“Outshining Challenges with Innovation ”

The pandemic—and Gurpal Singh’s, approach to handling it—will perhaps always define him as a leader. Startek’s COO- South Asia & ASEAN, Gurpal leads offices in India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia; together these form the largest number of Startek’s employees. The depth and breadth of their operations in this region here underscores the impact of what the company accomplished as they dealt with the pandemic. “We had to pivot very fast to help our clients maintain critical business continuity when the world suddenly went virtual last year. In effect, we had to quickly create a contact center without walls—a shift which required new security structures that addressed both physical and network security for 250 clients and over 40,000 employees. That was in addition to ensuring the safety of our own staff and ensuring they were set up to succeed in a WFH environment,” explains Gurpal.

Tough times call for creative solutions. The company developed and implemented Startek Cloud: a campus-on-cloud suite of technology and process frameworks that help employees work anywhere and on any device. At the same time, built-in security governance guarantees safe operations at all times.

“The bespoke solutions Startek offers are part of our ongoing digital transformation—which is already delivering Customer Experience as a Service (CXaaS) and embedding and training a digital mindset across the business.”

Implementing this solution and moving quickly to a virtual environment required vision and commitment; Gurpal’s leadership, and his ability to quickly build consensus and concerted action, meant that he could accomplish this turnaround in a matter of weeks. His actions not only changed the way thousands work in India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia; they helped the company seamlessly transition to a WFH environment without losing service quality through a very tough year for the world. And he continues to guide the path forward through ongoing initiatives.

The bespoke solutions Startek offers are part of the company’s digital transformation—which is already delivering Customer Experience as a Service (CXaaS) while embedding and training a digital mindset across the business. And that mindset is necessary; it informs conversations—and results—with clients. Startek’s customers are at different levels of the digital maturity matrix and they work with them to select the most appropriate cloud-hosted toolset. For example, Startek’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) helps tailors solutions to meet each client's vertical and application configuration requirements, including Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Virtual Desktop, Citrix, VMWare, and Amazon Web Services. Customized services include workforce management (which offers forecasting, scheduling, state compliance, and remote workforce administration) and omnichannel support (which handles interactions through voice, chat, email, video, social media, and digital). Data analytics and learning management systems track performance on pre-decided metrics and provide on-demand training, helping agents improve customer engagement by driving best behaviors.

Underpinning Startek’s solutions is their proprietary Startek Cloud, which helps home-based specialists and associates on campuses work seamlessly together to deliver an unparalleled customer experience—while significantly reducing costs. A unified cloud platform, its pivotal functions and security features (such as effective collaboration; productivity monitoring; data and document privacy; unauthorized site, application, and activity surveillance; facial, gesture, and object detection; notice boards; alerts; intuitive dashboards; and an audit trail), provide increased business agility and continuity for clients.

“We are grounded by our focus on making a difference. Not just for our clients, but in how we hire, train, and develop our own people around the globe,” says Gurpal. “One of our key differentiators is our focus on Impact Sourcing—the hiring and providing of career development opportunities to people with limited prospects for formal employment; this is an integral part of our diversity and inclusion framework.” Startek’s Impact Sourcing in India supports efforts by the Government of India to accelerate the growth of the IT-ITES sector and encourage rural employment. This is a mature sourcing model for their operations in India; one of their key target groups is underemployed—including people with disabilities. He adds: “In addition to jobs, we also provide job training and opportunities for higher education.”

Today, Startek has over 3000 such hires across Chhindwara, Bhopal, and Lucknow; these are numbers which are expected to increase. Impact sourcing and resourcing models, WFH models, and capabilities are shifting; as a result, Startek is going where the talent is—instead of bringing employees into urban areas with all the associated costs of moving, housing, office space, transportation, and attrition. “We actively look for talent in Tier II and III cities—creating distributed operational centers that support our larger business strategy.” IE