Sparsh BPO loses Shopper Stop subsidiary
By Pulkit Sharma

Sparsh is the domestic subsidiary of Intelenet Global Services (P) Ltd.  It offers state of the art solutions to Vertical Industries to meet their voice and BPO needs.  In 2008, Sparsh had 5200 seats operating 24 by 7, and was telling investors that it had the potential to scale up to 20,000 thousand seats by next year. 2009 looks like a shaky year for Sparsh.

Struggling with process losses since 2008,  Sparsh management have lost another process this year. 

A little bird tells techgoss that a  high paying client,  Hypercity Argos (Shopper's Stop's subsidiary),  paying nearly 43000/- per seat for a 25-30 Seater Inbound Customer Care Process managed out of  Sparsh’s Mumbai center,  has moved out in the past fortnight and the process has shut down.

This process was responsible for converting callers into customers. If customers wish to purchase something from the Hypercity Argos catalogue (Hypercity sells merchandise through catalogues or call order) and called the number which used to exist in Sparsh's Mumbai center, the Agents used to answer calls and dispatch merchandise post payment by credit card.

Customer care queries and inquires used to be handled by this 30 seater team and was a very lucrative process for Sparsh.  Such a process is usually closed down as a  result of dismal sales or conversion numbers.

The ability of an agent to convert callers into customers plays a large part in ensuring the success of a process. This process had started off in December 2008 with a team of seven agents, now obviously there was a reason for Hypercity to ramp up the numbers to 30. However the exact reasons for Hypercity's displeasure -  be it the economic slowdown or poor performance -  is not known as of now.

Sparsh has lost a number of processes in the recent past. The new losses adds to the list of ICICI Prudential outbound marketing process which was once a 200 seater process out of Sparsh's center but which was shut down quite a while ago, Air India Domestic Customer Care and Reservations Process shut down sometime last year, HDFC Standard Life Inbound customer care as well as  TATA AIG Life Insurance outbound process.

Last but not the least, the TATA AIG General Insurance outbound process using HSBC's card member base to call upon is being ramped down.

The latest goss is that Sparsh's center at Mumbai will be moving out of Mumbai to Thane or some far away suburb in Mumbai.  This will cause a lot of inconvenience to Sparsh's existing employees as they will have to commute longer distances.  Attrition numbers are bound to increase on account of the relocation.. The move is rumored to be on account of cost cuts as the present center has too much surplus space due to the loss of processes.

(Techgoss had run the following story on Jan 29, 2009)

Sparsh BPO loses valued customer
By Pulkit Sharma

Sparsh is the domestic subsidiary of Intelenet Global Services (P) Ltd.  It offers state of the art solutions to Vertical Industries to meet their voice and BPO needs.  In 2008, Sparsh had 5200 seats operating 24 by 7, and was telling investors that it had the potential to scale up to 20,000 thousand seats by next year. 2009 looks like a shaky year for Sparsh.

On Jan 24, 2009, techgoss had reported how the HDFC SL at Sparsh was being ramped down.

The news is worse.  A little bird at Sparsh has just told techgoss that the HDFC Standard Life Inbound process has now moved from Sparsh BPO Services to Sitel.  Apparently, the senior management of HDFC SL were irked by the fact that despite paying very high service fees to Sparsh BPO, they got a shoddy treatment in terms of dedication in filling up vacant seats, asking for additional funds on every request ( be it data requests (on DVDs), CRM software changes etc).

HDFC Standard Life had an inbound customer service process with Sparsh BPO Services Ltd. at Mumbai which was nearly a 100 seater with a 12 x 7 process (12 hours a day 7 days a week). It was a very remunerative process for Sparsh.  But Sparsh wanted more and asked for a 10% increase over 32000/- per agent per shift per month towards this process (Sundays staffing is at 39000 per agent per seat per month)
 
In the first half of 2008, performance of this process had suffered (due to lack of trained agents as recruitment was very slow) as Sparsh BPO did not intend to increase salaries beyond the regular Rs. 8000+ performance pay to agents.  English speaking professional inbound agents were hard to come by as most international BPOs paid more.

Not willing to pay higher salaries to agents for this specialized process, Sparsh senior management had requested HDFC Standard Life to allow under graduates to join in the process. This may have not gone down well as HDFC Standard Life takes experienced agents of the inbound process onto their own payrolls once satisfactory performance of agents within the inbound process has been established. Hiring undergraduates takes its toll on the process as there are breaks up to two month long in the process during the training and examinations of the Agents. All this affects the service quality.

Aegis was interested in picking up this process from rival Sparsh.  But Sitel finally got the contract.
 

(Techgoss had published the following story on Jan 24, 2009)

Sparsh BPO downturn
By Pulkit Sharma

Sparsh is the domestic subsidiary of Intelenet Global Services (P) Ltd.  It offers state of the art solutions to Vertical Industries to meet their voice and BPO needs.  In 2008, Sparsh had 5200 seats operating 24 by 7, and was telling investors that it had the potential to scale up to 20,000 thousand seats by next year.

But 2009 looks to be a shaky year for Sparsh.  After a 3 year stint, Sparsh BPO Chief Operating Officer Radhika Balasubramanian will be moving on after her contract expires in March 2009.  Radhika will be replaced by another female executive Gayatri Balaji who is currently the Chief Operating Officer for South India Operations.  Gayatri looks after the Aircel TN and other processes these days.

But a Sparsh Agents tells us that all is not well at the BPO.  The TATA AIG Life Insurance Process has been ramped down by 200-250 seats.  It is now running at a maximum of only 20 Seats. (Billing at 36000/- per agent per seat + service & telecom costs).  The HDFC SL is also being ramped down.

The TATA AIG General Insurance will be ramped down. Revenues to client are below operating costs + cancellations.  This is resulting in a loss to TATA AIG General Insurance.

Barclays ramped down by over 50% (thanks to the process deviations and frauds in the credit card process). This was a 32000/- per agent seat billing which were in excess of two crores a year.

For many reasons no Manager wants to remain at the Bangalore and Chennai HR positions.  Some of the processes need fine tuning.  Notably there are no ERP/CRM solutions deployed at HR points, which is very crucial as Sparsh is running Barclay's pan India payroll. A little bird also tells techgoss that Akhilesh Mishra, AGM HR, South & West region for Sparsh BPO services Ltd, is looking out for a job now.

As Radhika is leaving soon, Gayathri will need get the house in order.