Dell Plans to Expand Fourth Call Center in India

By Susan J. Campbell

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

Dell has announced plans to broaden its scope of available customer service contacts by expanding its call center in India. The company expects to extend its employee base from 800 currently to 2,500, according to a spokesperson for Dell’s (News - Alert) Indian subsidiary.

K.S. Narahari, director for corporate communications at Dell International Services India, stated that the planned expansion will happen over the next 12-15 months.

This call center is Dell’s fourth to be located in India. Operations began in June of this year at the facility located in the northern city of Gurgaon. Three other call centers handling calls from Dell customers are in the southern cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore and the northern city of Mohali.


Narahari acknowledged that Dell is constructing a permanent building to house the Gurgaon center with the additional employees. The company may expand the center further as it grows the business in India.

Dell employees in India currently number around 13,000, which include the four call centers, research and development professionals and those in software development. Dell also anticipates that it will build its first manufacturing plant in India in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Dell is one of the lap top manufacturers that have had to recall batteries as of late due to reported explosions and fire hazards. The company saw a tremendous spike in customer contacts as a result of the battery recall. Add to that the company’s planned expansions and growth in its respective markets and the need to add more customer care agents became a matter of impacting the bottom line by lacking the capacity to fully serve customers.

India has been a prime location for organizations around the world to select as their primary location for contact and call center operations. The available talent pool speaks fluent English and many are skilled, educated and willing to work for much less than their American counterparts. India has proven to be one of the most cost effective countries for establishing such operations, while also returning positive performance results throughout the different centers in operation.

Moving and expanding locations overseas has not always proven to be the best corporate image promoter and Dell will have to position this expansion and its planned manufacturing plant as positive market growth to draw attention away from its further offshoring.

In this global economy, however, we should expect that companies are going to look around the globe for the best location overall to establish operations. As we continue to demand quality for a lower price, the cost savings must be obtained somewhere and Dell has found that their Indian operations fit that need.

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Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.