Globee recruiting hundreds to work at home in Japan

29 July 2020, Singapore -- Despite the limitations brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Malaysian and Japanese arm of Everise, Globee, a joint venture between Everise and UBASE, experienced almost 237% revenue growth year on year to 30 May 2020. The next-generation business process outsourcing company (BPO) has already recruited almost 100 staff in Japan and aims to supplement their headcount with another 100 by December 2020, in a move that is unusual in Japan, where work from home is not the norm.

According to the New York Times, Japan's unemployment rate has been creeping up this year, from 2.4% in February, to 2.6% in April and 2.9% by May 2020. The country is in a recession, but the economic slowdown has not yet resulted in mass layoffs. Culturally, businesses put the interests of their employees first, over those of shareholders, to maximise sustaining their business over maximising growth.

Yet, if the Covid-19 pandemic has proved anything, it is that Japan is not yet ready to work at home. Culturally, showing that you are working is more important than working efficiently, according to an article on Izanau.com. However, Japan Times says that the pandemic 'is accelerating the digital shift of the workplace', and is 'emerging as a key measure to ensure employee safety and convey corporate social responsibility'.

Globally, 10% of companies with a billion dollars of revenue or more, were used to having their workforce work remotely according to Gartner Inc. analyst Brian Kropp. Only 40% of those companies had established work from home practices, but lacked infrastructure and 50% were unprepared.

For Everise, however, their award-winning work at home model is beginning to be adopted in Japan. For Globee, staff attrition rates fell to a low of 1.9% in May, and accordingly, the company’s KPI pass rate (the measure by which the company achieves all targets set by clients) increased to 76%. Just over 50% of Globee’s customer experience (CX) champions in Malaysia come from North Asia (Japan, Taiwan and Korea). Which means that from Malaysia, Everise can deliver support for Asia’s logistics, gaming, consumer electronics and fintech companies. In fact, Everise is among the largest employers of native Japanese speakers in Malaysia, with full-time native Japanese staff members. But current demand means that the company needs more native speakers, and hence they’ve established an office in Japan.

Impact of COVID-19

“While COVID-19 forced us to work from home, fortunately we were operationally ready to do so and that has us well positioned to continue growth in this uncertain economic environment,” remarked Sudhir Agarwal, Founder and CEO of Everise.

Everise moved 90 percent of its 12,000 strong global workforce onto a secure Desktop as a Service (Daas), work at home (W@H) solution in under two weeks during March 2020, which in no small part was a factor that supported increased demand from their enterprise customers.

“We are a people-first company who has entrepreneurship and innovation in our DNA. It is critical that we live these values during a crisis to offer a superior brand experience,” says Sudhir Agarwal, Founder and CEO of Everise.

Creating personalized customer touchpoints

Everise’s operations support a trend in Asia for digitally savvy and increasingly discerning consumers in Asia who expect brands to speak with one voice and to provide hassle-free, omnichannel experiences.

What is easily overlooked is that consumers perceive that when interacting across different touchpoints with the brand, the brand knows who they are. For example, if you buy a branded product, you might expect the brand to know who you are when you buy a different product from them. Consumers don’t want to repeat answers to questions or fill in similar information that they’ve already provided once to the brand.

However, only 35% of companies provide an omnichannel customer service experience, as traditionally, it has been difficult to cater to a consumer’s need for varied channels of communication. When a company invests heavily in cross border expansion, providing multiple communication touchpoints - say across voice, email, chat, video or social media - may be cost-inhibitive.

But particularly in Malaysia, Everise is well set up to provide this experience. Brands can tap Everise, which already has varied channels for communications, to easily enable their customers to interact with their brand in the manner they prefer.

Everise keeps track of the customer information across any channel, and, armed with analytics and appropriate information, connects the dots behind the scenes, thereby helping the brand to create an omnichannel experience, providing a seamless and personalised consumer journey at key touchpoints. The brand benefits from integrated analytics that provide relevant business intelligence and an accurate summary of customer sentiment.

To this end, Everise, through Globee, aim to attract a greater number of native speakers to grow their customer service champions base and contribute to the BPO’s sector growth. If you are interested in working with Everise, visit weareeverise.com. We look forward to welcoming you!

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Notes to Editors:

Sudhir Agarwal, CEO of Everise, shares more about this story in a video viewable with English and Japanese subtitles, where he explains:

• Why Everise, through Globee, is hiring more Japanese-speaking agents at this time despite worldwide economic contractions
• How Everise was able to move 90% of its 12,000 strong global workforce to a work-at-home model within two weeks in March 2020
• His vision for Everise as a company delivering seamless omnichannel customer experiences to meet growth opportunities in Japan and Asia

Media Contacts

Illka Gobius
Pinpoint PR
+65 9769 8370
illka@pinpointpr.sg

Jade Randall
Everise
+65 8868 1022
Jade.Randall@weareeverise.com