Nokia opens call centre

Nokia, one of the world's leading mobile phone manufacturers, has announced the opening of Nokia India Careline, a contact centre, in Bangalore on Wednesday. The centre will be managed by Scicom Contact Centre Services (India) Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Malaysian BPO services provider, Scicom (MSC).

So far, Nokia had outsourced its Indian customer support services to companies within India, who will lose this business to Scicom. The latter will be the only third-party customer support services for Nokia's Indian customers. The customer care support number is 3030-3838.

While the investment in this new contact centre is said to be "several million dollars", this announcement also marks Scicom's entry into the Indian market.

According to Peter Thomas, director, support services and global customer care, Nokia, "Nokia took the decision to streamline its operations in India and enhance its customer care services with a global approach."

The centre has begun its operations with nearly 120 seats at a 15,000 sq ft facility in Whitefield (near Bangalore). This announcement may also develop into a trend of establishing contact centres through global collaborative effort.

"The advantage that India offers is its ability to scale up quickly, which cannot happen overnight in Malaysia," Leo Ariyanayakam, chief executive officer, Scicom, said.

Scicom closed the previous fiscal with revenues of US $ 16 million. The company is 1,200-strong in Malaysia and provides clients with multilingual inbound customer care and technical support services.

Scicom manages multiple contact centres in Malaysia, Singapore and Korea, handling interactions from 12 Asia-Pacific countries in 15 native languages along with providing English support for UK and US markets. Their include HP, Petronas, Telecom Malaysia, Hilton Group and Jet Star Asia among others.

"We are open to growing in the Indian market, both organically and inorganically. We have always placed emphasis on getting more business from existing customers than client acquisitions. The setting up of a contact centre in India for Nokia is a good example of our approach to the business," Ariyanayakam added.

Though Malaysia does not offer the advantage of being able to scale up rapidly, it inducts about 50,000 foreign educated graduates a year.

"These people come with assertiveness and are highly competent. As a result, we do not have any accent neutralisation courses and this itself is a huge cost reduction to BPO companies," Ariyanayakam explained.

Scicom plans to benefit from India's technology expertise in support services and the ability to scale up rapidly, along with voice support from Malaysia, which can be done at a much lower cost than India. They call this as the "right sourcing model" and plan to offer it to all their clients.