Reliance International BPO Closes Down

By Vijayalakshmi S

It was the end of its international BPO operations when Reliance International lost its only inbound process being managed from Reliance BPO in Navi Mumbai. This was the only international process operating in Reliance for the past four years and was serving banking customers in U.S.  By all accounts, it was a very successful operation and the agents and management were looking at even more success within Reliance.

Reliance is well regarded for its Domestic call centre in the BPO industry. This international process offered its agents a good platform to making a career in an international BPO.

Reliance International was only a seventy five seater and had strength of only 160 agents in comparison to the massive number of 7000 plus agents employed in its Domestic call center.  But Agents loved working there.  As with most International BPOs, the employees were paid higher than their domestic counterparts.

The first signs of trouble came in June this year when Reliance announced that their international client of 4 years and running a 24*7 BPO Operation would now scale back to only 15 hours/day.   Naturally, the agents were shocked as they were expecting the process to ramp up instead of being downsized.  Rumor mills went into overdrive and there was talk about the process being shut down soon. The managers held a meeting with agents to reassure them that the process was here to stay and their jobs were safe.  But the savvy agents could feel that there was something wrong…

In the next few weeks, the processes hummed smoothly as if nothing had ever happened.  In August, a meeting was held were their worst fears were confirmed. Management announced that the process was being lost from the month of December. The employees were told that they would be moved to different departments and/or they could look for other jobs.  Naturally, this was devastating news for some employees who had been with the company for some time and were looking to grow in such a successful company.

Soon the management helped these agents with a proven track record by promoting them to Assistant Team Leader & Team Leader position in their domestic BPO, and others were transferred at the agent level. Few tenured Team Leaders were informed that they will be promoted as Assistant Mangers. Agents who were not able to perform were told to resign and others left themselves as they were not interested in working for a domestic BPO,  or we can say that they never wanted to go back to the point where they started. 

Sadly, the journey of this tiny international BPO finally ended after 4 years.