4. Five key areas of strategic focus in 2012


Andrew Kokes, vice president, global product management, Sitel

1. Work@Home Solutions™—A home-based agent program where the customer service agent works remotely. This allows for more satisfied agents, better customer experience, and a more efficient operating environment. Over the next year, Sitel will continue to evolve its Sitel Work@Home Solutions™ with the industry-leading Sitel Work at Home Center of Excellence.  The Sitel Work at Home Center of Excellence is a centralized management hub designed to raise the standard for virtual workforce performance, security and scalability to align virtual customer service quality levels comparable to or better than any call center.

2. Global Language-Based Solutions—Sitel will be focusing on matching the language needs of our clients with the expertise of our global agents. Sitel combines the right agent skill set for the right global location(s) at the right time, all of which falls within the varying operating budgets of the client.

3. Collections— Sitel provides domestic and international receivables management/collections programs for companies across the globe. Our dedicated team offers comprehensive experience in loss mitigation and provides a consultative approach, sharing industry-served best practices to create customized strategies. In the New Year, Sitel expects to see more focus placed on the Company’s early stage debt prevention offerings to ensure client customer retention while reducing losses and delinquency rates.

4. Customer Experience Management—As Sitel continues to invest in new call center technologies based on client needs, a strategic focus will be placed upon on-demand hosted solutions that improve the view of a client’s customer data, access to knowledge and consistency of communication across multiple channels.

5. Voice and Data Analytics—to extract greater real-time knowledge that empowers business decisions that drive behavior and returns closer to the actual transactions.


5. Value-Add Is the Name of the Game


Satya Gottumukkala, executive vice president, Anthelio Business Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

“Customers are now very clear on what they want. They are asking vendors to show value beyond “pure vanilla” services. “Value-add” is going to be the name of the game. The expectation of the customers is to see reduction of costs as vendors maintain their systems for long. There will be pressure on vendors to become more efficient.”


6. Strong Focus on Specific Verticals


Lalit Dhingra, president of NIIT Technologies, Inc.; director of NIIT Media Technologies and managing director of NIIT Healthcare Technologies

“Buyers are looking to work with companies that have a strong focus on their specific vertical. Firm that make significant investments in the vertical, high-touch account management, credible history of creating value for clients with a strong balance sheet.” 

 
7. Need to be Creative and Intuitive in App Development


Prakash Sreewastav, CEO, WINIT

 “Customers are looking for value added service. They simply do not need a fixed bid. They want to know how we can bring value to them by providing them a strategy and a long term view. Mobile Applications up until now were source of entertainment or recreation. As the consciousness about the huge potential that Mobile Apps industry holds is donning around, our existing and potential customers will have greater expectations. Hence the expectations of Clients and end users will multiply and Service providers will now have to be much more creative and intuitive in the App development strategy.”