Coimbatore: Aegis-promoted Institute of Customer Experience Management (ICEM), world’s first and only institute dedicated to building managers for the services sector,today held its first convocation ceremony at the institute’s sprawling state-of-the-art campus spread across 40,000 square feet on Amankullam Road.

Mr. Aparup Sengupta, MD & Global CEO, Aegis Ltd., Mr. Subir Ghosh, President, Aegis Global Academy, and Dr. N. Ravichandran, Director, IIM Indore, attended the glittering function in the company of parents of several students. Also present were the current batch of students undergoing the 15-month post graduate programme. The passing out batch had interned with leading organisations like Vodafone, Shoppers Stop, Essar Oil & Gas, Net Elixir, Customer Centria, Mom&Me, Aegis Limited, NMore and Aegis Analytics. Currently they are undergoing their final placement process with the same organisations.

Mr. Sengupta inaugurated the function by lighting the lamp and conferred the merit certificates to rank holders. In his address, spoke of the strong need the industry will face for such managers in the days to come, as “customer experience” becomes the only differentiator. Mr. Ghosh congratulated the students and thanked partners for reposing their faith in this nascent concept which will fulfil a very clear need-gap faced by the services industry in sourcing talent with a “service sector mind set”.

ICEM has been promoted by Aegis, a global outsourcing services company and part of the $17 billion Essar Group, along with partners Indian Institute of Management – Indore (IIM- I), Service Quality (SQ) Centre (SQ Centre, Singapore), and Customer Operations Performance Center (COPC Inc., USA).

The unique highlight of the programme is its 65% weightage to work experience comprising managing live customer channels of contact and internship opportunities, and 35% weightage to theory, totally leading to 100% job readiness. Students can opt to specialize in any of the five sectors, viz. telecom, banking, insurance, retail, and ITeS. The institute also conducts short term Executive Development Programmes.