The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is mulling to set up a call centre that will cater to the queries related to the first computer-based Common Management Admissions Test (CMAT) which will mark its beginning from 2012.

The call centre service, would handle domestic and international test candidate calls, faxes, and e-mail correspondences and AICTE expects test candidate calls to be in the context of registration, seat assignments, test centre conditions, and test support. The call centre would be set up by the same agency that would conduct the CMAT next year.

?We don?t have any such mechanism within the AICTE at present and this call centre would cater to the queries of students and parents. The firm which wins the tender will set up the call centre,? said SS Mantha, AICTE chairman.

Incidentally, the council has fixed a minimum revenue requirement of R100 crore for education companies willing to bid for the project and it may enter into an initial 3-5 year contract, but plans to retain overall control over test-generation and delivery mechanism.

The tender floated by the council asks the bidders to indicate the reply-time guaranteed to answer phone calls, e-mail messages, and faxes during the peak-load period and the way AICTE could survey callers from time to time to ensure that test takers? needs are being served and that answers provided are correct and timely. Besides, the call centre will also handle queries related to tutorials and preparatory materials, test policies, scores, problems with the test experience, test challenges and reports of improprieties.

Mantha added that the centre will have to cover 630 districts of the country and their multiple centres, some of which are not accessible.

The tender has also asked the interested parties to outline the location of call centres and the person-in-charge for the call centres who will be responsible for the call centre activities and who will be answerable to AICTE in real time. Moreover, the company which bags the contract will have to do the integration of the call centre activities with the online registration system and state the reply-time in which test related materials will be received by requesting party.

CMAT-2012 will be conducted from February 20-28, 2012, and is expected to cater to about 2.5 lakh candidates across the country.