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24% of our annual volume
Retail and e-commerce support.
Seasonal, chat-heavy, fresher-dominated. The batch is easier to fill and harder to keep. Ramps land in three weeks or they land late.
The festive maths.
October demand is not a surprise. It is the same every year and it is still handled late by most floors. A 300-seat festive ramp needs sourcing switched on in the second week of August, not the first week of September.
Our retail clients run two peaks: the Navratri-to-Diwali block, and the Republic Day and end-of-season sale block in January. A third, smaller peak sits around mid-year sale events. Quick-commerce clients have a flatter curve but a sharper daily one — evening escalation volume between 19:00 and 23:00 dictates their roster shape more than the calendar does.
| Week | Action | Cumulative joined |
|---|---|---|
| T-7 | Seat count and induction dates locked, JD frozen | 0 |
| T-6 | Sourcing live: campus feeders, referral, portals | 0 |
| T-5 | Drive one — 200 footfall, chat and typing stations | 85 |
| T-4 | Batch one inducts; drive two runs same Saturday | 170 |
| T-3 | Drive three; bench built to 18% | 255 |
| T-2 | Backfill for batch-one drop-offs | 300 |
| T-1 | Bench on standby, weekly top-up drive | 300 + 54 bench |
# chat / email support screen typing 35 wpm @ 95% acc grammar 20 items, pass 16 writing 2 live tickets, scored on tone / accuracy / closure multi-chat 3 concurrent simulation tools basic CRM navigation # auto-drop drop wpm < 30 drop grammar < 14 drop ticket reply copies template verbatim with wrong order id
Roles and bands
- Chat support associate2.2 – 3.2 LPA
- Email / ticket support2.4 – 3.4 LPA
- Order & returns desk2.2 – 3.0 LPA
- Seller support associate2.8 – 4.2 LPA
- Escalation / social desk3.2 – 4.8 LPA
- Team leader — support4.2 – 6.8 LPA
- Store & warehouse coordinator2.0 – 3.0 LPA
Sector-specific failure modes
Why retail batches leak.
Fresher expectation gap
Seventy per cent of the batch has never worked a rostered job. They expect fixed weekends. Countermeasure: the roster is shown as an actual four-week grid during the HR round, not described in words.
Seasonal-contract honesty
If the role ends in January, we say so at the drive. Batches told they are permanent and then released churn the referral channel for two quarters. We would rather fill slower.
Written English drift
Chat quality collapses when the floor hires on typing speed alone. The two-ticket writing sample stays in the process even under ramp pressure. It is the one round clients ask us to drop, and the one we do not.
Split shifts
Quick-commerce evening peaks push split rosters. Splits break commutes. We only offer splits to candidates within a 40-minute one-way boundary, and we say so on the JD.
Campus-feeder timing
Greater Noida and Ghaziabad undergraduate feeders dry up during university exams. The August and December windows are planned around the semester calendar, not around client urgency.
Post-peak retention
The best festive performers get poached in November. We hand the client a retained-talent list on day 45 so they can convert to permanent before the market does.
What we ask for on a retail mandate.
- Roster grid for the first four weeks, in writing, before the drive.
- Contract length stated plainly — permanent, six-month, or peak-season.
- Tool list for the tech round: CRM, ticketing, chat console.
- Whether the desk handles refunds and payments, which changes the BGV depth.
- Language mix. English-only, English plus Hindi, or a regional requirement.
Documents stay the same as every other mandate: Aadhaar, PAN, UAN where the candidate has prior employment, education proof, and a relieving letter for experienced hires. For freshers we take the final-semester marksheet or provisional certificate and log the degree completion date.
Twelve-month retail snapshot
- Mandates run19
- Agents joined1,640
- Largest single ramp340 seats
- Median sign-off to floor9 days
- Offer-to-join91%
- Day-30 retained82%
- Day-90 retained58%
- Sourced per joiner9
Day-90 retention is lower here than in BPO because a large share of these seats are seasonal by design. Contract-end exits are counted as attrition in this table rather than netted out.
Peak is on the calendar. Start seven weeks out.
Send seat count, roster grid and go-live date. We will work the ramp backwards and tell you the week sourcing has to start.