India's Allsec Technologies to buy rival i2i Telesource

Chennai-based Allsec Technologies is set to acquire the contact center business of Delhi-based i2i Telesource for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition will help the Allsec increase its domestic contact center business from the present 10% of the total revenues to 30%, according to Ramamoorthi Jagadish, co-founder, Allsec, which provides integrated contact management services. The deal envisages that i2i will hive-off all customer contracts/employees and related assets. The entire process is expected to be completed in the next 60 days, Allsec said in a statement.

i2i has been in the domestic Indian contact center business for over five years. It currently employs about 1,500 agents and has a pan-India service delivery from 13 locations, which includes a mix of metros and tier-II cities. It has clients in the service and manufacturing sectors.

HSBC beefs up Chinese customer service for Games

UK-based bank HSBC has beefed up its customer service operations in China to serve the influx of foreign visitors for the Beijing Games.

HSBC China will stay open three additional hours during the work week and open on the weekends for the Olympics. It has also added staff at its 24-hour contact center and added language support in Spanish and Portuguese.

The bank has also beefed up emergency services and launched a special website. The HSBC initiatives coincide with moves by many foreign banks to extend operating hours and offer special services during the Olympics.

India's Essar buys US outsourcer PeopleSupport

Indian outsourcer Aegis BPO, will buy US-owned rival PeopleSupport for $250 million in cash.

The acquisition by Aegis, owned by the Essar Group, will expand Aegis' customer base in its biggest market, the U.S. PeopleSupport, whose largest operations are in the Philippines, will add 15 clients to Aegis, which accounts for 60% of the two companies' combined sales amounting to $467 million.

PeopleSupport's Philippine operations will be merged with Aegis through a Mauritius-based unit of Essar. Takeover is expected within a 100-day period assuming regulatory approvals are obtained by that time.

Philippine contact centers should look at Malaysia as a possible expansion site rather than a rival, according to an analyst from Frost and Sullivan.

The Philippines is already years ahead of Malaysia, which only recently began marketing itself as a contact center hub, Frost and Sullivan's Shivanu Shukla told reporters. Local operators, he said, can migrate low-level customer support services to Malaysia and concentrate Philippine operations on doing high-value processes.

"It is exactly what the Indians have been doing by investing in the Philippines. The next phase for operators here is organic growth," Shukla said. As the Philippines becomes a more mature market, expanding overseas allows local operators to leverage on Malaysia, to leverage on available capacity while developing the local workforce for more advanced services like knowledge processs outsourcing or KPO.

The NSW ATA Awards, Late Flights and Paper Wrist Bands

Last week whilst I was having my chakra's cleansed and my body de-toxed from all that is good in life, namely coffee, tea, sugar, salt, oil, chocolate and alcohol, at The Golden Door in Queensland, the Australian Teleservices Association (ATA) held its NSW Awards evening. I was not able to attend as I was busy making my body a temple. That, and also my flight from Brisbane was the usual hour and a half late..... ;( so I missed the event. Luckily I had sent Jules and Laurence to cover the night's festivities in my absence.

Anyway, while I was on the plane practicing my new found Feldenkrais, Pilates and Restorative Yoga poses, meditating and channelling Reiki, the following winners were being announced. And all credit (pun) to the Banking and Finance industry which cleaned up on the awards this year. Special acknowledgement goes to ...

Read full blog entry here

Asian Contact Center Industry Benchmarking Report 2008:
China, India, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia

Why this is essential reading:

• The report provides you with information about the size and scope of the contact center industry in Asia and the eight countries studied
• Learn about industry benchmarks of performance in areas including: Operations, Human Resources, Technology, Finances, Sales and Revenue generation, Outsourcing and more
• Use the information contained in this report to gauge your center's performance in relation to the rest of the industry
• Find out the difference between the Outsource sector and the Captive contact center markets

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SmartCall #26, Sponsored by:

Why don't astronauts
answer email?

Chris Moriarty of Strike Force Sales joins us on SmartCall to discuss the research he conducted into just how fast Australian businesses respond to emails sent from their websites. The results are pretty terrifying ...

Our sponsor interview is with Craig Neil of NSC who drops in to talk about thin clients in the contact centre.

Listen to the programme here