Is BPO a Bad Word?
On the 16th and 17th of July, 2005 Mr. Narasimhan, HR Head, Global Solutions Centre, Hewlett Packard, took two sessions for the second year MBA students on the role of HR in Customer Relationship Management and the latest HR Technologies used by organizations.
Customer relationship management (CRM) has existed, as long as there have been buyers and sellers of goods and services. But only recently have technological advancements allowed businesses to track and monitor customer behavior and satisfaction. Like never before, businesses are focused on retaining customers and increasing customer satisfaction. More often than not the success of a CRM initiative depends on a company's staff accepting the change towards customer orientation. Here lies the importance of Human Resources in creating a CRM success story.
The discussion started with examples from various industries on how companies are coming up with innovative ideas to woo customers from their competitors. Hyundai Santro offers an extended three-year warranty with its car to prove that its product is much better than those of its competitors. Maruti features its Ladakh service station in its ad to inform potential customers that it has service stations in the most remote parts of the country also. Similarly, many other examples can be cited which prove beyond doubt that in today’s competitive world, the customer is the king.
Customers’ expectations have evolved with time. One of the most important expectations of customers from the companies is “be accessible”. A decade ago this meant a low cost phone call and the opportunity to speak with a relatively well-trained CSR. Today, it means 24 hrs a day access through multiple channels and one contact meeting a number of queries with the support of an IT platform. In order to understand customers’ expectations properly and handle CRM efficiently, an organization should have the proper organizational structure, updated technology, the right mindset of employees and redefined boundaries of space and time. In this respect, for employees to be highly productive, the HR managers’ role should be redefined. First, while recruiting employees, they should prioritize attitude over anything else because if the candidates have the right attitude, skills and knowledge can be imparted to them through proper training. Second they should design compensation systems, which pay employees based on their productivity. Measure of productivity should in turn include the voice of the customers. Third, they should take decisions about employee performance and training needs based on performance data and not gut feelings. Finally, if there is an anecdote in the organization, it should be converted into a practice.
In his talk on HR technologies Mr.Narasimham spoke about the two kinds of HR functions, Generalist Vs. Specialist. Today, organizations are outsourcing (or sharing) many of their Specialist HR functions like recruiting, staffing, resource management, compensation and benefits management and training. For example, in the function of recruitment, volume recruiting may be done by the organization itself but when it comes to value recruiting, for ex. recruiting a CEO, the firm may outsource the task to a firm specialist in this field. HRIS (Human Resource Information Systems) is the technology that provides numerous solutions to enhance all these HR deliverables. Mr. Narasimhan also spoke about the various HRIS solutions available like Recruitment Portals, HR Operations (SAP R3), Payroll Packages, and Performance Management Portals. In addition to this there was a brief presentation on the use of technologies in compensation and benefits design and about the use of hard-core statistics and data analysis in this function. So HR is not just about soft skills, strong data analysis skills are also mandatory to be a successful HR manager.
The sessions turned out to be very interesting and informative. We are eagerly looking forward to many more such sessions in the days to come.
Contributed by
Madhubanti Chaudhari,
2nd Year MBA
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