High Attrition Rate
In India, call center industry deals with customer’s queries, questions, and problems and assist them. Call center industry makes the major contribution to the economy of India. Despite such major contributions, call center industry faces umpteen challenges on a day to day basis. They are one of the hardest work environments in the world due to uptight events. It is not so easy to handle the tough working schedule, irate customers, difficult work timings, satisfying the customers. The most important task in this industry is to maintain and manage the work environment properly. People who are running the industry have to make sure that all the employees are running everything smoothly and within the boundaries (Bratton, and Gold, 2017). Any layman cannot control it on its own or in other words any normal person cannot understand these challenges. These challenges can be of any type, for instance, a high rate of attrition, health issues, and competition etcetera. Employees in the call center are expected to meet the client’s expectations in order to give them the complete satisfaction related to their queries or any information. Mostly these challenges create a setback for the call center industry and its growth. All these challenges are discussed below.
High level of attrition rate is one of the biggest challenges in this industry. The reason behind the high level of attrition is the difficulty faced by the people in the organization after a trained person or an expert leaves the firm. To ensure that the work is under control or running smoothly, they have to put so many efforts (Mostafa and Gould-Williams, 2014). In order to balance out the scenario, the company hires more employees. As an end result of that, there is a lot of extra budgets spent on the recruiting, training and the hiring process. The call center industry suffers so much because of this. According to research, 25-40% of the attrition rate set the company back in so many ways. The major drawback is, losing the customers. It interrupts the preexisting quality of customer support and leads to a double whammy. Because of the void created by the agent that left the organization, it becomes very necessary to fill up all the vacant seats or positions in the organization (Bailey, Mankin, Kelliher and Garavan, 2018). All the training and recruiting process can charge the company a lot and it can affect the budget in numeral ways. It also affects the company’s growth and business in different ways possible.
There are numerous ways in which the employees can get affected and face some issues related to health. Due to several reasons, the employees can face health issue like improper working schedule, crazy timings, night shifts, visual problems etcetera. For instance, working during night shifts takes a major toll on the health and can lead to serious health problems. Serious problems like hypertension, insomnia, stress, RLS, depression etcetera. This might raise the level of attrition too. This crazy schedule messes with the biological rhythm of the employee and eventually leads to ill health. Other issues can be related to vocals, visuals or auditory problems. Due to continuing talking to customers and clients for long hours, employees might get some vocal disturbance or get voice fatigued. Most of the employees often complain about visual problems. Due to continuously staring at the computer screen or their equipment for display, there is a very high chance of occurrence of visual disturbance (Arzbächer, Holtgrewe, and Kerst, 2017). It affects the eyesight and can even cause eyesight weakness. Visual fatigue is another reason that can cause this problem too. Apart from these, due to continuously wearing headphones and sharing they can even cause auditory problems or ear infections. In call centers, employees are required to sit continuously for a long time interval. This can even cause neck and back pain and eventually, it might lead to musculoskeletal disorders. Bad postures at the workstation aids are one of the reasons for such a problem. Due to heavy load of work, most of the employees ignore these things and ends up being unhealthy (Taylor, 2017). Obesity, stress, less social interaction, sleep disorders, lack of safety etcetera are a few side effects. According to a survey, this is the major challenge that affects the working of call centers in India.
Health Problems
Many call centers of different countries with more development and technologies are giving the Indian call center a very hard time and run for its money. A survey was conducted by the KPMG and ASSOCHAM in 2014. That survey showed that the other countries like China, Brazil, Malaysia and the USA have taken over 70% of the incremental BPO business in India (IBS 2004). According to that survey, one out of every 10 graduate students in India opts for a job in call center business. Harm for this industry is from countries like Europe and the US and their political environment. All the political propaganda like bad economic situation, public strikes, wars etcetera can create an adverse environment and might aid in political unrest. All these factors can leave a negative impact on call centers in India. Wages rate is low in China and workforce is high that can create a huge difference and also gives a tough competition to Indian call centers. Due to better technologies and developments, other countries require fewer workforces to do their work and solve the problem in the minimum time interval. All these factors give other countries a better chance than India and create a high-level competition.
Under this type of situation arises, overstaffing and understaffing. Sometimes during peak sale time, managers face the biggest challenge of handling a large number of customers at the same time. Due to understaffing, the managers fail to complete their task before the time decided or deadline. To overcome the situation, the managers recruit more employees and this situation results in overstaffing. Although managers are experienced and this is their forte but sometimes even they find it hard to face these challenges. Along with the change of time, there arise so many different problems that seem to be tough to be controlled (Taylor and Bain, 2013).
Hiring an employee is the most important step in the whole process. For this process to go perfect, the managers are required to use their quick decision-making skills and to be judgmental in order to hire the perfect person for the job. There are so many features that are required in an employee for this job. Features like, good speaking skills, creative thinking, good social interaction, quick decision making etcetera. All these features define whether the person is ready for the job or not. If these qualities are ignored then it may lead to business failure.
Good quality products and services are necessary in order for the business to grow along with the number of customers. And if by chance if the company fails to meet the customer’s expectations then there can be severe consequences. Due to the bad experience, the client might end up changing the brand as well as their loyalty. In a way, it is very difficult to meet the customer’s requirement for what it is available. Shortage of technology and excellent services, this problem arises.
In call centers due to lack of motivation, the employees do not take much interest in their work. Lack of excitement and involvement, a stressful environment arises among the workforce. Due to the monotonous nature of call center jobs, the employee loses their interest and eventually ends up making mistakes
Competition from Other Countries
(Farndale, Raghuram, Gully, Liu, Phillips, and Vidovi?, 2017). At some point, the performance level starts falling and the static starts to plate. Another drawback is presenting the inaccurate analysis report. For any company, their customer’s information is very important for them and precious too. So it becomes their duty to handle the data carefully, it includes, daily reports, presenting the reports to another department, reports of the market’s current situation and the brand etcetera. And to manage all these types of reports correctly and then analyzing them is a major task. Therefore it is another challenge for the call center industry. Most of the employees do not pay attention to their work seriously and this causes a huge loss to the call center industry in India.
In most of the Indian call centers, the resources allocated to them are very few and inadequate. Low salaries and high workforce are the basic requirements to maintain the increasing global competition and maintain the profit out of the whole process. Most of the companies cut back on the most of the services and also the infrastructure (Ananthram, Teo, Connell, and Bish, 2018). Managing the whole process with such a limited amount of budget and resources is also a big challenge for the call center company in India. All those public sector call centers in India which depend upon the Indian government for the funds face a huge problem. Due to low budget and services, it becomes difficult for the call centers to provide the quality services to its customers.
All these challenges faced by the call centers in India leaves a major impact on their day to day work life. For the call center’s employees, it is very important to face high demands from the customers and also the high pressure in order to meet the standards of the company. While the employees try to exceed the performance expectation they start losing the quality of their services (Guchait and Cho, 2016). All these challenges determine the attitude and the performance of the employee towards the particular job in this sector. These challenges or problems creates a huge difference in the life of the employee and affect him or her in different ways possible. There are so many ways in which these challenges seem to affect the professional and personal life of the call center agents.
All these call center agents have to work continuously for a long time interval with a little or no break at all. The stressful work environment causes so many problems to a person’s health. Due to late night working problems like, insomnia hypertension and sleep disorder arises. Other issues like musculoskeletal dystrophy also arise due to sitting in a bad posture for a long time interval. Stress is the major impact that arises because of these challenges. It takes a toll on a person’s mental and physical health. Stress can also cause panic attacks, headaches, migraines
. Other ill health also affects the nervous system, immune system, cardiovascular system, endocrine system, gastrointestinal system. The evidence is 30-40% of working staff also suffers from the physical problems like blurred visions, vocal problems, auditory issues etcetera. Obesity is also one of the major health problem caused by long hours of work.
Overstaffing and Understaffing
With the entire poorly motivated environment, the employees take a very little or no interest at all in the work. Since this job is very tiring and a lot of stressful therefore it affects the performance of the employees (Jeyapal, Bhasin, Kannan and Bhatia, 2015). The call center agent does a very difficult job according to this point of view and when there is no motivation and the workforce is full of stress they are very likely to lose their ability to accurately perform. Since most of their energy is diverted away from the actual work and towards the stress management (Miller, Hendrickse, Miller, Miller, and Hendrickse, 2015).
Due to more stress among the working staff, the employees tend to get engaged in conflicts. Conflicts can be with the co-workers or the managers. This decreases the level of professionalism and integrity among the working staff. This situation might even lead to a burnout. And the employees may burst out emotionally or create a negative environment at the workstation. This will cause the work staff to be less devoted towards their work and their performance level. This is the main reason behind poor customer services. Sometimes due to this much stress, the employees misbehave with the customers who lead to a decrease in professionalism and losing the customers (Das, Dharwadkar, and Brandes, 2018).
In such a burnout environment, the call center agents do not get any kind of positive energy, therefore, is very likely to miss their working days continuously. It affects their performance and eventually the performance of the company. It also takes a toll on the personal accomplishments of the employee. The working staff is more likely to experience less efficaciousness but a significant amount of demotivation and stress. It also changes the attitude of the person towards their job and lack of motivation to cope with the situation (Roberts, Tong, Laramee, Smith, Brookes and D’Cruze, 2016).
How can the employee help their customers if they themselves do not know the proper mechanism to work and are motivated enough towards doing their job (Taylor, 2017). When employees do not handle the customer properly and solve their problems completely, then there is a very high chance of facing the customer’s anger. Due to poor services, the customers may even change their loyalty or company. This puts the call center at a very high risk and can cause a very high amount
Due to so much stress and very low amount of satisfaction, the employees are most likely to change their job. This can cause so much loss to the company. It will also increase the attrition rate. Due to more experienced people leaving their job, the company will face so many challenges (Brewster and Hegewisch, 2017). Challenges like recruiting the proper person who is qualified enough for the job and then training him or her for the job. There is a huge amount associated with losing many talented persons and can put the company through so much loss and high amount associated with turnover.
Importance of Hiring the Right Employee
Conclusion:
All these challenges cause a great competition for India since so many other countries are managing this industry so well. They have better technology, good workforce, low salaries but high working staff etcetera. All the late night shifts mess up with a person’s health. And all these issues are quite serious and should be taken under consideration. In India, most of the working people avoid all these issues and do not take it seriously at all. Their careless attitude and the lack of initiatives towards the better health are the reason behind this being such a big issue in this industry. The international level competition is a major turn off for the Indian call centers. The accent is the biggest problem for the Indian employees and if they fail to do so, they have to face some consequences and even get fired. Although all these challenges leave a major impact on the Indian call center industry there are some good points too. Despite so many obstacles and hurdles the call center industry has made a great development in the last few decades. This industry has provided jobs to many youths of India too. But despite providing jobs for billions of people, the industry is going through so many problems.
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