Sonu Singh, 23-year-old visually challenged agent from Haryana used to make about 80 telemarketing calls a day. He, along with 45 others, was getting a stipend of around Rs 5,000 a month for working in a vocational centre set up by the Blind Relief Association with the support of Tata Teleservices.

But from September onwards their phone lines have gone silent and their monthly income has stopped. Thanks to the stringent telemarketing regulations introduced by the telecom regulator, Sonu and his colleagues, many of whom are the sole bread earners for their families, are now facing an uncertain future.

“I have not made a single call since September. I am very worried about getting a job in this industry now,” says Rajesh Kumar, a 28-year-old graduate working in the same centre as Sonu.

Although Tata Teleservices is making efforts to reassign them for inbound calls, Rajesh and Sonu are among the thousands of call centre agents who have been hit by TRAI's ban on pesky calls. Though there is no hard data on the size of outbound telemarketing pie which collapsed under the ban, two people familiar with the industry estimate that number of people engaged in that segment would have been close to 50,000.

“These businesses, which would typically operate with 40-100 people and unfiltered data, were anyway bleeding because of high cost overheads and unviable revenue model…they may have shut shop,” says BPO industry veteran and the Global CEO of Spanco BPO, Mr Pravin Kumar.

Mr Kumar is quick to point out that Spanco itself has not been affected by the telecom regulator's directive as it operates inbound and outbound customer care operations which strictly adhere to the TRAI regulations. But many smaller firms – which thrived on unfiltered telemarketing data - have since disappeared.

New numbering series

According to information available with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, about 2,000 telemarketers have registered themselves under the new regime for using ‘1400' number series. Prior to September, when telemarketers were allowed to make calls from any phone number, there were nearly 20,000 small firms registered. This means that as many as 90 per cent of the industry has either shut shop or found another way to continue their business.

Mr Vinay Grover, Director at Competent Synergies - a company that has domestic and international call centres - admits that with the new numbering series, the dynamics of the telemarketing business changed.

“When people see the new series, they know it is a promotional call and may choose not to take the call. So the ‘contractibility' has suffered drastically, even in those cases where a person is not registered in the ‘Do Not Disturb registry' and may be genuinely interested in knowing about, say, new phone tariffs,” Mr Grover points out.

Revenues affected

Mr Grover further adds that while a few people in the affected processes have been absorbed in other functions, like collections and routine customer care interactions, about “100-odd people” could not be re-deployed.

All this has also impacted telecom operator's revenues. One of the players which used to earn about Rs 80 crore a month by selling bulk SMS and voice minutes to telemarketers said that there has been a 60 per cent decline in the income generated from this segment.

“There are 130 million subscribers now registered in the DND. These are the urban based subscribers whom the telemarketers would have wanted to sell products. Now, we are left with the semi-urban and rural users who are happy to get information but the conversion rate for marketers has gone down drastically,” said a telecom operator.

moumita@thehindu.co.in

Related Topics