Know a 24/7ite

V. Bharathwaj,
Chief Marketing Officer, 24/7 Customer

BPO Industry is a great place to work in. It is a vibrant industry that gives a lot of opportunities to youngsters. But people do not realize it. One key principle we must realize is creating value wherever you are. How do you create value? Creating value is
a) In simple terms 'productivity'. Am I doing what I am required to do to the best possible in terms of efficiency and outputs?
b) Am I developing my own expertise, talent or my own skill sets to do what I am doing better than what I did a month back or week back or better than anyone in the group? Am I consistently creating a difference? Adding every day in a small way. And can it happen in a role which requires doing same task a hundred times? That’s where the whole opportunity lies.

Let’s take the example of one of my colleagues whose family member is hospitalized. He was telling me that the surgeon who is doing the surgery is busy through the day. Are surgeries repetitive? No. There are some complicated and some simple cases. The surgeries will have a series of steps which is repetitive. He is one of the most highly paid surgeons in the country and how did he rise to this? Obviously he didn't reach where he is today by trying not to become an expert. You become an expert by learning better ways of doing the same things. Not necessarily only by doing different things. Doing different things is important and that also adds to the variety to learning. You create value by doing things more efficient and better doing different ways of doing the same thing. People start regarding you as an expert. You add value to yourself and company and to the business and that is where you are able to stand out. So that is an important thing people need to understand in a situation like this. What’s the value you have created?

There are a lot of myths around this industry – the predominant one being monotony in call transactions. I wish to clarify this. Jobs in this industry requires great attention to detail, high integrity, the ability to persevere and the need to have complete know how of the product. No two interactions are the same because every human being thinks differently and has different needs. It is all in the way one thinks about one’s job, a job is exciting and interesting if the person doing it thinks so, it is in the mind and the attitude. There are over 7 lakh employees working in this industry in India and is growing year-on-year.

There are tremendous growth opportunities in the BPO Industry. One 24/7ite who started as an agent 8 years ago is now heading one of our South American centers. Another is heading a program. Which industry gives you the scope to head a program worth millions of dollars and have about 100+ people reporting to you?

My advice is to all of you - Build your English communication skills and the organization will help you with training to build a great career in the BPO Industry. At 24/7 Customer we have various programs like Ascend that aims to build English communication skills of students and seminars that aims to help people build careers in the BPO Industry. Also check out the Build Your English lessons on the website.

The economy downturn could be like the lid which will get removed. So be ready to grow bigger. Some of the greatest successes of the last 50 years have come post World War II. You need to leverage yourself to build on opportunity, build your expertise, adding value, creating skill sets etc. There is no need for panic; caution may be, but work on your self, work on things that are most important. Be very productive, create value and see how you can continuously not get bogged down by the lot of negative things that are happening. Just be open without getting fearful. These are very high level things that people need to have. It’s not ok that if things are good I change jobs and jobs are getting cut I stay foot. This is not a zero-one situation. Career if you look at it is a 40 year period. It’s much longer than a Marathon. People who run marathon don't get up one day and start running. People get trained for months before you run a marathon. Or else you just break. So look at your career like a marathon and look at all the things you need and things you can develop.