Will the emergence of the New Economy make India a major player in callcentre technology and development?
Unlike other Asian countries, technology catches up very fast in India andthis technology will not be an exception. Going by the fact that many Indiancompanies use call centres at present, and many are making a beeline topurchase these solutions, I think India would be a major player in a coupleof year's time.

Call centre technologies at present are developed outside the country andare being imported into India. Users are of opinion that the technologydeveloped outside is not suitable for the country. Do you agree?
Call centres and its technologies need a large amount of service andsupport, and most of the domestic companies who brought these solutionsfound it difficult to get it adequately serviced in India. So, wherever alarge amount of customer service is required, the company dealing with thesekind of technologies should have a strong presence in that country itself.As most of the foreign call centre manufacturers do not have an adequatebase in India, they failed to provide the right kind of support. So it isalways advisable to go in for Indian call centres and technologies.

Is it right to believe that there is a huge potential for development ofcall centre technologies in India as its operational and maintenance chargesare relatively low?
If we look at the present statistics, a huge amount of call centre trafficis moving into India to get serviced here. Labour being comparatively cheapin the country, the service charges are very competitive when compared tothose in the US. A fully-loaded call centre agent cost in the US issomewhere around $20,000 per annum, whereas in India it ranges between$10,000 to $15,000 depending upon the agent. When telephone, service andother charges are added to it, this amounts to a whopping $35,000 per annumin the US. Whereas, the charges in India would be only about one-third ofthat in the US. These statistics prove that there is a huge potential forcall centre developments in the country.

What is the importance of server-based call centres?
Call centre technology is of two types - EPABX-based and server-based. Eventhough some organisations use the conventional form of EPABX-based ones,most of them opt for server-based call centres. This is because aserver-based call centres has more features than its EPABX-based version. Atpresent, a call centre solution comprises of a lot of components likeAutomatic Call Distributors (ACDs), fax-on-demands, Interactive VoiceDemands, Screen Pop-Ups, Predictive Dialer and Voice Logging among others.

Conventionally, the call centres didn't have so much of features as thesewere later added to it by vendors on different hardware and differentOperating Systems (OS) using API architects. To put up all these on onesystem amounts to a very high cost of ownership. But with the advent ofserver-based technology all these features can be put in one box, therebyreducing the cost to a considerable amount. These, I think, were the reasonsfor the popularity of server-based call centres.

Is Windows NT truly not a suitable platform for server-based callcentres, or is that a false allegation?
In the case of server-based call centres, a lot of people have doubtswhether Windows NT is an ideal platform for these kinds of software. But asfar as our experience is concerned, we never encountered any problems whileoperating on Windows NT platforms. Earlier, about three years ago, whenWindows 3.51 was used as the platform for running call centre technologies,there were question-marks about its stability. Today on NT, we don't seethose apprehensions any more.

In case Windows NT would be replaced, which OS do you think would takeits place?
I don't think Windows NT ever needs to be substituted. At present, a largeamount of browsers, chat, servers, client stations and other applicationsare written on Windows NT. Going by the statistics, even though, Linus andUnix are hailed as good platforms, it would take quite sometime for WindowsNT programs to be replaced by them. This is very true in case of call centreapplications too.

Which are the emerging technologies in terms of call centreapplications?
Web integration seems to be the most important emerging technology as far ascall centre applications are concerned. Web integration is necessary becausethe client at present has a telephone access plus an Internet connection.This also enables the client to ask online questions either through chatmode or other multimedia software using Internet or PC. Navigating himthrough the Website, which is called co-browsing, is another importantentrant into call centre technology.