India has now become the hub for outsourcing industry. Customer services in most US companies are outsourced to call centers based in India. The reason is the low labor costs and easy availability of labor in a large number. However, in the recent days, security concerns have forced companies to re-contemplate their decision on outsourcing their customer service to India.
A recent survey has proved that companies such as Bank of America, Choice Point, Citibank & Time Warner experienced the loss of customer information. This has raised the controversy over the dependence on business process outsourcing industry.
It has now become a crucial issue for India as the country raises huge profits from outsourcing. Besides, outsourcing has also offered employment & great career opportunities to many in the country.
Hence, ensuring effective data protection has become an issue of concern.
John C. McCarthy, the vice president for research at Forrester, has confirmed that there are some outsourcing providers abstain from background checks of employees and even assist various applicants to design their resumes.
US companies have always been keen to associate themselves with Indian call centers. However, the questions raised regarding the security of data have made them reconsider about the whole collaboration.
McCarthy made a survey on 91 US-based companies & came to a conclusion that nearly two-thirds of those who were utilizing off shore call center services & customer-service providers were either peeping a vigil at the vendor’s security practices or cutting back on their contracts.
The situation now seems to be under control once the Indian Govt. started to impose strict measures to control data fraud at call centers used by foreign companies.
