BENGALURU: Over a quarter, 27 per cent, of Business Processing outsourcing (BPO) companies will switch to work-from-home models permanently in the post pandemic environment, indicates a survey conducted by Ozonetel, an on-demand cloud communications firm.
The survey, which highlighted the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the call centre industry, reported that 53 per cent of such businesses witnessed a drop in productivity of call center agents during the pandemic.
The decline in the productivity of BPO professionals during the pandemic was primarily due to problems pertaining to internet connectivity, telecom issues, lack of privacy, space, noise cancellation, lack of desktops and laptops while working from home.
71 per cent of call center agents mentioned internet connectivity as the biggest barrier to agent productivity followed by telecom issues by 42 per cent.
However, despite the challenges, a majority of the BPO companies are still working from home due to concerns around employees’ health.
According to the survey, 55 per cent of call centres are letting agents opt for work from home solutions, while 16 per cent are not opening offices and keeping work from home mandatory.
The survey also found that 27 per cent are expected to permanently switch to WFH models as a viable long-term strategy. However, an equal percentage of BPO companies also want to switch back to offices.
“The pandemic has made them look at the services that they provide and how they provide it. Ozonetel has worked very closely with clients to ensure that we have seamless transition to work from home. At the start of the lockdown in March, we promptly assisted many of our clients to move their agents to a work from home mode to help with Business continuity plan very quickly,” said Chaitanya Chokkareddy, Chief Innovation Officer, Ozonetel.
With an annual revenue growth rate of 50 per cent, India accounts for 50 per cent of the business process outsourcing sector globally, and the BPO segment is an integral part of its $190 billion IT/ITeS sector.