BSNL to outsource customer care ops

[jayanthi mandhalapu]

 After shying away from the outsourcing model for several years, state-owned BSNL is now going all out to replicate this business mod
el which has become the cornerstone behind the strategies employed by private operators such as Bharti Airtel .

BSNL has now decided to outsource its customer care requirements to private call centres. The telco has already invited bids for setting up and managing its BPO operations that will cover over 17 million customers across the four southern states, as per a notification on its website.

Following this, BSNL will invite bids for the other three zones -- North, East & West. The size of the total BPO outsourcing contract for all the four zones combined is well over Rs 5,000 crore over a five-year period.

Just last week, BSNL executives said that the company would soon float tenders to outsource the management and maintenance of its 50,000 plus towers and over 100,000 km of optic fibre cable network.
This contract too is worth over Rs 5,000 crore (Over $1 billion), but the telco is facing stiff resistance from the employee unions which fear massive layoffs if this deal were to go through.

For the south zone, BSNL has said that the bids will be restricted to large BPOs who have over 3,500 seats domestically or over 6,500 employees globally, with capabilities of setting up independent standalone centres to cater to the requirements of the PSU.
Going further, the BSNL notification also adds all BPOs bidding for this contract should have experience in running centres with over 500 seats at single destination. In addition, BNSL has also introduced several clauses to the contract document that would allow the telco to penalise the BPO in the event of poor performance.
BSNL has also added that it reserves the right to deduct up to 20% of the monthly payouts to the successful bidder if performance levels are below certain pre-defined levels. The bids for the south zone will be opened on November 11, the notification on the PSU's website added.

Outsourcing customer care operations was pioneered by Bharti Airtel when it signed deals with IBM Daksh, Mphasis, Teletech and HTMT in 2005. The banking and telecom sector combined accounts for over 80% of domestic BPOs revenues, industry studies have revealed.