CTI has felt and still feels very strongly that the future of third party collections is still India. Indians are dedicated to be the “go to” country for America’s third party collections. Depending on the time of year India is 9.5 or 10.5 hours ahead of the Eastern Time zone and as much as 13.5 hours ahead of the Pacific Time zone during certain parts of the year. This means that Indian’s have to work overnights to collect on American debt.

For India’s call centers third party collections is not just another process like mortgage lead generation, customer service or a 411 process. You see, most call centers have many processes running throughout the day or at the same time. There are three main sources of processes or verticals. The U.S., the U.K. and Australia are the sources for most of India’s or for that matter most call center processes worldwide. One center might have collections, reverse mortgage lead generation, customer service and rebate fulfillment operating at the same time with 25 seats or agents on each process. Third party collections is viewed as being the most profitable for call centers and can earn them over a million USD a year for as little as 30 seats.

Call centers in India have a largest number of qualified, tech-savvy, IT literate, trained, skilled and experienced professionals. India has the largest English-speaking population after the USA. India’s large and well-educated workforce has been one of India’s main advantages over other countries. India will continue to have a well-educated and large workforce, because India has an ever increasing number of college graduates and a large number of successful training industries. These factors ensure that India’s resources will keep increasing year after year.

India’s large manpower is willing to work for a lesser price. In a call center operation, manpower typically accounts for 55 to 60 percent of the total cost. In India, manpower is available at a fraction of the cost overseas. Initial investment in infrastructure and training can be expensive and make one believe that the promise of cost reduction is false. However, there will be savings and the fact that several global giants continue to set up call centers in India is proof of this.

Call centers in India employ the use of the latest technology, the best software and high-end infrastructure to provide high-quality customer support services. India has also experienced privatization and reduction in the tariff of internet services, telecom, cellular services and paging services. This has given India an advantage over other locations, in terms of infrastructure. India has the largest number of state-of-the-art call centers in the world. The Government of India has recognized the potential of IT-enabled services and has taken positive steps by providing numerous incentives.

Another important factor why global organizations prefer outsourcing call centers to India is because call centers in India offer cost-effective customer support services without compromising on quality. With the low cost of manpower available in India, Indian call centers have been able to provide high-quality call center outsourcing services on a 24x7x365 days basis, at a cost which is more than 50% less if performed in the U.S or U.K. These reasons have encouraged more global corporations to outsource call center services to India, because they can get access to quality call center outsourcing services at a cost-effective price.

India has been one of the first nations to step into the call center outsourcing industry. Global organizations have already outsourced call centers to India and have found India to be an ideal outsourcing provider. Today, some of the world’s global giants have a base in India, from where they provide customer support services to their worldwide customers on a 24x7x365 days basis. These successful call center outsourcing ventures have encouraged more and more global organizations to outsource call center services to India and give their organization a competitive advantage.

CTI gives all qualified call centers in India a training period of four to eight weeks before activating them on collection accounts. The training usually starts with on-line vendor training from all of our vendors and daily web cam training from me during this period. Our Strategic Vendor Partners are the key to this first ever third party collection turn-key solution and CSS Impact our software is the backbone of our operations and has integrated with Billing Tree, our electronic payment provider, Dial Connection, our predictive dialer, Global Connect, our IVR dialer, PSC Info Group, our letter vendor and e bureau or scoring and skip tracing group. Last but certainly not least, Credit and Collection News that has supported and assisted CTI in getting the word out through their news organization, newsletters and by word of mouth.

I then go to India and train each location for approximately one week. We do FDCPA, testing, compliance, roll playing and application of strategic vendor partner products. Each collector has to score 90 or above to continue to work on the collection floor and each floor is tested every eight weeks. If they score under 90 they are pulled off the collection floor and can take the test daily until they pass. We use a number of different tests to make is somewhat challenging for the collectors.

Roll playing is a big part of our training and usually takes two to three days. Several months ago, during roll playing in India, I got up on stage in a woman’s wig, dress and heels (I don’t think I’ll do the heels again, women…how do you do that ???) and played the dancer, single mother with children roll, all cash business with a high pitched woman’s voice. The collectors once they got up off the floor from laughing really got an appreciation of what some single mothers really go through and understood why the L.U.R.E. (Listen, Understand, Resolve and Execute) program that CTI teaches is so important. CTI also teaches Americanisms and accent and English training while educating India collectors. We teach them to expect to be lied to and what to do when that happens and the importance of credit report information to determine a debtor’s true ability to repay.

India’s are very excited and always want to start the calling process before training has completed. They are driven, motivated and focused on their jobs and their performance and have the faith to become successful.

Anyway, I’m off to start learning Hindi from the Rosetta Stone program I bought and I’ll see you next month.