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When the clock strikes 12 to ring in the New Year, Anoop Sridhar, a BPO executive in Bangalore, could well be selling a laptop to some customer in the US or the UK.
This holiday season, the Indian BPO workforce has got busy making calls rather then answering queries.
Thanks to the huge appetite for gifts and discounted deals during year-end holidays like Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas and New Year, BPOs are seeing a huge uptake in telesales and telemarketing.
Nearly 70% of the workforce is engrossed in selling products and services to these customers. The city has over 2,00,000 BPO executives.
It is this holiday season when most companies peak sales. Doing this job for them are the Indian BPOs.A number of BPO agents have been engaged in selling products like laptops, financial instruments, insurance products, credit cards, air tickets, hotel rooms, holiday packages, or internet services to clients in the US, the UK and Europe.
"November, December are pretty packed months as far as outbound sales are concerned. This is when people in the US, Europe save to make purchases," says Ravi Kiran, a BPO executive.
While agents at Barclays, Reuters, Ocwen Financials and Viteos are busy selling travel or medical insurance products, companies like Dell and HP are also making the most when it comes to pushing their products.
"We do have a few teams that are looking into technical support. But close to 80% of the calls are outbound and this indicates the kind of sales witnessed during Christmas and New Year,"said a Dell employee.
Although buying decisions are made much earlier, the actual sales start as early as October and continue right till the New Year.
According to sources at HSBC, sale of insurance products is most common as people travel a lot during the holiday season.
"Travelling opens up the possibility of selling other products like holiday packages, credit cards etc. In fact, some companies offer new credit cards by accepting a balance transfer. In this case, you can go in for a new card by transferring all your present credit card liabilities to the new card. This will free your old card from dues and you can resume usage of that card,"added sources.
December is also when there is an increased support activity, mostly on the net. After buying new products, customers often seek support for initial doubts and it is here that some BPOs have deployed their workforce.
Some are even filling in for their counterparts in the US who are busy holidaying. As a result, some companies have scaled up their sales staff.
"Most BPO staff in the US are off on holiday. Therefore, we have additional work to do from here. Many of us are unable to take off even during New Year Eve,"said Savita, an employee of a Bangalore-based call centre.
Definitely not the best way to usher in the New Year, considering that her husband is on leave and is on a great holiday mood!
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