ingredients needed for B2B lead generation. B2B projects don’t work on telemarketing calls anymore. You have to do something extra, something that shows off how effective and professional you can be. LinkedIn is what premiere BPO units trust for B2B projects. There is a certain amount of credibility to your brand when you feature of LinkedIn and have some recommendations. The professional networking site brings together all the companies and employees that you may feel the need to connect with.

The primary advantage of B2B lead generation on LinkedIn is that you can survey the scene. Before you rush in to grab projects, you will have to do some marketing pitches to the companies you want the projects from. LinkedIn provides you with that platform. Call center agents can approach business executives and influential members of the board through this site. The BPO agents can even get a reference from a common contact. The contact base of the business process outsourcing unit increases manifold through canvassing on LinkedIn.

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There is a sustained growth in the BPO sector. Yet the stock market value of the call center companies continue to plummet! This is a bizarre phenomenon that the experts of the business process outsourcing industry have not been able to explain satisfactorily. There are some calculated responses to this fall in the stock values of call centers. Some feel that it could be because of the rising inflation in prices. Call center services cannot hike up their price tags for the simple reason that they will find themselves on the leeward side of business deals if they offer uncompetitive prices. On the other hand, their cost of production is not getting any lower, thanks to the same inflated price scenario.

There is another reason cited by the BPO experts. The cost of hiring better manpower for telemarketing services is higher than what they allocate for their budget. Third world call centers are now working on a quality-oriented system, as opposed to the traditional way of using a cost-oriented business model. Because of the numerous telemarketing units fighting for talented agents and employees, the cost of hiring has gone higher. Unfortunately, these rising costs have dented into the profit margins. The general profit margin has dipped from 18-20% to 13-14%. The repercussions of these falls is reflected in the stock values headed downwards.

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The standalone BPO units are developing better facilities to compete with the IT sector. Experts studying the trends of business process outsourcing have always pointed out how the IT sector is moving ahead in bolder strides than the call center industry. The business firms in countries like USA are looking at companies that can provide them a bit of IT support along with call center services. That is how bigger names in the business get the bulk of the projects while the telemarketing units find it comparatively tougher to bag them. As observed from the trends, call centers have to pull up their infrastructure and provide a more diverse range of outsourcing services.

A prime reason why the call centers are falling short of business is that the cost factor is not the only reason why business firms are outsourcing. The concept of BPO has changed over the last few months. It has become more of a business supporting enterprise as opposed to call center services that do the non-core work for your company. Because the core business areas of a business needs innovative engineering, new technologies and development of new platforms for better revenue generation, the diversification has become extremely necessary in call center units.

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The BPO sector, fresh from the turmoil that this year put it through, will go through a consolidation phase in the first quarter of the next year. The global survey and research group, Gartner, has come out with a report saying that call centers will be looking to settle down and adapt to the changing dynamics of telemarketing services in 2011.  There is a strong speculation that many of bigger players will brand out and embrace different lines of business to cope with the changing times. The challenge of doing something different in the call center business is necessary because some of the core issues of business process outsourcing were challenged in 2010.

Making the BPO service portfolio broader was always part of our agenda. The experts working for us had predicted long back that voice-based call center services are only the tip of the outsourcing iceberg. There will be various other disciplines to follow and most of them would be non-voice call center operations. Keeping these forecasts in mind, we have developed our SEO and web development teams. Now these departments are generating profits and financing their own expansion drives. We are in the act of recruiting more quality manpower to meet the rising demands. 2011 will be an exciting year for us in office! Stay tuned on this page for updates.

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There are just a couple of days before we bid bye to a year that was a roller-coaster ride for the BPO sector. There were those high crests — times when the telemarketing industry could shake off the recession and emerge stronger and better equipped to deal with the challenges. There were also those troughs when the protectionist measures of USA cast a shadow of gloom over the entire business process outsourcing market. However, at the end of the year, all looks set for a promising 2011 with some serious changes and modifications in call center services and business models.

The way ahead for the call center industry surely holds a lot of scope for improvement. Call center services is strongly moving from a cost-centric to a quality-centric one. That is how India got toppled from the top BPO destination spot. 2011 will be the year when business firms will finally dump the only-cost way of thinking and look beyond to spending some extra money to get better telemarketing services on board. The use of non-voice processes, like search engine optimization (SEO) and web development services. The use of new devices like Smartphones and even Androids or i-Pads will take lead generation in a new direction. Watch this space to follow the latest updates on BPO trends!

The Indian BPO sector will be eyeing a 20% growth next year. After being toppled from the top spot in the world of business process outsourcing, the country is pinning their hopes on making a strong comeback in 2011. The experts of the call center sector have blamed various factors for their poor show this year. The reasons ranged from the protectionist scare in USA to the lack of skilled manpower. But all these fall pitifully short of expectations. It’s a fact that they couldn’t compete with the call center services offered by countries like the Philippines. The quality was simply lacking and they lacked the perseverance to beat off the hurdles.

In 2011, the Indian BPO unit will be looking to strengthen their talent pool. Call centers have to plan out training modules and sessions before working on telemarketing projects. Things will begin to work out when they pull up the quality of work. The Indian telemarketing unit is also looking at Europe to provide them with an alternate market next year. The whole of 2010 was spent in speculation that the economic condition of Europe will improve and there will be projects coming in from that quarter. But as of now, they are pulling their socks up to fight a grim battle in 2011!

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