It is a continuous thought priority to all call centers to know how they can save money in their contact centers and throughout their operations. Few tips which is step by step to go for the cost reducing.

Make a Team: Make a team which will do the review. Because call centers efforts are heading for at customer service, process improvement and potential cost reduction, form a team that can bring different disciplines to the process. Also include general training and quality training, human resources, center scheduling, telecom traffic, IT, marketing, and returns and replacement if all of these areas are within responsibilities.

Take the opinions and input of all of team members. Challenge them to assess how things could be done differently, and make them answer the question, "How can costs are reduced without lowering the standard of customer service?" These meeting we can keep in the starting of the year to set up the target.

Marks the Achievements: By marking your achievement, it will be indicator to know the performance measures up against set standards and plans. The major achievements include contacts per hour; service level; abandon rate; attrition/turnover rate; call-handle time; talk time; after-call work time; contact-to-order ratio; transaction volumes for Internet, phone and mail; non-phone volumes and others. 

Review: Labor's cost, quality and availability is becoming an issue for many call centers, particularly in seasonal businesses where the selling curve is more compressed. Review advertising media costs and results, and exchange information with other human resource departments. Review pre-hiring testing, employee selection criteria and practices. By review process we can know the possible improvements and cost reductions for the process. It will help us to know more about a place for temporary agencies rather than relying completely on in-house hiring.

Revenue Generation. As part of their mission, many contact centers are charged with becoming revenue centers in addition to taking orders and providing customer service. By revenue generation reports we can show about success with cross-selling, up-selling, outbound selling and increasing the company's average orders. It will be really help full for the cost saving in call centers. 

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Good news for the small medium business (SMB) for which you must be waiting from long time.  Now the ERP gets easier for the SMB. A few years back the Enterprise resource planning (ERP) was a self-important expression with expensive software to match. ERP is helpful for the managers to do their responsibilities more efficiently, boost sales and reduce costs.  ERP is business management system that gives a support to the mangers of the companies to command of data and workflows to get the clear report of each factors of the business. 

The essential part of the business like planning, manufacturing, sales and marketing are also cover with ERP. It also covers activities like inventory control, order tracking, customer service, finance and human resources. For example, ERP software can automatically indicate to the managers when it notices that stocks have gone down in a sales depot. Dealing with the suppliers is sometimes very difficult for the managers but with ERP it will be easier for a company manager to deal with suppliers.

ERP software is now available in much cheaper rate for small business also because now a day's number of computer users is increasing day by day. A large group of people are using various kind of software to manage all the official details. ERP software, once a privilege for the global multinational, is available on much cheaper rates.

SaaS (Software as a Service) – It is refer to renting of software over the Internet, much like Web based e-mail. SaaS is also contributing to software becoming cheaper and easier to use. Industry officials say the emergence of SaaS and cheaper ERP software has dramatically lowered the barrier for users. Top ERP solution providers are now targeting just about every company, size no bar Consider the case of SAP, the global leader in ERP software, which once was associated largely with multinational giants.

On November 21, 2007 SAP India announced record-breaking quarterly growth for the third quarter of 2007 with the addition of more than 714 new customers till September 2007, translating to more than two new customers per work day in 2007. "A growing SMB (small and medium business) market, opportunistic investors, and middleware technologies converge to make the SMB market for ERP applications one of the most competitive environments for market growth and product innovation within enterprise applications,"   ---- Says Gopakumar Sivanandan of SAP India.

A spokeswoman for rival Oracle India spokesperson agrees. "Mid-sized companies are driving India's GDP growth today," she says. Microsoft recently launched Microsoft Dynamics NAV designed specifically for medium sized companies.

"Dynamics NAV delivers integrated functionality to support solutions for financial management, supply chain management, CRM and E-Business." According to Sushant Dwivedy from Microsoft India,

For small and medium enterprises sometimes it was very hard to pay the cost at one time.Earlier it was required Rs 10 to 15 lakhs can be done at a fraction of the price for ERP software. Though it must be that renting out software involves a recurring cost every month. The onetime cost of an ERP package needs returning costs in training and support and to that extent, renting the ERP software over the Web could be a lot better Consider. 

The cost of the ERP for SMB is available for three users at Rs 25,000 a month, for five users at Rs 35,000 a month and 10 users at Rs 60,000 a month. No hardware, no personnel, no software cost is required in addition to this. Oracle and SAP have attractive pricing that make affordability a huge attraction. Oracle starts at as low as Rs 2,800 per user license, though it calls for implementation and support cost Much cheaper versions are also available from the Open Source movement, which uses operating systems based on free, modifiable platforms like Linux.              Source – HT Times 

According to market researcher Gartner, revenues from business platforms in India grow from $12.1 million in 2005 to $16.4 million in 2006, with all leading vendors posting double-digit growth. The Indian ERP market is expected to see a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 25.2 per cent over the next five years. The market was $83 million in 2004, and is projected to be over $250 million in 2009.  

Some companies are realizing that their call center staffing processes are not only inefficient, they are also very costly. Many are seeking an alternative and are turning to RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) as an option. Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is a growing trend in which companies outsource all or part of their hiring functions to find better-quality people to staff your call center. RPO can be used successfully to fulfill a range of hiring needs for organizations; and is particularly well suited to call centers. Specifically, RPO delivers benefits for call center operations that include sourcing higher-quality candidates, improving fill ratios and "show rates", decreasing turn-over, and reducing hiring costs.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is a form of business process outsourcing (BPO) when an employer outsourcers or transfers all or part of the staffing process to an external service provider.

An RPO engagement can be structured in one of three ways depending on the needs of the company: Enterprise, Selective or Project RPO.  

In Enterprise RPO, the partner manages the entire process across all skill categories and all locations. Selective RPO involves managing a subset of locations or a subset of recruiting processes, such as sourcing, screening, interview scheduling or offer letters.

In Project RPO, the RPO provider delivers hires for a one-time hiring project.

In all three scenarios, a dedicated RPO team works directly with the hiring manager to create a tailored program to meet the call center's specific needs. The team can work on-site at the client's locations, off-site in its own facility or a combination of the RPO Benefits 

Organisations that partner with RPO specialists can realize a range of significant and sustained business benefits, all of which can be measured.   

These benefits include:

Securing the best talent: Competition for the most talented individuals is increasing. Organizations need to secure the best people quickly and efficiently to help them build competitive capability.

Cutting recruitment costs: By transforming processes, utilizing best practice, and replacing a fixed cost base with a variable charging structure, RPO can significantly reduce the cost of recruitment.

Removing the administrative burden:RPO providers take on the burden of operational recruitment activities, making organizations free to focus on value-creating and strategic activities.

Delivering higher quality services:There are many stakeholders in a recruitment process; through improving processes and measuring experience and outcome, RPO providers can demonstrate highest quality services.

Mitigating operational risks:Risks come in many forms, and the expert knowledge of an RPO specialist can help organizations mitigate the risks associated with an inability to scale their business operationally to meet changing market demands, and the risks of non-compliance to legislative and regulatory change.

The more sophisticated and experienced RPO providers will also have a system of "forward-looking" analytics to ensure that hiring goals will be met for each "hiring class." This predictive process analyzes how many candidates are in the pipeline.

How to hire an RPO provider

If you think an RPO partner could measurably improve the quality of your call center hires while containing costs, research several firms and choose carefully. The field is expanding quickly but there is a wide range of experience, knowledge and track record of success/failure. Specifically, you may want to ask potential providers some key questions, including:

How many RPO clients do you have?

How many hires do you support annually?

What experience do you have with call centers? And what types of call centers?

What percentage of your clients is reference able?

Are your recruiters dedicated to one client or do they work on multiple clients at the same time?

Do you have the flexibility to scale up and down as my needs change?

What is your client renewal rate?

As call center recruiting, hiring and retention remains a challenge for many companies, RPO is emerging as an important option. With turnover down. Significantly decreasing costs -- an increasing number of call center and human resources professionals have embraced RPO as an innovative strategy and a smart business decision.  

India is growing in the BPO sector at present India is unquestionably the BPO superpower of the world. But it is also true that the competition is always on. There are other strong competitors of India who might ruin India's BPO. There are lot of countries and one which on top is China.  

China is one such country which can eat into the BPO share market of India. But for the time being India is well ahead of China because of some inherent advantages. India is currently booming in the BPO arena and has scored over China to emerge as the top offshore destination for Global businesses. In the 2004 offshore index, India remains the star performer. It has once again captured the top spot in outsourcing by a comfortable margin due to its strong mix of low costs and noteworthy depth in human resources. This fact was brought out in a study conducted by AT Kearney, an international consultancy agency.

India has a very important advantage, their command of the English language. There are lots more Indians with good English skills than Chinese. Forrester also endorses the view that scalability of resources (talent pool) is the major factor that makes India an attractive offshore location. "The cost of operations in India can be 20-30% higher than places like Vietnam or lower than places like Brazil. But part of the challenge for these countries is the lack of skills. There is a very limited set of low-end work that companies like GE are looking at and lack of quality resources makes it hard for these countries to get started. The work going offshore today is geometrically more complex than the Y2K work that India got started on with,'' says Mr McCarthy.

India proved better than China on account of several factors. The study pointed out that China lags behind India in terms experience and other important factors like IT and management education, language skills, concerns about intellectual property and overall country risk.

According to the study, although India and China are the market leaders in this sector, there are huge opportunities present in the market to give ample space to other countries like Philippines, Vietnam, Romania, Kenya, Sri Lanka and North America market to grow.

The study also said although it is unlikely that India would be able to retain its number one slot with China aggressively trying to outstrip it in the business, it would still be able to get a decent share of the pie. 

It is true that now day's employees are not working for salary because they want to relaxation in job. Most youngsters do not like joining the business process outsourcing (BPO) due to stress and health issue. BPO employees are quitting BPO job's to get rid of the stress and strain at work place. Employees do not quit due to salary issues alone. They are least bother about the salary. All the companies are giving good salary. 

Now companies are providing good services to fresher and experienced employees with openings with good salary. But preference of the employees now goes to the office where they should have some fun and entrainment for getting relaxation.

In fact, stress and health weren't even among the 'top three' factors for leaving a company.Union Health Minister A Ramadoss recently called for a "health policy for the tech sector", stating: "(BPO employees) have a sedentary lifestyle. They smoke, go for late-night parties, and even take drugs. Some get heart attacks in their mid-20s"

Employees are facing stress problem in BPO due to that their health is down. If customers are not getting comfort and the full relaxation in BPO companies then they quit the company. The good part is that if the industry is aware to checking indoor air quality to testing food in labs then it will be really.

Employees of Indian BPO firms, on the other hand, were overall content with their jobs in 2007, states the survey. They were satisfied with the job content, work culture, training, and appraisal.

However, it added that they were not satisfied with the image they were stuck with, and least satisfied with their salaries. The average salary hike in the BPO industry grew by 14.8 per cent only in 2007 as compared to an increase of 17.2 per cent last year.

The direct outcome of the fall in salary hike is the increase in attrition rates. The attrition rate went up to 20 per cent from 18 per cent in 2006.

Hyderabad-based Brigade, for instance, appointed a chief fun officer to look into ways of ensuring low employee stress levels and keeping them highly motivated.

The survey also revealed that while large firms ranked better in parameters like work culture and image, niche companies were better in terms of salary and job content.

Now days all call center are providing the best service to employee to give them comfort and the satisfaction in job. The stress level is really sometimes very high but the companies are also focusing to reduce the stress on employees. 

The compaction between the companies is very high. At this movement it is very important to take care of each thing at the company. Workers spending too much time on social networking websites such as Facebook are costing employers a staggering £130m a day according to the findings of one recent survey, and the problem looks set to become much worse if businesses fail to take action, and fast. Facebook shows 125% growth year over year.

The findings from the survey show that some 233 million hours are lost every month to employees surfing the net, with social networking websites causing the greatest concern. It is a fact that these particular websites are very addictive and can often result in users remaining on the sites for hours rather than minutes. Whilst this is worrying news for employers, help is now at hand thanks to a powerful and effective range of software packages available to small to medium sized businesses.

To know about the details of the system there is software which effectively monitors and records everything employees do on their computer and the internet, providing employers with the perfect low-cost solution for monitoring employees. You can use of the software packages significantly prevents, reduces or eliminates the problems associated with abuse. In doing so employers have successfully stamped out inappropriate activity, reduced security breaches and prevented 'Insider' theft.

May be it happened that employee will not feel happy to know that someone is monitoring their work. But as a employer of the company it is very important to have this kind of software a your work place. You will get lot of protection from the improper activities like opening the social networking site at work time or any shopping site etc. 

Many employers have been happy for their workers to use the internet for personal use as long as ultimately they do their job and reach their targets. However, this is now proving to be a somewhat costly decision for many businesses as loss of productivity and lack of concentration has proven to significantly hinder their overall performance.

You can choose the latest software packages to monitor the system of your work place. With this you can also stop the cause of the social networking problem. 

As we all know the Christmas is approaching and this is the inoculation time for the employees. Here the challenge starts for the call centers to full fill the demands on the festival season.

The call centers will need home-based resources to give the good customer care service to their callers. Customer care centers represent the frontline for the majority of brands, and are the first point of contact for customers. Christmas customer service demand is critical for all sectors, particularly retail, where over 40 per cent of annual turnover occurs in a matter of weeks. 

To keep customer service levels high at the busiest time of the year, and to deal with product enquiries after the festive period it will be good if to use home and outsourced resources.

UK consumers are refreshing themselves for a long wait and frustration this Christmas as contact centers struggle to predict and manage with surges in demand and increased staff absence in the run up to 25 December.  

If Customers will get the poor service then the result will be very shocking. 76 per cent of consumers recently stating that they would stop doing business with an organization following a bad experience (Source: Right Now/Harris Interactive). The festival season is one of the busiest times for contact centers in terms of call volumes, and high levels of staff absenteeism ensures that it is one of the most challenging. 

It is not an easy task to manage with demand and ensure consistently high-levels of customer service in the festival season. Call center managers need to increasingly look at using home-based workers and outsourced resources. Home-based contact centre agents are an additional resource that can be pulled into assist with operations as required in real-time, operating as part of a Virtual Contact Centre (VCC). The number of home-based agents is a trend that has gained significant momentum in 2007, and is expected to continue growing each year by 36.4 per cent until 2012 (Source: Datamonitor).  

Consumers are looking for the world class customer service from the call centers and to meet their high expectations, companies are really putting their best. In the charismas call center which are based in UK and US need to be full fill with all advance preparation to avoid any problem between consumer and company. This Christmas is going to prove the strength of the call centers. To prove the best in the customer service now it is important to give the good impression on customer in festival season as well. Christmas is the busiest time of the year for retailers, so to prevent lost business it is vital that contact centre managers have the flexibility to bring in extra resources to meet changing demand.  

Virtual Contact Centers allow operational and business managers to balance agent skills with current and future customer demand across the whole organization. They enable a company to incorporate agents from multiple sources, such as home and back office workers, third party outsourced agents and staff in other geographical areas. 

To appreciate the employees and to make them happy few companies understand that they need to have fun in their staffers at least sometimes. Management shows employees they are valued with dance parties, field trips, unexpected financial giveaways and lots of free food.  

That is not a priority for many employers. But it should be. Many say they are fretting about how expensive it is to advertise, recruit and train new employees, not to mention the toll it takes on morale. They're racking their collective brains over how to attract and keep the best talent. It's become such a key issue because unemployment is low, and the supply of jobs is high. That adds up to lots of options for employees.  

Throwing money at staffers isn't always the answer. Neither is throwing a party every few months. Having fun at work and creating a organized team is just one element. The most successful companies also realize flexibility, values, career development and providing meaningful experiences are also important elements to minimizing turnover. The interesting thing is that many of the companies that value having a good time usually incorporate those other elements too.  

It's important to creating a great working environment instead of spending lot of money. It's an investment, and you can't figure out a return on investment on that event, but as long as we're, it's worth every dime. 

You have to touch the heart of what is considered fun for the people that work for you. Companies that are good at retention are engaging people. They hire people who fit in there. The ones that are good at it tend to be a bit odd. They do things that are different.  

Throwing money at people will only work for a little while. Pick people who fit into the organization both professionally and personality-wise; form small work teams that have their own authority and if you get a good result you get a bonus. He also allocates a "fun budget" for each team. They've used it for all sorts of activities including tubing, laser tag and videogames.  

The next step is to advertise the culture of the company. Use those events as a way to recruit talent. The best thing to do if you're a company is make it clear what you have to offer. That way, when a candidate receives two job offers, and everything else is equal, they might go to the company that has a culture similar to theirs.  

After all, bosses want employees to look forward to coming to work every day. 

A recent study shows that India will continue to be the favored target for IT offshoring in spite of rising wages and surging rupee. When it comes to outsourcing, India continues to rule. According to industry experts, emerging destinations like the Philippines, Brazil, Russia and other countries in East Europe do not, at present, pose a threat to India. It will take at least five year for these emerging countries to pip India's position. 
                                                             
Reports suggest that on average, an IT worker's salary in India is growing at about 12% annually. The rupee, too, has risen by around 12% against the dollar this year. Despite this, an Indian software engineer gets only one-fifth of what his counterpart in the US or Western Europe earns.

                                                                                                                          -The Economic Times

India has a very important advantage, their command of the English language. There are lots more Indians with good English skills than Chinese. Forrester also endorses the view that scalability of resources (talent pool) is the major factor that makes India an attractive offshore location. "The cost of operations in India can be 20-30% higher than places like Vietnam or lower than places like Brazil. But part of the challenge for these countries is the lack of skills. There is a very limited set of low-end work that companies like GE are looking at and lack of quality resources makes it hard for these countries to get started. The work going offshore today is geometrically more complex than the Y2K work that India got started on with,'' says Mr McCarthy.

"Companies are setting up offshore centers outside India to mitigate geopolitical risk. Besides, clients are also asking companies to have centers close to their locations.

At present outsourcing business in India is increasing at a rate four times more than any other country and the county have the resource and margin to meet. Turn Around Time (TAT) is the time needed for performing a task, especially receiving, completing, and returning an assignment.

According to the study, growing at a rate of 40 per cent annually, India is the lead player in this sector followed by China at the second spot with a growth rate of 25 per cent.

The overall outlook of this industry seems positive with experts predicting that the global market for shared services would grow to 1.43 trillion dollar by the end of 2009 from 1,000 billion dollar at present.

According to the study, although India and China are the market leaders in this sector, there are huge opportunities present in the market to give ample space to other countries like Philippines, Vietnam, Romania, Kenya, Sri Lanka and North America market to grow.

The study also said although it is unlikely that India would be able to retain its number one slot with China aggressively trying to outstrip it in the business, it would still be able to get a decent share of the pie.

Also, processes like human resource, insurance, life sciences, finance, legal services, technical support, risk management, supply chain and media would come up in a big way in terms of business and employment opportunities, the study added.

Now days it is very challenging job for call centers to full fill all aspects of customers and their requirement. The expectation of the customers is much more and all want the complete satisfaction for their query/problem. Call centers who fails to give this kind of response will pay a brutal price: dissatisfied customers, negative word of mouth and defections to competitors. But those who stay ahead of the curve will enjoy strong customer loyalty and the commensurate benefits. The stakes are high.The list of fundamental customer expectations provided in the below key points.

To perform the full satisfaction and to make a good interaction with the customers you must know about given points.

The Customers Expectations are as follows:

1. Be Available:
Customers are using the communications centers to get the information for their desire query. Online information and the website are giving the best support to the customers to get the full information. This is very important that some one must be available on their call time. So be available on there call. When you get the call from the customers after confirming their verification it's important to give them quick reply. Suppose if customer calls up for the query and no one is available to take their calls then it may give the negative impact of the call center service to the customers. So be careful of this point.

2. Treat Customers Politely:
Callers always expect that the agent of the call center will show the politeness while communication to them for any query. Customers are always feels good to talk with agent who has good communication skills and a smile in their voice. Don't confuse the customers with asking lots of question. Remember customer has called you for their query and they expect the respect for them. 

3. Be Approachable for Problem:
Customers always expect that their query must be solved with the responsively way. They want to have the positive response from the customer services. Their priority for the problem is to give the priority to my asking. Customers expect that the agent must give the priority and solved the problem as soon as possible. If you do some promise to customers then full fill it as a responsible agent. 

4. Customers don't expect poorly trained & ill-informed employees:
Customers never expect to deal with poorly trained and ill-informed employees. Due to this mostly call centers are now hiring the well educated agents to give the support to their better educated consumers. It is becoming much more of a challenge to organizations. New developments are creating the need for a new breed of call center professional. 

5. Meet your Commitments/Deadlines:
Customer expected that the promise must be fulfill. Customers only want to here what they want.
All the information which is related to customer's like Real-time, online information on shipping, account status, and clear explanations of the impact of any changes in terms or conditions are more than information.

6. Follow Up/Call Back:Customers expected the best follow up for their problem. If they are calling to customer care service company second time then the customer want to get the good response. It is very important to give them a proper follow up of their last query. 7. Give Importance to Customers:
"Be socially responsible" and "be ethical" have always been important issues to most consumers. And in today's environment, lapses or even perceived lapses in ethics or social responsibility quickly make the rounds in networked, digital communities.   Overall, the customer's expectation to get the best services from a call center that handles questions about products. Today's increasingly informed and connected customers expect no less.