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The
telemarketing project for an American credit-card company was
just coming to an end in January when an internal audit at the
Wipro Spectramind call center in Navi Mumbai, India,
discovered something very alarming: an organized ring of about
60 call-center agents had been systematically scamming U.S.
consumers for two months. Supervisors had told the agents to
spice up their sales pitch for the client, Capital One
Financial Services, by making false claims about free gifts
and membership fees, according to Indian press reports. The
scam even bypassed Wipro’s sophisticated call-monitoring
system.
After
conducting its own audit, Capital One, located in McLean,
Virginia, rescinded the contract with Wipro in March. But its
misadventure--and other recent departures from India by U.S.
clients--has confirmed many doubts and concerns about the
booming business of outsourcing call centers, and also is
serving as a catalyst for human resources to develop more
effective approaches to managing offshore workers. Experts and
consultants believe that companies can meet the challenges and
save millions of dollars by improving training and
implementing tighter oversight of offshore call agents. Some
U.S. companies have even installed their own teams at offshore
call centers.
"Capital
One represents some of the challenges of outsourcing
Based
on www.workforce.com |