FROM THE FILE  Company: iQor Inc. Position: President and chief executive officer Education: Bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Princeton University in Princeton, N.J.; master’s degree in philosophy and master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University. Age: 45

NEW YORK – Vikas Kapoor, the president and chief executive officer of iQor Inc., a call center services company, has benefited from a successful professional life by doing what others may be afraid, shy or embarrassed to do – asking the dumb question.

Kapoor, 45, said he asks silly questions during iQor meetings and is not afraid to tell someone that he did not understand what they were talking about. He believes by asking basic questions, he helps others unleash their creative ideas, as well as the courage to pursue them.

Kapoor said one example of this kind of thinking was the name iQor itself. The New York City-based company recently changed its name to iQor from IntelliRisk Management Corp., which had a number of other companies under different names. So Kapoor asked the marketing department a basic, dumb question: isn’t it silly for one company to have 14 different names? From there, the marketing department came up with iQor.

Kapoor said the reason he is able to ask the dumb question freely and often is because of his own life experiences, which required him to deal with a lot of change.

Kapoor was born in Ajmer, in the state of Rajasthan, India. But he moved often, as his family was in the military and also diplomats. As a result, he experienced new cultures in countries like Australia and Austria. “Having to deal with that kind of change, I often had to ask the really dumb questions,” he said. 

When he was young, Kapoor earned a scholarship to go to school in England. Kapoor also earned another scholarship to Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., where he arrived in 1980 with $17 to his name. He graduated from Princeton with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Kapoor has passed these life lessons along to his team by getting them to ask fundamental questions and be creative.

“Once you deal with that kind of stuff and that kind of total change, asking the dumb, silly questions, which basically get you all the insight you need, is a lot easier. And that’s what I try to do with the team,” he said. 

Kapoor came to iQor in 2004 and has been instrumental in the company’s turnaround. Before he arrived, iQor – then known as IntelliRisk – had seen a decline in performance for five straight years. Since Kapoor arrived, the company has increased revenue and earnings, every quarter for the last two years, according to the company. iQor has also seen a rise in employees – in September 2006, the company employed 6,000 people, and by the end of this year, iQor will employ 7,500 people.

Before arriving at iQor, Kapoor was president and chief executive officer of Toronto-based Delano Technology. Before that, he was president and CEO of the Stamford, Conn.-based Walker Digital. Prior to that, he co-founded Mitchell Madison Group. He started his career with McKinsey & Co. Kapoor and has a master’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University.

In his years as a consultant and also with his time at Delano and now at iQor, Kapoor said he has enjoyed helping businesses turnaround. He said likes taking that jewel in the rough and trying to find its glitter. He enjoys turnaround efforts because he likes to take a losing team and turn it into a winner.

He views turnarounds as challenging because managing change is hard. But he takes a simple view – “The only way to do change management is to change management,” he said. According to him, if the team is incapable of doing what needs to be done, then he changes the team. For example, with iQor, of the top 100 people in the company, 80 are new employees.

Kapoor said that once the right team is in place, going from winning to losing is possible, although it is not easier.

“I say to people, ‘Look, winning is always fun, but taking a losing proposition or a losing team and making it win is really fun,’” he said.

In general, Kapoor said that before he took the job with iQor, he was interested in call centers. He thought it was a large industry that employs more than a couple of million people in the United States, one that is larger than the auto industry, handles a critical function for its clients, one that has witnesses double-digit growth, and one that has decent margins; yet it is also an industry that gets no respect.

“And so from a lot of different points of view, I felt that this is a very interesting industry, but I’ve also felt this industry is the Rodney Dangerfield of business. It doesn’t get a lot of attention, and it doesn’t get a lot of respect, certainly it doesn’t get the attention and respect that it deserves based on its size and importance,” he said. 

One of the many reasons for that is because the call center industry is fragmented, with no company that has created the technology, the global footprint, the people or the processes to deliver performance and earn the client’s respect, according to Kapoor.

“In a word, I don’t think the industry is fully modernized or professionalized and so I’ve, for quite some time, thought there was an opportunity to do a lot better in the call center industry,” he said.

When Kapoor was approached by iQor in 2004, he viewed it as an opportunity to prove his point about call centers. Kapoor also said he felt that the role of the United States in back-office processing had been undersold, and iQor, a company with facilities in the United States, has a good opportunity to show that this country could compete in the market and be a part of a global footprint. iQor also has other facilities in the Philippines, India, the United Kingdom and Canada, and is opening another facility in Mexico early next year.

Kapoor believes that call centers depend on where the talent lies. For example, if a company is looking for a call center to handle software and hardware computer problems, the talent for that particular work is more likely to be in India than in the Philippines or the United States. However, if someone is looking to restructure a complex financial product like a $100,000 student loan that needs to be renegotiated, the best place to go for a call center is in the United States.

Kapoor added there should also be a greater emphasis on a city and a zip code than a country. For example, he said there is a lot of technical talent in India, but little of its exists in New Delhi, for example. So what iQor tries to do is isolate skill sets to the appropriate labor market and then tells its customers that they want to segment their customer base or call pattern and send calls to the appropriate locations. Essentially, iQor’s approach discourages a battle of call centers between India and the Philippines versus the United States, but looks more at what is happening on the local level in cities.

Kapoor said he brought the tenet of this approach in to iQor. His team has been working on it over the past three years and they have continually gotten better at it. He believes this approach is one of the reasons why iQor has grown from quarter to quarter and also distinguishes the company from its competitors.    

However, as a general rule, iQor does what the client wants to do. Kapoor said when iQor speaks to clients, the company is indifferent, and the company is able to quickly pull call centers in and out of different cities for clients. But Kapoor said he also tells clients not to be married to any one location, and they should explore locations with iQor.  

Kapoor believes that iQor is at the forefront of companies thinking about how to play on a global playing field, and is one of the reasons why he enjoys being at iQor, in addition to the stresses and challenges of managing change, which he has found to be satisfying. 

Over the next five to 10 years, Kapoor said he would like iQor to be the standard for the call center industry, although the company still has another year to year and a half to go before its infrastructure and processes are completely set. Once that work is finished, Kapoor wants to see iQor become the pacesetter for how this work is done.