Indian enters standards panel for call centers

Thursday, 07 November 2002, 20:30 IST
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BANGALORE: An Indian has been invited for the first time to join the standards committee of a global certification agency for call centers, signifying global recognition of this country's call center industry. Prakash Gurbaxani, CEO of Trans Works, has been invited to join the standards committee of the Customer Operations Performance Center (COPC). The panel has representatives from leading companies like Microsoft, Motorola, L.L. Bean and Blue Cross Blue Shield, among others. "It is much more than a personal honour for me. It is a feather in the cap of the Indian call center industry that it is now recognized globally as a major destination for outsourcing customer relationship management contracts," Gurbaxani said. "Participation in the COPC standards committee will enable us to influence the standard positively to reflect some of the nuances of the Indian work culture and environment." Added Gurbaxani: "India is different from other locations in the world. The business environment here is different from the rest of the world. For instance, in the Philippines, you don't find accent training but this is an integral part of the Indian call center business." COPC is the world's leading authority on customer intensive operations, as typified by customer contact centers and fulfillment services and is authorized to issue certification to the COPC-2000 Standard. Gurbaxani's company has already received COPC certification 2000 (Release 3.2), the highest level, for its Mumbai center. COPC services clients on a worldwide basis and has representatives in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Singapore, Britain and the United States. Its users include firms in e-commerce, computer hardware and software, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications and consumer products. The certification for voice and outbound services in the call center industry from COPC is considered the equivalent of the CMM-SEI level, indicating the quality of software that a company provides. India has more than half of such companies in the global software sector, enhancing the country's image among clients. The COPC-2000 standard was first written in 1995 by a core group of users of call center services and associated distribution fulfillment operations, including representatives from American Express, Dell Computer Corp., Microsoft, L.L. Bean and Bell South. The standard was developed because companies outsourcing their services to third parties were unhappy as call centers were not delivering what they promised and outsourcing companies wanted something to distinguish the good call centers from the mediocre ones.
Source: IANS