I attended a dinner two weeks ago in Delhi as a guest of the UK India Business Council. Hosted by the Right Honourable Patricia Hewitt MP, I was fascinated at how much of the discussion focused on economic technicalities and fiscal policy. Undoubtedly these are important core elements to the long term view of India as a secure business environment, but for Teleperformance, the real appetite is the benefit we can deliver right now to our clients and their customers in the UK.
In India Teleperformance has been the first to speak of and establish the ‘non-metro’model for customer contact outsourcing. The gains are immediate. Employees enjoy a work-life balance that benefits from significantly reduced travel times (no more than a half-hour from home as opposed to two hours in either direction), and extended working hours in non-metro locations means clients gain a significant percentage cost saving on the same operation elsewhere.
Indeed it is the level of engagement of employees in Teleperformance India that is most inspiring. Research is clear that employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction are related. In the ‘age of the customer’ experience is the key differentiator for brands, and it is without doubt the single most important component to consider when addressing the needs of your customer contact programme.
Having witnessed what this means at first hand, it is no surprise to me that Teleperformance India was ranked 4th out of the 100 companies that were selected for inclusion on the list of ‘India’s Best Companies to Work For in 2016’ awarded by The Great Place to Work Institute.
Among certain sectors there will always be resistance to ‘offshore’ customer service. However for the ‘omnichannel’ customer of the 21st century, and especially Millennials and Generation Z, social technologies have created a borderless international community. Daily active users across the globe for Snapchat number 160mn, 300mn for Instagram and 1.86bn for Facebook. In this sense the world has become a much smaller place than at any time in the past 50 years.
Not since the exponential growth in air travel in the 1960s has there been such a shift in consciousness about what constitutes a ‘one world’ view. Through sites like eBay customers of every demographic engage in ‘peer to peer’ commerce across all sectors nationally and internationally, and the unmitigated growth of companies such as Uber and Airbnb shows the real appetite people have for a ‘boundary-free’ customer journey.
As automation, voice and non-voice support for digital channels become key to omnichannel success, it is certain that location has a vital role to play in the operational blueprint for customer experience management. In this context, India has a clear mandate for delivery.
As I reflect on my past twenty years in the industry, and I think back to the earliest offshore implementations for the UK, I am convinced that what we are offering customers and clients today is a truly ‘one world’ view of customer experience management – utilising the most effective technologies, processes, and location strategies to help our clients grow their markets and meet their business objectives as we accelerate towards 2020.
My role as CEO is to help my team, and the market more generally, to reimagine the India proposition. I am certain that as more and more of our UK clients take up our offer to host them at our sites in Jaipur and Gurgaon, they will come to see our India operation as a natural extension of our business here in the UK, to the delight of their customers and key stakeholders alike.
Photo by Mark D Martin licensed under Creative Commons.
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