The call center industry is known to provide employment to varied and disparate sections of the population. With its flexible routines and work timings, housewives and retired professionals have signed up with BPO units to be a part of the workforce. But nowhere has the all-inclusive ethic of the business process outsourcing sector more pronounced than in the way in which they have embraced convicts into the workforce. Yes, thanks to the initiative of some BPO service experts, several call centers across the world have found a way in which they can save costs and at the same time employ some unfortunate souls. The step is not free from danger, though. Lets take a closer look at this emerging trend from the point of view of a telemarketing unit.
As a call center, getting convicts on board as telemarketing agents is a risky proposition. To begin with, you have to be very careful with the data that you are sharing. I am not saying that because they are convicts, you need to be paranoid about your data. Lead generation data must always be handled with care. Do not share more with the call center agents than what is necessary. You can divide the dissemination of the data in a way that no single agent knows the entire picture. Call center services when run by the convicts have to be cautious about financial details. Do not part with the credit card figures of your clients and customers. These are more of precautionary steps than anything else.
But there are many advantages of having the convicts as call center employees. You can get the telemarketing work done without spending too much on manpower. You can easily negotiate how much these BPO agents will be paid with their supervisors. There is no question of attrition as well! But the primary reason why call centers are doing this is to provide a meaningful employment to these society discards. They are a bunch of people who have very little option to carve out a life for themselves. The BPO service that they do will hold them in good stead. They can earn far more than what they do in the prisons. With this money, they can start off a new life when they get out of prison. They can also use the call center services that they learn to find profitable employment when their prison term ends.
The call centers that hire convicts generally leave out those that have been convicted of fraud or trickery. This is so because the BPO managers dont want to take a risk with their psychological tendency to cheat. The call center recruiters also go for those convicts whose terms end in the very recent future. There is cold business logic in this decision. The recruiters believe that when they finish their term in prison, they can join in as a full-time employee. That way the cost that the BPO service incurs in training these convicts are not wasted. This is one aspect that every participating business process outsourcing unit must be proud of.