24/7 Customer inaugurates Chennai facility

Chennai, Mar 9 (UNI) Business process outsourcing firm '24/7 Customer', which inaugurated its 1,800-seat facility here today to cater to its prime client Aviva, proposed to set up a dedicated facility at Manila in the next quarter.

Addressing the media, '24/7 Customer' Co Founder and CEO P V Kannan said Aviva, the world's fifth largest insurance company, which had acquired a few companies in the UK, was restructuring there and looking to host its operations here.

The Chennai facility was a 'build operate transfer facility' to take care of Aviva's needs, with which it had a five-year contract.

It would be hiring over 2,000 professions to offer services in life and motor insurance. The new facility was the second one in the city.

Aviva had a long-term approach to offshoring, which took between 12 and 24 months generally, he said adding '24/7 Customer' specialised in the customer life-cycle management business. This involved giving details on policy quote be it health, life or auto insurance.

Mr Kannan said 25 per cent of its revenues were from Aviva.

''This is our first insurance client in Chennai,'' he said adding the company handled three such clients out of its 1,700-seat Bangalore facility.

Currently, the company had 7,500 seats and 6,500 employees across seven centres in three cities, including Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The Manila facility would employ between 500 and 1,000 people.

So far, it invested close to 40 million USD in the infrastructure, he said in response to a query.

'24/7 Customer' had plans to ''definitely'' enter the capital market but nothing had been firmed up as yet.

Finding the domestic industry also fairly attractive, Mr Kannan said his company would ''revisit'' it next year.

On attrition, he said it was around 35 per cent against the industry average of 60 per cent.

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