Managing Capacity at Sparsh Call Centre

T. T. Niranjan () and Samir K. Srivastava
Additional contact information
T. T. Niranjan: Management Development Institute, Mehrauli Road, Sukhrali, Gurgaon 122 001, India
Samir K. Srivastava: The Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, India

Asian Case Research Journal (ACRJ), 2008, vol. 12, issue 01, 73-103

Abstract: Bangalore basedSparshCall Centre was set up as a subsidiary of the major telecom software company IP-Trinity, with ambitious plans of becoming a significant player in the booming BPO (business process outsourcing) space. Its strategy, in line with that of its parent group, was to focus on telecom related services. Sparsh began its operations in 2002 with its first client Alfa, a US based VOIP telephone service provider and had three other accounts and employed over 400 people. Financial performance had been lacklustre and top management including Kumar, Director (Operations) was carrying out a review. Operationally, everything appeared to be fine. People management was, to a great extent, managed by sophisticated workforce management software, supplemented by supervisory actions by managers.This case is useful in highlighting the complexities of managing call centres and the unique people issues involved. This case illustrates that besides operational efficiencies, there is a need for a fit between strategy and scale of operations. In particular, high employee attrition can cause reduction in service quality as well as reduced capacity. Fast scale up of operations may be needed to make call centres economically viable. Cost effective innovative retention schemes may be needed to retain call centre staff to achieve this scale up.

Keywords: Call Centre; Employee Attrition; Operational Efficiency; Scale of Operation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0218927508001084
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:acrjxx:v:12:y:2008:i:01:n:s0218927508001084

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0218927508001084

Access Statistics for this article

Asian Case Research Journal (ACRJ) is currently edited by Lau Geok Theng

More articles in Asian Case Research Journal (ACRJ) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().