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Online help: behind the scene at Hello
By Suren Gnanaraj

Web technical engineers helping online clients. Pix. by J. Weerasekera

The government budget may not have provided too many incentives for Sri Lanka's youth, but Hello Corporation may just give them something to smile about.

Just seven months after setting up in Sri Lanka, HelloCorp has managed to turn heads, change attitudes and put the island on the global map, as one of the world's most efficient and professional group of web technical support engineers. What makes this venture even more striking is the fact that the company rests entirely on the shoulders of young men and women between the ages of 20 and 24 years.

Their North American partner, Webhelp, has been so impressed, that they are due to send in Microsoft and America On Line (AOL) representatives to the island shortly, to explore more opportunities for business.

HelloCorp, a multinational Webhelp partner company locally owned by Expo Lanka, with operations in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, is a 24-hour backend technical and customer support provider for IT giants Microsoft Network (MSN) and AOL. They are the newest brains behind your online customer help link, providing MSN and AOL users across the globe with customer and technical support solutions to problems they may encounter when using these branded products.

Young, confident and never short of ideas is twenty-five-year- old Head of Operations Jonathan Rasiah, an IT graduate who is currently reaping the rewards of his bold decision to set up the company in Sri Lanka. He received professional training in Canada where he was introduced to the world of call centres. He still enjoys every bit of it.

Having visited centres in the Philippines and India, Rasiah said that he realised the value and potential of Sri Lanka's human resource base. "I was confident that Sri Lanka could produce good results." He proudly draws out his evidence of Webhelp's system-wide monthly MSN (Microsoft) Customer Satisfaction rating, where his Colombo centre ranks Number 1.

Judd Berlin, the foreign partner of HelloCorp said that initially, they were very nervous about setting up in Sri Lanka, due to the prevailing security situation in the country. He said that initial efforts to set up in 2000 failed due to the deteriorating security situation, which forced them to shut down and leave. However, having previously centralised its operations in the Philippines, HelloCorp decided to find new destinations to branch out their service centres, in order to reduce the dependency on one country. "Following the peace initiatives, Sri Lanka was our obvious choice."

However, Berlin adds that promoting Sri Lanka was a challenge. It wasn't easy to convince Microsoft and AOL that Sri Lanka was safe and possessed the intelligent human resources to match their high standards. "However, I had faith in the Sri Lankan people, and I tell you, the performance of these young men and women in the past 120 days has shocked everybody. I'm totally impressed with the Sri Lankan will to succeed."

Rasiah chips in saying that their clients originally gave the Sri Lankan centre just three seats (three employees) to work with. "But eventually they just loved our work and they encouraged us to expand our employee base to 200 in four months, and we are now looking to take that number to 1,000." However, he is in no hurry to expand. "I need to be selective when choosing the right people to suit the job, so it will take time, but I want all employees to have the perseverance to reach the same performance level, so that they would enjoy the experience."

Interestingly, Rasiah has his sights set on school leavers between the age of 20 to 24 years to fill in the vacancies, and wants the profession to be the ideal foundation on which employees can build their career. Working at HelloCorp is a learning experience, which demands good communication and management skills, IT, leadership and teamwork. "Americans are tough customers, and it takes confidence and competence to keep them happy. That's quite a challenge which I feel is lacking in Sri Lanka. There is very little exposure given to young people in working with international customers.

So my aim is to make this the best first job for school leavers." After all, when you're young, you ought to find a job that will constantly teach you new things, and this job does that...we learn something new everyday, he adds. The working environment has been specifically designed to make the employee feel as comfortable as home.

The office is furnished with a cafe, gymnasium, staff locker room, recreation room, meditating and sleeping area, and a mini auditorium equipped with video conferencing facilities, which is used for staff training programmes. "Our staff consists of part time students studying for their first degrees or Masters, so we have provided them with facilities to study in-house, so they can relax instead of having to rush home." All transport and meals are provided, free of charge.

Training usually involves 10-15 days of technical coaching on the product by North American instructors from Webhelp, and thereafter, it is just fitting into a unique culture. When asked why he referred to the job as challenging, Rasiah said that employees are daily assessed on their performance, and the client satisfaction rating of each employee is listed on a whiteboard, visible to everyone. The judge is none other than the online customer, who fills a questionnaire at the end of the online consultation, assessing the quality of the web technical engineer's service. Rasiah said, "When a customer says that he is delighted with your service, it's just a tremendous boost to someone as young as a school leaver, and gives them so much confidence to continuously improve."

Arjun Seneviratne, 21 years old and three months on the job, said what really appealed to him was the fact that the job was challenging but informal. "It's such a relaxed environment and I sometimes just spend the night at work and go for my lectures in the morning." Peak hours are from 10 pm to 8 am, which Seneviratne says is when the office becomes very busy. Commenting on his own experience with customers, he says, "You have to be very informal and treat them almost like a friend. Then they communicate much better and they rate you much higher." Interestingly, all web technical engineers use American names online to maintain uniformity.

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