Indian BPO Industry

India’s BPO success story is not entirely a fairy tale. The number of complaints received from the outsourcing western companies is growing especially with regard to the accent of Indian call centre employees, their not-so-humble attitude while dealing with customer queries and a laid-back attitude in solving their problems. The accusation that can have a far reaching impact for the stability and future of Indian BPO industry, however, is that private customer data is not safe in the hands of Indian BPO operators.

When a highly charged up campaign against outsourcing to India was taking place in the US during the last presidential elections, the NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik had exclaimed, US cannot stop outsourcing unless we stop providing them quality services. Mr. Karnik’s statement stemmed from his strong faith in the fundamental strengths of our BPO industry, which, he thought couldn’t go wrong. However, recent incidents of data theft and fraud by some Indian call centers employees doesn’t augur well for the stability of this sector which, according to Gartner, is poised to contribute as much as $13.8 billion to the already booming Indian Economy.

The recent controversy over British tabloid Sun’s purchase of confidential bank account details of some 2000 Britons from an employee of Gurgaon based BPO company Infinity E-Search has generated a lot of concern in the western countries over the data-protection issue. This comes close on the heels of the arrest of three former employees of Pune’s MphasiS BPO on allegations of siphoning off $350,000 from the Citibank accounts of four New York based account holders has sent shock waves across the Indian BPO industry.

Some time ago, an Aligarh resident and employee of a Gurgaon based call centre, Arif Azim, was also taken into custody after he purchased a television set and a cordless phone using credit card data stolen from US customer Barbara Campa’s records. Although such isolated incidents are not specific to India and are not uncommon even in the US, they may just have given the dying US anti-outsourcing lobby a new lease of life.