Carol Borghesi, M.D BT Retail Customer Contact Center

Carol Borghesi is the Managing director of BT Retail Customer Contact Center and the Chairperson of Call Canter Association, UK, the apex industry body n the area.

How do you decide on your services mix–inhouse/outsource, onshore/offshore, single vendor/multiple vendors?

We have developed a holistic sourcing strategy. That is derived from various business needs like customer satisfaction, the ability to provide uninterrupted service, control, risk, and skill availability. Whether we decide to outsource or do it ourself, do it from the UK or from India, all these decisions are coherent with that strategy.

Most major companies that have offshored to India have either started their own delivery centers or have at best gone for a hybrid approach–outsourcing only a portion to the external service providers. You have gone completely for outsourcing. Why?

For us that would have been more difficult. It is important that we have Indian partners that have experience of the Indian labor markets, that understand the culture much better. It would have been more challenging for us to try and learn that. It is a choice. We have given them the blueprint of how to run the call center. It is their responsibility to manage the operations. They do that to our specification.

Also, many other companies that you probably refer to came at a time when there were few third-party service providers available with that kind of skills. We came at a time when we found good partners. If you see, many of them like GE, SwissAir and British Airways are getting out of the operations now.

Will you explain the blueprint that you referred to?

The blueprint is our intellectual property. It is a combination of infrastructure, environment and management practices that make our call centers run the way they do. The way we operate in the UK is the way we operate in Noida and Bangalore (India).

Do you have your own managers here?

We have two managers that are employees of BT. Their responsibility is to work with the suppliers and interface back to the UK. It is a shared support model. So, we have activities that we do back in the UK to manage work in India. But the supplier is equally responsible to have a structure that is complementary to ours.

How many suppliers do you work with?

I cannot tell about BT as a whole. But from customer-service perspective, there are four. Two in the UK and two in India.

You chose two India-headquartered suppliers, not UK or US-based companies with delivery centers in India...

Our decision to outsource and not run our own operations was based on the consideration that Indian companies understand the local culture better. People is what matters in a call center. That explains why we chose India-based suppliers. We have also seen that with a handful of exceptions, not many suppliers from outside have succeeded in managing the India operations.

Can Indian companies sustain that advantage?

That is a good point. They understand the local operations really well. What they need to do is to measure themselves against best practices globally and improve continuously. In the UK, the contact-center association has developed a standard framework called CCA standards. This addresses areas of people development, communications, culture, policies, and service performance and organizational operational efficiency. Increasingly, more and more UK companies are being accredited against that standard. It is applicable internationally. Indian companies could take advantage of that.