MISSION STATEMENT
Value Statements
Charter has a determined resolve to conduct our dealings with compliance, integrity and transparency. This is achieved predominately through a company culture of sound ethics, supported by a working system of checks and balances. A Risk Management doctrine that is driven by certified best practices is a cornerstone of our management structure. Our own Brand name is just as important as that of our valued clients.
A Continued Quest For Quality In Everything We Do:
The Charter Quality/Compliance System is a program designed for the Charter Group as a whole. This ensures our clients and ourselves that our services are consistently reliable and are delivered in accordance with client requirements and all relevant stat required. This is achieved by processes such as internal compliance audits and requires operating instructions and procedures to be adhered to, for aspects of work undertaken by CMA employees. All Charter's quality systems, policies and processes are designed to provide optimum service to clients and to reduce the risk of unsatisfactory outcomes. Charter offers services of high-quality that have outstanding value for price and that are flexible, functional and responsive to its clientsCharter BPO Solutions White Paper
The Challenge
As one of Australia's leading mercantile companies, we continually look for ways to ensure the service we provide to our clients is in line with global trends regarding compliance, service delivery, quality, security and price.Our philosophy has always remained simple - we provide high quality receivables management solutions designed to bring greater financial net returns to our clients in the consumer and commercial markets. The challenge we faced was how could we increase returns for our clients without increasing the cost to the company or reduce service quality.
The most favored solution was to reduce our costs and pass those savings on to our clients. As debt collecting is a labor intensive industry, the question was "how do we reduce the costs?" We need the people, but it's the people that cost us the most. In keeping with world wide trends the idea was decided upon to open an offshore call center. The offshore movement is not new in our industry internationally however it is a relatively new concept for the Australian collection market. Many overseas agencies have already established in-roads into India, Jamaica and the Philippines. With this in mind, we proceeded to investigate the logistics of such a venture from both a technological and human element.
Surprisingly both potential stumbling blocks proved to be ever increasing challenges, ones that we were determined to overcome.
Cochin in the southern state of Kerala, India was chosen as the best location to base our call center. It offered lower staff attrition rates, better call quality connectivity and a superior level of quality employees.
India is the largest provider of offshore programming with Kerala noted as having the highest density of science and technology personnel with a strategic location on the transnational trade corridor.
Cochin in the southern state of Kerala, India was chosen as the best location to base our call center. It offered lower staff attrition rates, better call quality connectivity and a superior level of quality employees.
India is the largest provider of offshore programming with Kerala noted as having the highest density of science and technology personnel with a strategic location on the transnational trade corridor.
There is a tremendous opportunity for growth in the outsourcing of collections as it offers cost efficiency to our clients. The focus is to deliver to our clients a service that meets with the highest level of integrity.
The Location
Charter established its office at Infopark, one of two major IT Parks in Kerala. Infopark is placed in a picturesque 100 acre campus in Cochin, the commercial capital of Kerala. Located 25 kilometres from the International Airport and 12 kilometers from the heart of the city, the Park is an ideal destination for the IT industry, especially for IT Enabled Service (ITES) units. Close proximity to the SAFE and SE-ME-WE3 submarine cable landings make Infopark one of the best connected IT parks in the country. The VSNL's primary gateway is located less than 2 kilometers from the park. This gateway handles around 70% of the country's data traffic. Infopark is thus ideally located to provide reliable, abundant and cost-effective bandwidth to all the units in the Park.
The Park offers 125 thousand square feet of built up area in the SDF IT building. Uninterrupted power supply is provided to the units through a dedicated 110 KV line from the nearby Diesel Power Plant. Other facilities in the SDF-IT building include cafeteria and seminar hall. A 1000 line BSNL telephone exchange is operational within the building.
Technology
A highly educated English speaking workforce and reduced infrastructure costs make India the number one choice when it comes to off shore call center outsourcing. The Indian Government has a strong commitment to such ventures with dramatic improvements in telecommunications and state of the art ITES over the past 10-15 years, which now has them emerging as a prominent outsourcing hub. The Government has shown its commitment to this activity by establishing a task force especially for developing world class knowledge based outsourcing industry, allowing duty free imports of capital goods and providing tax exemption on export of IT enabled services.
The relatively low cost of manpower makes India a very attractive base for sourcing cross-border collection services. India has been the largest provider of software engineers to Silicon Valley, West Europe and Asian Pacific IT industry and will now be the most cost effective location for off-shore Business Process and Customer Contact services outsourcing. With privatization and drastic reduction in the tariff of basic telecom services, paging, cellular and internet services, India enjoys an infrastructure advantage like never before. And it's getting better every day.
Even though the call center is physically located away from the Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne offices, there can only be improvement in the level of service we deliver to our clients. This improvement is bought about by the ability of our offshore center to employ quality and compliance service operators that invest 100% of their time measuring the productivity, compliance and effectiveness of every collection officer in the Charter Group on a daily basis. Charter has for many years operated offices in New Zealand and the United Kingdom and the Indian call center is now another means of improving our service delivery.
All client reporting, account management and Charter/Client contact will continue from Australia. All data will be held on the National Server based in Brisbane. In fact from an existing client's point of view nothing will change regarding the relationship apart from the operator who will be making the telephone contact from offshore.
Human Resources
India offers a large pool of highly skilled and educated workforce, proficient in the English language and IT literate. With the constantly increasing numbers of college graduates and the hugely successful private training industry these resources will continue to grow every year insuring that there will always be a pool of highly qualified individuals to recruit as we grow.
Throughout 2005 to 2006, our Collection Manager, Gary Thorley based himself in Cochin for a total of 12 months so as to assist in the recruitment and training process of collection and administration staff. All new employees are submitted to rigorous screening processes, induction and technical training. Such a process includes:
- Charter Culture and Philosophy
- Collection and Telephone Techniques
- Systems Training
- Legislative Requirements
- Voice Accent and Cultural/Social Orientation
- Listening and Comprehending Skills
- Client Product Training
- Quality and Compliance Training
Such is the high standard of initial screening only 5 out of every 100 applicants reached the final interview stage. These figures are not indicative of the quality of the applicants but rather the high standards we have in place for staff procurement that allows us to choose only the very best to proceed further.
Local Indian staff are also sent to Australia for training purposes and are set projects to impart the knowledge they have gained to their colleagues.
These operators are employees of Charter in the full sense of the word. We are not just outsourcing your work to another agency. They are subject to the same intense training and monitoring and expectations of them and their output does not change.
A call center is not just about managing a client's accounts; it's the means to improving the relationship and forging a strong partnership for the future.
We commenced operations with highly qualified and well trained collectors. Our management team consists of Business Head, Mr. Sachit Rajan, whom is qualified as a black belt in Six Sigma quality system and Mrs. Grace John, both of whom possess experience in collecting in the Australian and US markets. The management team command a thorough knowledge of the Australian Privacy Act, the Trade Practices Act and ACCC guidelines and continual training in these areas is undertaken and passed on to our collection team. Notwithstanding this, all employees are trained with extra modules incorporating Voice, Accent and Social and Cultural Orientation.
All processes are implemented and monitored in line with strict Quality Assurance guidelines incorporating Six Sigma and Professional Practices Management System. Such compliance guidelines ensure there are defined methodologies and measurable benchmarks to guarantee that the quality of our processes and services meet all set requirements, and these are constantly being improved to ensure a reliable, efficient and streamlined operation that exceeds pre set SLA's is operational.
The Advantage to You
- Cost savings of up to 50% on existing outlays.
- Client relationships and portfolio accountability is managed in Australia.
- Training is continually ongoing to ensure all staff are compliant with client SLA's and are compliant in legislative responsibilities.
- All processes are compliant with Six Sigma and Professional Practices Management System (PPMS) and are in line will current ISO Standards.
- Digital call monitoring, recording and compliance, productivity, quality and effectiveness measurement undertaken daily.
- Data Security - All data remains in Australia on the COSMOS server in Brisbane. USB and Disk drives have been disable on offshore computers.
- Mobile phones are banned from inside the office.
- Full client internet access to review accounts and run reports.
In real terms this means we will reduce losses and increase efficiencies, boost client revenue and enhance customer satisfaction whilst maintaining 100% compliance in terms of regulatory and Client Service Level Agreements.
Our main businesses focus is to provide 1st and 3rd party collection services, however we can tailor our service to suit your individual requirement. Challenges from a BPO perspective that may include commercial collections (Ledger Management), Telemarketing, Skip Tracing or Accounting Services can also be delivered to you by our Indian Center.
The Ethical Issues
As we are all aware current unemployment rates in Australia are at an all time low of between 3% - 5%. Economists consider this rate equates to full employment. The collection industry is one of Australia's fastest growing industries with a high demand for suitably skilled collectors. Currently there are not enough experienced collectors to support the positions available within Australia. We are confident in defending the claims by some that we are sacrificing jobs from the Australian market to send offshore, as the demand for collection officers within our industry is constantly increasing particularly with the business within our industry of debt purchasing. Normal economic trends will always affect the need for staff in any industry as does the ebb and flow of current clients and the services they require.
Currently Charter is still recruiting employees for our Australian offices and we will continue to do so, after all we are not closing our offices here we are in fact expanding. We will always require staff to manage the work and the relationships undertaken by India as a part of our promise to you that all relationships will be managed by your dedicated local office.
Security and Privacy
As India will be operating on a point-to-point network to Brisbane, data can be re-routed through a national VPN (Virtual Private Network) to the client site. As the operators in India utilize a remote access program they operate on systems, data and applications which reside in Australia. Only screen information is viewable in India - the data is never transferred or stored offshore.
Charter is using what is called Layer 2 VPN Services. With this solution data is transmitted through a custom built private network without traversing the public internet. In the past these services were typically frame relay or ATM based services.
How Do We Refer Accounts to India?
The referral process will not change as all the data remains in Australia. Accounts will be referred and loaded to the server as they are now. No change will be required to the means or the format of the data referred for existing clients. The work is referred to India by work queue only via the direct cable link between our offices
A Final Word
A call center is much more than a room filled with desks and a lot of phones. It is the essence to who we are and what we do. The technological infrastructure required for a state-of-the-art operation is complex and expensive and as such we would not risk our reputation on this project unless we were 100% committed to ensure that the outcomes would deliver improved service levels along with cost benefits to our clients.
Since opening our Indian collection facility we have proven that our existing Australian management team and collectors, and our Indian management team and collection staff along with the technology we have invested in, have delivered and are still delivering improved service at quality and compliance levels not seen before in Australia. Initiatives we have in place from compliance, quality, technology, staff selection, training to collection strategies will ensure that we continue to achieve our goal i.e. - to meet and exceed the challenges set by our clients and to ensure we continue to offer the most cost effective and efficient collection service both Nationally and Internationally.