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Call-centre industry gets a facelift news
Our Convergence Bureau
07 January 2002
New Delhi: The ministry of communication and information technology (MCIT) and Nasscom have joined hands to step up a quality movement in the nascent Indian call-centre industry. Recently, a workshop on quality initiatives at call-centres was organised in New Delhi to discuss various quality-related issues and to evolve a strategy for India to emerge as a sustainable destination for the call-centre and back-office industry.

Inaugurating the workshop, IT secretary R R Shah emphasised the need for quality service in the IT-enabled sector. Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) director Dr S L Sarnot welcomed the audience. It was followed by a presentation by Nasscom call-centre and BPO forum convenor Arun Seth and an India Advantage presentation by Nasscom president Kiran Karnik.

During the inaugural function, Shah said: "The call-centre business offers enormous employment opportunities and revenue growth. But an inadequate quality service and mushrooming growth can adversely affect Indias image and potential opportunities."

Supporting his views, Seth in his presentation stressed the need for setting a national standard, which call-centre organisations can follow to improve on their processes and operational methodology. He said: "Along with quality and standardisation, adequate training infrastructure is the need of the hour. And Nasscom, through its call-centre forum, has already initiated steps towards the same."

Karnik said: "Nasscom is undertaking various initiatives so that the quality advantage that India enjoys for the IT services industry domain also becomes a trademark for the ITES industry. Currently there are no standards that cover the entire spectrum for ITES, especially in the context of overseas outsourcing. There are, of course, existing ISO standards and some standards that are specific to call-centres, but this particular initiative of MCIT with Nasscom for quality improvement in call-centre operations will play a significant role in bringing standardisation in the call-centre industry."

"MCIT, together with Nasscom, will explore the possibility of a tie-up with other international certification agencies so that the cost of certification is reduced and made affordable for Indian call-centres," he said.

The deliberations at the workshop highlighted the initiatives that STQC has already taken in terms of standardisation by evolving draft guidelines for call-centres based on worldwide-accepted ISO 9001 standard. Moreover, a core team of STQC engineers is in the process of framing certification scheme, compliance to which shall ensure an adequate level of quality in operations of call-centres.

STQC director-general Dr S L Sarnot said: "We will formulise schemes for certification of personnel at the agent as well as manager level, so that skilled manpower is available to the industry in this area. Depending on the industrys response, these certification schemes could be extended to other IT-enabled services like geographical information system, HR and data entry and data conversion."

About STQC
MIT set up the STQC directorate to provide the standardisation, testing and certification support to the Indian electronics industry for improving their product quality and increasing their competitiveness in the global market. STQC functions through 22 laboratories throughout the country, providing services to industries in testing and calibration, product development assistance, system reliability prediction and assessment, education and on-the-job training in quality and reliability, with a manpower strength of 600 engineers and scientists.


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Call-centre industry gets a facelift