Offshore Outsourcing & Scammer

Blog about offshore outsourcing and scammer in the outsourcing industry

An unbelievable offer from SYNTEL Pvt. Ltd. Australia - or to rent is more expensive than to buy

Amanjit SahotaSYNTEL Pvt. Ltd.An Australian company, with the name Syntel Pvt. Ltd. got registered on June 17, 2013. The "Founding Partner and Director at Syntel Pty Ltd" Amanjit Sahota writes by himself in his LinkedIn profile that he is since August 2014 Director of his own company, makes the company already very suspect. For me it shows that the company did not earn enough in the time from June 2013 until July 2014 for paying his salary and/or he got fired on his other job.

If I read additional in the year 2015 at http://syntel.com.au/why-syntel (2016-02-25: Link removed - Domain not exists): "We have spent the last 6 years perfecting VOIP (Voice Over IP) phone systems which means you can take advantage of the internet to make cheaper, often free calls." than I know that they are notorious liars or they are not able to calculate by using their brain and have not enough money for a pocket calculator. Both is in business worse.

If such a person even does not understand the difference between a LinkedIn company page and a LinkedIn personal profile, then it shows that the person seems have a real problem understanding any rules in business. If I read additional in his profile that his language is Punjabi then I think already about a post forwarding service and not about a local company in Australia.

Anyway the business amateur Amajit Sohota has sent me from his "personal company" profile at LinkedIn the following offer:

G`day Rudolf,

How are ya?

Many thanks for accepting my invite.

The reason I am getting in touch is that we have large presence in Manila and we are growing fast. We have a couple of ex-pats, from Australia, who are recommending our Hosted VPBX Services to customers in Manila. This is going great and I was wondering if this would be something we could partner up with?

The Dealer Agreement is a pretty straight forward arrangement whereby you locate possible opportunities, scope them out and then recommend us to them. We then take care of the rest. If they sign up we are happy to pay the following, which to date is the largest number of seats we have had come on board through a referral in one go:

5,000 Seat Opportunity.
5000 x $10 = $50,000 Up Front Fee

This particular customer went for the $49.95 All inclusive plan.
Therefore the trail is as follows: 5000 x $49.95 = $249,750.00 10% Trail = $24,975.00 Per Month for the 36 Months of the contract.

Most customers opt for either the $15 plan or the $49.95, depending on their needs. There are plans in between, they do not get much take up. We can be bespoke, if the opportunity requires, just let us know and we can amend accordingly. We pride ourselves on being proactive and dynamic.

As you can see the figures are inviting, for the right opportunity. This is, to date, the largest opportunity we have had in Manila.

Please do get back to me on: amanjit@syntel.com.au if this of interest.

My Director of Support will be in Manila in early December and would be happy to meet up, to discuss further. I will be up in early February, so happy to meet then, if that suits.

Enjoy your day and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thanks!

Ammo
0427 550 566
1300 739 885
amanjit@syntel.com.au

I really cannot believe that one owner of a 5,000 seat call center can be so stupid to sign-up with such a suspicious company. Does such a call center owner not think about the risk what he has with only one business partner? Such a center needs to get divided into a few sections to reduce the risk of a fail. A serious consultant will warn such people and reject the job if the call center owner does not understand the risk. One example of the risk: If the Internet connection from the place of the center drops for an hour the damage would be 5,000 working hours of his agents! The same can happen with the power connection of the center - only the Internet connection drops normally more often than the power connection.

As the email address provided in the offer is from an Australian domain I think that the prices are in Australian Dollars. Based on the exchange rate from today the up-front fee of AU$ 50,000 has the value of US$ 35,499.51 and the offer the monthly payment from AU$ 24,975 has the value of US$ 17,732.

Nowhere is written what is all included in the "all inclusive" offer. It seems to be only important for Amanjit Sahota to make money instead of explaining his offer. I would kick out such a salesman from my company. VoIP minutes cannot be included because they are different from country to country, from provider to provider and if fixed or mobile phones are get called. The local computers from the centers and the Internet connection of the center cannot be included too because the price is depending on the region of the world. In this case in the "all inclusive" offer can be only be included can the basic hosting and the rental of a phone system. For this is the offered price nothing else than profiteering.

To my reply "Maybe you need to rethink your offer and compare your prices with others on the international market", I got the answer:

G`day Rudolf,

How are ya?

Thanks for the message. We have Call Centres which are primarily for Overseas Clients, so our rates are good for them. Happy to discuss what would work with you.

Thanks!

Ammo

It seems to be his sales strategy. I don't think that he would be really successful with this strategy.

Let us make a simple calculation example: I would take for security reasons at 4 SQL server, which are storing the data, the configuration of the phone systems and the call detail records. The price for one sql server hardware is around US$ 1,000. In sum we spend US$ 4,000 for our datastorage system. Additonal I would use for 500 seats one phone system based on Linux and Asterisk (Asterisk itself, GoAutoDial or a similar product). The price for one of these phone systems is around US$ 500. As I need 10 from them I spend in sum US$ 5,000. As Linux, Asterisk, GoAutoDial is open source I don't need to pay something for the software and I have enough capacity for a failover in the case that one system dies. Each of the phone systems will get connected to different Internet providers. This will enhance the failover possibilities and reduces the risk of an Internet drop. As more different VoIP providers I'll use as higher would get my security in the case of an error. I even can make a least cost routing between the chosen VoIP providers.

If we take now the above calculation in sum then I have spent until now only US$ 9,000 for the hardware. If I like to use the MS SQL server instead of a Linux open source SQL server than I need to spend additional US$ 650 for the Windows Server Software and US$ 4000 for the MS SQL Server. As I'm using 4 SQL-Server I have to spend in this case US$ 18,600 for the software. Even if we are now counting everything together we spend in sum US$ 27,600. That is even less than the up-front fee from the offer from Syntel Pvt. Ltd. (US$ 35,499.51). I would even make personally the complete server setup for the center for less than the half of the remaining US$ 7,899.517, which this solution is cheaper then the up-front costs from Syntel Pvt. Ltd.

The savings of my suggestion are in this case the "very small" amount of US$ 24.975 each month for 36 months of the contract. That makes the "little" sum of US$ 899,100 during 3 years of operation.

Update November 23, 2015: Syntel sent a message that in the "all inclusive" Plan is VoIP included:

G`day Rudolf,

How are ya? Hope you had a great weekend.

The All Inclusive Plans included All Local/National Calls All 1300/1800 Numbers and All Mobile calls.

Hope that assist. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Thanks!

A call center is working 17 hours a day (call time between 8 am and 9 pm additional 4 time zones on the continent) and 6 days a week calling the U.S. If we take now the minutes generated from a single agent then we need to multiply 60 minutes per hour * 17 hours a day * 26 days per month to see the result of 26,520 minutes an agent is generating during one month. If we divide now the difference between the standard plan and the all inclusive plan (AU$ 34.95 = US$ 25.26) then we see that this sum got offered as flat rate from some VoIP providers for private users. These VoIP providers, which have offered such a flat rate, are getting found now at the VoIP cemetery. The reason is very simple found. We need only divide the US$ 25.26 by the generated minutes from one agent during one month - 26,520. The result is rounded US$ 0.00095249. This minute price is far under the value which are the telecom companies billing under each other for the minutes. Each minute will generate a loss in this case. Not one company will pay you for using their lines.

The all inclusive offer is even worse and the loss for the phone companies higher for the case that this offer is restricted to the Australian phone numbers. The Australian free phone numbers 1300/1800 are not getting called from call centers because call centers need to sell something and not speak with customer services. The interconnect exchange rate is for Australia even at least 10 times higher than from U.S. phone companies. The agent is only 1 hour less generating per day because Australia has only 3 time zones on the continent.

 

Dubious "award winning free cloud based software for contact centers"

Some dubious offers of an "award winning free cloud based software for contact centers" are not really free of charge. There you have even to pay for incoming calls. Why do you need to pay for something what you can get FOR FREE?

Call CenterIf you take a look at all the "Award winning" contact center solutions at news.tmcnet.com and you read about the connection between TMC and the magazine Customer, then you'll know that this "awards" are only for making advertisements in their magazines. There is no reason listed why this software should be better than the other ones. So they have even not seen the software for giving their awards, or does anybody really think that they could make a test of 27 call/contact center software within one year? They are producing a newspaper for consumer and not a call/contact center magazine.

if we take a look at the promoted "FREE" Fenero offer and scroll a down nearly to the end of the site, then we see that the software is only in their cloud system available. There is written:

There are no software costs for Fenero - ever. You simply pay for the following, which helps us keep the lights on and continue to provide you with great service:
  • $1.75 per month for a local DID
  • $2.00 per month for a toll-free DID
  • $0.02 cents per minute for inbound (local & toll-free) and outbound calls
  • $0.02 cents per session for live customer chats
  • $0.10 cents per GB of screen recording storage (call recordings are FREE)
  • $250 per month for support (optional paid support plan)

If we are comparing the costs then the price for the VoIP minutes are 3-4 times higher than the offer from the listed VoIP providers in my blog and you will get even charged for the incoming calls. For this are the "NO HIDDEN COSTS" written nearly at the end of page. The price for the VoIP minutes written on the page are only for US calls. Prices for calls to other countries are not available or the same 3-4 times more expensive then other offers. In the case if they are 3-4 times higher than other offers, then it will be very expensive for contact centers calling mobile phones in other countries. Don't forget the Fenero software is only an addon to the base Asterisk system. This information is found at http://www.fenero.com/reliable-scalable/.

 

Open Source Call Center Software: GOautodial - easy and FREE OF CHARGE

GOautodial is an open source web based call center system based on CentOS. It automatically installs the GOautodial applications (GOadmin, GOreports and GOagent), Vicidial, Mysql, PHP, Asterisk, Limesurvey and other open source software to have a fully functional call center system. An open source predictive dialer and inbound IVR + ACD system that rocks.

GOautodial is based on the Asterisk framework, which is sponsored by Digium. The Asterisk project started in 1999 when Mark Spencer released the initial code under the GPL open source license. Since that time, it has been enhanced and tested by a global community of thousands. Today, Asterisk is maintained by the combined efforts of Digium and the Asterisk community.

Today, there are more than one million Asterisk-based communications systems in use, in more than 170 countries. Asterisk is used by almost the entire Fortune 1000 list of customers. Most often deployed by system integrators and developers, Asterisk can become the basis for a complete business phone system, or used to enhance or extend an existing system, or to bridge a gap between systems.

GOautodial Major Features:

  • Inbound, Outbound and Blended call handling
  • Broadcast and survey dialing
  • Web-based applications
  • Wizard based configurations
  • Full call recording
  • Scalable to hundreds of seats
  • USA, UK and Canada call compliance
  • VoIP trunks and standard Telco lines
  • Support for Sangoma and Digium cards
  • Open-Source GPLv2 licensed, with no software licensing cost

 

Full Features List (based from the Vicidial engine):

  • Ability for an agent to call clients in succession from a database through a web-client
  • Ability to display a script for the agent to read with fields like name, address, etc. filled-in
  • Ability to set a campaign to auto-dial and send live calls to available agents
  • Ability to dial predictively in a campaign with an adaptive dialing algorithm
  • Ability to dial on a single campaign across multiple Asterisk servers, or multiple campaigns on a single server
  • Ability to transfer calls with customer data to a closer/verifier on the local system or a remote Asterisk server
  • Ability to open a custom web page with user data from the call, per campaign
  • Ability to autodial campaigns to start with a simple IVR then direct to agent
  • Ability to broadcast dial to customers with a pre-recorded message
  • Ability to park the customer with custom music per campaign
  • Ability to send a dropped call to a voicemail box, queue or extension per campaign if no agent is available
  • Ability to set outbound CallerID per campaign or per list
  • Ability to take inbound calls gathering CallerID
  • Ability to function as an ACD for inbound and fronter/closer verification calls
  • Ability to have an agent take both inbound and outbound calls in one session(blended)
  • Ability to start and stop recording an agent's calls at any time
  • Ability to automatically record all calls
  • Ability to manually or automatically call upto two other customer numbers for the same lead
  • Automatically dial unlimited alternate numbers per customer until you get an answer
  • Ability to schedule a callback with a customer as either any-agent or agent-specific
  • Ability in Manual dial mode to preview leads before dialing
  • Ability for agents to be logged in remotely anywhere with just a phone and a web browser
  • Faster hangup and dispositioning of calls with one key press (HotKeys)
  • Definable Agent Wrapup-time per campaign
  • Ability to add custom call dispositions per campaign
  • Ability to use custom database queries in campaign dialing
  • Recycling of specified status calls at a specified interval without resetting a list
  • Dialing with custom TimeZone restrictions including per state and per day-of-the-week
  • Dialing with Answering Machine Detection, also playing a message for AM calls
  • Multiple campaigns and lead-lists are possible
  • Option of a drop timer with safe-harbor message for FTC compliance
  • Variable drop call percentage when dialing predictively for FTC compliance
  • System-wide and per-campaign DNC lists that can optionally be activated per campaign
  • All calls are logged and statuses of calls are logged as well as agent time breakdowns
  • Load Balancing of call across multiple inbound or outbound Asterisk servers is possible
  • Agent phone login balancing and failover across multiple ViciDial servers
  • Several real-time and summary reports available
  • Real-time campaign display screens
  • 3rd party conferencing(with DTMF macros and number presets)
  • 3rd party blind call transfer
  • 3rd party conferencing with agent drop-off
  • Custom Music-On-Hold and agent alert sound for inbound calls
  • Estimated hold time, place in line, overflow queues and several other inbound-only features
  • Skills-based ranking and call routing per inbound group(queues) and campaign
  • Queue Prioritization per campaign and inbound group
  • Single agent call queueing
  • Ability to set user levels and permissions for certain features and campaigns
  • Ability for managers to listen-in on agent conversations
  • Ability for managers to enter conversations with agents and customers
  • Ability for managers to change the selected queues for an agent
  • Ability for agents to select a Pause Code when they are not active
  • Ability for agents to view the statuses of other agents on the system
  • Ability for agents to view details for calls in queue that the agent is selected to take calls from
  • Ability for agents to select and click to take calls in queue from their agent screen
  • Several Vtiger integration features: user-sync, account-sync, data interconnection (deprecated)
  • Full integration with Sangoma Call Progress Detection(CDP) for better Answering Machine Detection(AMD)
  • Web-based data export utilities
  • Web-based administration
  • DID, phone and carrier trunk provisioning through the web interface

 

GOautodial can be downloaded for free from http://goautodial.org/
CentOS can get downloaded for free from http://www.centos.org/ 

In combination with the outbound provider Voicetrading and Voicebuy you'll get a very cheap solution for your call/contact center.