BPO Rankings: 8 | Convergys India: For the People

When the Indian offshoring wave started, the only large American
customer services firm which embraced it with open arms was Convergys. So the
first few years saw rapid growth. That was largely possible because the then
president of Convergys Customer Management Group, Jack Freker, saw it as a
strategic opportunity. After his departure, despite knowing fully well that
India is such a competitive labor market, the company could not localize
practices enough to cope with that.

The recruitment strategy, centered around consultants, led to
high attrition which led to some doubts about whether betting so much on India
was the right strategy. After an exodus of top Indian managers such as the then
HR head, Nandini Aggarwal and country head Jaswinder Ghumman in 2005, operations
stabilized to some extent in 2006, but the last few months again saw some exits
in top management.

So, not surprisingly, the single-biggest mantra for the company
last year was employee retention. The result: a drop of twenty points in
attrition in the last 12 months, though it still remains high. The early
warning system and the CIS University initiatives formed the core of
the companys employee retention strategy. Interestingly, both are home grown
programs, designed and developed by Convergys India operations. The early
warning system tracks distinct triggers identified as likely to lead to agent
attrition. It then compiles that to indicate the agent's likeliness to leave,
followed by intervention from team leaders to address the agents issues.
Convergys University, on the other hand, is an in-house educational initiative
that teaches Convergys employees aboutand prepares them forthe advanced
career opportunities available to them within the companys Customer Care
business. Both the programs are being globally implemented.

After a sedate last two years wherein no new delivery centers
were added, the company finally got into an expansion mode as it announced its
eighth contact center with a full staffing of up to 1,000 employees expected
over the next few months. DQ