Sparsh sacks 2 for cunning credit card fraud
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 seats by next year.  Sparsh has just sacked 2 Agents for committing fraud

Nearly two weeks ago, two agents Sachin and Ashwin* were fired from one of the major outbound general insurance marketing process at Sparsh BPO Services at Deonar, Mumbai.  Investigations revealed that both the Agents had apparently taken credit card numbers from customers and were selling General Insurance to different customers using these compromised credit cards.

According to a little bird who works on the Sparsh floor, these two Agents had done this to increase their sales numbers.  While most Agents were satisfied if they could close a Rs. 2500 accident and health insurance product, the duo used to sell policies worth up to Rs. 60,000.

Their modus operandi was to fraudulently take customers valid credit card numbers and sell insurance policies to other customers.  Normally, once a sale has been agreed to, every Agent is meant to pass the call to the Verifier at the Bank or Insurance Company.  Instead of doing so, they illegally noted down the credit card details.  The next step of this elaborate credit card fraud strategy was to tell new customers that they were being sent a new credit card (with the stolen numbers) as well as ‘free’ insurance worth up to Rs. 60,000.  The only thing the customer has to do was to tell the Bank or Insurance Verifier that they wanted the policy with their new credit card number. Such third party Verifiers are the only ones entitled to take down credit card details.

To any internal investigator or police, it would seem that someone outside Sparsh had stolen the credit card numbers and used it to buy insurance worth upto Rs. 60,000.

To Sparsh management, these 2 Agents were star performers and were given substantial bonuses.

According to our tipster who prefers anonymity, this was going on for the past 6-8 months and one of the Assistant Managers at Sparsh is even distantly related to Ashwin.

What is quite bizarre is that Sachin was terminated for falsifying sales in the very same process in 2007.  After keeping a low profile for a few months, he reapplied for the same job in Sparsh.   Sparsh, without even checking that it had fired Sachin in the past, hired him as a new employee.

Sparsh has lost a number of processes in the last year or so.  The exiting process include Tata AIG Life Insurance, HDFC Standard Life Insurance inbound customer care, Reliance Life Insurance customer acquisitions, Hyperciti Argos, Air India and others.

Techgoss note:  Agents may be able to sell up to Rs. 25,000 worth of coverage premia in one call.  A few even manage to sell up to Rs. 40,000.

*We are in possession of the full names of the Agents as well as more details of this elaborate scam.  Once we have completed our investigations, we will publish more details.

(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.