For several years VFS Global has been working the community to get passport/visa/OCI services from the Indian embassy and consulates. Over the years it streamlined and digitized most of its services.
Sonia Dhayagude is covering the span of the company’s presence across, U.S, Canada, South America and the Caribbean. Having spent over 20+ years at VFS across multiple regions and roles, she has covered various functions including Operations, Project management, Solution designing, Transition, Relationship management and worked across VFS Global’s offices across India, USA and Colombia .
Bringing forward her management experience in the hospitality industry she has been instrumental in setting up several centers and processes for key client governments across the globe.
An avid reader, Sonia prefers historical fiction and motivational genre of books and loves traveling which is usually with her family.
Sonia Dhayagude, head-Americas for VFS Global, spoke to Indialife about the services and its expectations in the aftermath of COVID-19.
Q: It’s been an unprecedented few years; how are things picking up for travel now?
A: Yes, after a year or so of pandemic-induced lockdowns, the world is looking to travel again. We’re increasingly seeing people optimistic about traveling as there is a lot of pent-up demand. People are excited to travel to both international and domestic destinations. We have also noticed that the customers are planning their trips and applying for documentation a lot more in advance. Measures like opening of international borders, ease of travel restrictions, and the resumption of regular international flights are bearing fruit. We have seen people applying almost 6 months in advance. This surge in travel activity has been a pleasant surprise despite the effects of the pandemic still prevalent in certain parts of the world.
Q: Revenge tourism seems to be the newly coined term that is being used to define the amount of travel expected and seen. Are there any numbers that you could talk about for travel now, in comparison to the pre-pandemic times?
A: Actually, that is true, but I wouldn’t know if that is revenge tourism (laughs). I think people are just excited to be out of homes and travel again. A lot was put on hold during the pandemic; be it travel for business or leisure, or even education for students. People are finally going back to attending colleges, training courses, and travelling for pleasure and we see tourism and leisure travel sector driving the demand.
In terms of visa application volumes, VFS Global received double the number of applications between January and August this year compared to the same period last year.
Q: VFS Global has also been dealing with this entire crisis very differently; actually coming out with a lot of proactive measures, services etc. What are the new things that you introduced to make processes simpler & easier?
A: We’ve set-up a completely online process, therefore facilitating the India processes including passports, OCI or even applying for visas, completely from home. We now have end to end online processes where you can apply and make the full payment online. Once the online process is complete and your documents are ready, you can send them to us via courier. After the decision on your documents has been made, they will get delivered back to your home, therefore almost entirely eliminating any need for you to leave your home.
We have introduced form filling assistance through our phone lines. We have setup a process wherein you can call us or go to our website to apply for form filling assistance. Once you set up an appointment, an agent will call and help you fill up the forms or assist with services like uploading a photograph or any other related help. This has been built into a robust process enhancement through constant customer feedback incorporating the minutest of details. The idea is to make the processes easier, simpler and of course faster to ensure the timely processing of applications.
Our centers also have the facility to take your photograph, photocopy your documents and provide other services related to your application. So, for everything our offices will remain a one stop shop in person and offer all assistance at prices approved by the Embassy of India. We are ensuring we send out the right message to people telling them all our services are now available in-person while the online facilities remain in parallel.
In addition, for those who are not able to come to our offices, our teams have started bringing the service to them via consular camps. These camps have been successful in letting us connect with the community; accept the applications close to their homes. We have successfully completed camps at several locations now and intend to conduct many over the next few months.
Q: How’s the overall response been to your Consular camps? What are the areas that have been covered so far and what places do you intend to conduct more in the future?
A: The Consular Camps have been a really nice concept and the embassy and Consulate of India have been working with us very closely on this. We’ve been working with several federations through the embassy and respective consulates tagged to those places where either we identify locations; or get invited to conduct the camps. Our team of experts and trained staff visits these locations prior to the camp and sets up an appointment system. This ensures we facilitate processes systematically and people are prepared and ready with the required documents. We rely on a guidance document and at the camp our staff accepts your applications and goes through it. If there’s a document missing or a mistake that needs to be rectified our staff will try and help resolve it at the location itself. It saves people the time that they would otherwise take to travel to our office locations.
Our Consular camps are normally conducted on a Saturday to facilitate and help those who work during the week also making it convenient and close to the local community. We have so far completed 16 consular camps in 6 cities. People have appreciated the consular camps and we get a fairly big turnout of applicants at these camps, making them a success. Once the applications are accepted they are sent back to our office and processed as is.
Q: In which cities have you already conducted these camps and what have the responses been like so far?
A: In this year alone, we have successfully completed 16 consular camps in 6 cities. We have participated in a few of them in the jurisdiction of the Embassy of India and Consulates of New York consulate and Chicago and more. We will be participating in a few camps very soon in the jurisdiction of the San Francisco consulate. We are open to facilitate these camps in any region where an association or a community would like us to come with the go ahead of the Embassy of India/Consulate. This process will continue through this year and once a camp is finalized, we will make these announcements on our website in advance, so people get to know. I would recommend that you keep a lookout for any notification on our website for the upcoming camps. We open the appointment slots well in advance so that our customers can avail this service and be prepared with documentation. We prefer that you come by appointment, as it helps us to be more prepared and make sure that the required support or a team size is available to support the entire community that comes.
Q: Can associations and groups reach out to you in case there is an opportunity for Consular camps in any particular region?
A: Yes, absolutely. We are more than happy to receive such requests. We work with the consulates and the embassy so if any Federation or Association feels the need for a camp please feel free to reach out to us and we can forward the request to the Embassy or the Consulate. You can reach us directly via an email at communications@vfsglobal.com. We run all requests with the embassy or the Consulate concerned for their approval and feedback.
Q: What are the new services that you have introduced to make the processes faster?
A: We have introduced services such as Digital Document Check for our other client Missions, which enables customers to get their application documents verified before visiting an application center, thereby making the experience less time-consuming. Our enhancements to the form-filling process will also help you upload and digitally complete the process from home, or take help from our call center, ensuring the correctness and speed of the process itself.
Q: With the various variants of the virus now popping up, there remains a lot of ambiguity on the near-term future of travel. Do you foresee any concerns?
A: At least with the widespread vaccination across most countries’ things are getting much better now. Especially in the Americas, things look quite positive and there’s likely to be a lot more travel in the coming months as can already be seen this summer. Having said this, we at VFS Global are strictly following all ‘Covid-19 protocols’ across all our offices. We ensure all our employees are ‘masked up’ and we insist that applicants follow the same rules to always protect themselves as well as our staff at all times. We are in compliance with the law of the state wherever we are based and follow the CDC guidelines very closely. We are hoping that this is the tail end of the pandemic and the worst is behind us.
