Multilingual Contact Centers: Next Wave of Growth Presented by Siva Ganapathi Chief Sales and Market

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Multilingual Contact Centers Next Wave of
GrowthPresented by Siva GanapathiChief
Sales and Marketing OfficerAugust 7, 2007

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About Aditya Birla Minacs

• 11,000 employees
• 30 facilities in 7 countries
• Suite of CRM, KPO, and IMS services to financial
  services, technology, telecommunications,
  automotive, and emerging markets
• Serving Fortune 500 clients in Automotive,
  Financial Services, Technology and Telecom
• Inbound, outbound, technical, and non-technical
  customer service in 28 languages
• Quality focused COPC-2000, ISO 9001, ISO 27001
  certified
• Secure solutions HIPPA, SAS 70, GLBA, PCI, UK
  DPA, PIPEDA
• Over 25 years of experience in BPO

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Case Study Major Automotive Manufacturer

• Overview of Program
• From England, Hungary, and Germany, agents
  provide technical, dealer, and marketing
  assistance in over 25 languages.
• Agents are certified mechanics who typically
  speak more than 3 languages each.
• Common languages are English and German all
  employees must be fluent in one of these.
• Challenges
• Maximizing productivity, occupancy, and
  scheduling among small groups of agents.
• Varying labor regulations and cultural
  backgrounds across countries.
• Providing technical training and support
  materials (e.g., manuals, glossaries) with
  manufacturer-endorsed terminology.
• Maintaining consistent quality levels and
  adhering to strict guidelines around violating
  an individuals rights and freedoms through call
  recording and statistical reporting.
• Absorbing extra costs for recruiting and
  sometimes relocating experienced native
  speakers.

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Case Study Major Financial Services Provider

• Overview of Program
• From a single facility in the Greater Toronto
  Area, 300 agents provide customer service in 19
  languages.
• Requirement to provide very diverse linguistic
  support all Western and most Eastern European
  languages plus Gujarati, Thai, Mandarin, etc.
• Challenges
• Site selection was a lengthy process and involved
  intensive due diligence.
• Fully bilingual agents, as training and all IT
  systems are in English only.
• Challenge to recruit, test, and retain agents
  recruitment ads in multiple languages and media
  to reach target audience.
• Loss of one agent can drastically affect
  metricsreplacing an agent may take 2 months (2
  weeks for recruiting and 6 weeks of training).
• Need to overstaff to ensure we are successful.
• Quality assurance and call monitoring challenges
  due to broad spectrum of languages.
• Setting up relationships with translation service
  providers and a language line as a backup for
  unexpected peaks and valleys in volume.

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Case Study Major Wireless Provider

• Overview of Program
• 120 agents provide inbound and outbound services
  in both English and Spanish 20 are bilingual.
• Improve customer retention and loyalty through
  welcome calls to ensure understanding and
  satisfaction.
• Back office management of contract verification
  and fraud detection has saved our client upwards
  of 12 million.
• Challenges
• Compensation rates are higher due to the U.S.
  location Spanish more difficult to obtain in
  Canada.
• Recruiting challenges included proper language
  validation and testing.
• Pace of regular training had to be modified since
  English was the second language of agents, and
  special training sessions developed to improve
  computer skills and grammar usage.
• Planned events (potlucks, parties) to celebrate
  diversity and foster feelings of being valued.

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Summary of Infrastructure Considerations for
Multilingual Centers

• IT/Telco Design
• Translation and configuration for IVR, ACD,
  dialer, quality, workforce management, and
  reporting tools.
• Separate toll-free numbers sometimes helpful.
• Staffing
• Partnerships with translation, language testing,
  language lines, and targeted recruiting firms.
• Site selection and due diligence to ensure
  population can support the languages and volumes.
• Overstaffing, small teams to ensure redundancy
  and prevent downtime when an agent departs.
• Wage premiums and sometimes longer AHTs for
  multilingual agents.
• Cultural differences and celebration of diversity
  in the office.
• Training and Quality
• Additional modules on grammar/verbal skills and
  possibly computer skills.
• Slower training pace and longer recruiting
  timelines.
• Quality monitoring and agent testing/validation
  more complex.

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Points of Consideration for Multilingual Site
Selection

• Understand the call arrival patterns and language
  distribution required.
• Conduct thorough research
• Review labor and census data for an appropriate
  labor pool.
• Gain an understanding of the level of growth,
  immigration rates, educational background, and
  unemployment levels (past and present) through
  local chambers of commerce and economic
  development groups.
• Evaluate candidate interest, salary, and
  availability with local recruitment agencies.
• Evaluate number of real estate options and call
  center competitors in the area.
• Learn about the cultural, hygiene, etiquette,
  motivators, and religious differences of each
  population this will have an impact on
  budgeting, scheduling, and training.
• Expect to pay multilingual agents at least 10
  more than unilingual agents.
• Expect to increase infrastructure and staffing
  costs by spreading volumes across multiple sites
  to meet language requirements.
• Key is to balance cost, language abilities,
  education and cultural similarity to the base you
  are serving, plus consider security and travel
  factors.

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Promising Delivery Locations for European and
North American Clients (According to DataMonitor)
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Multilingual Opportunities Where are they Coming
From?

• In our experience, multilingual/bilingual contact
  center contracts are coming from
• B2C clients in the U.S. and Canada looking for
  Spanish and French, respectively
• European clients looking to consolidate their
  country-specific operations
• Customers adopting telephony solutions in many of
  developing markets in APAC and EMEA
• This region to collectively constitute 55 of
  customer care market by 2012, up from 46 in 2006
  (Source Datamonitor)

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Thank You!