American Online Inc is expanding its Indian operations to enhance customer acquisition and support services for its members worldwide.

AOL is the world leader in interactive services, Web brands, Internet technologies, and e-commerce services.

Within a year of setting up the American Online Member Services Ltd in the International Technology Park at Whitefield on the outskirts of Bangalore, the facility has ramped up its employee strength to 1,500 by June from 200 initially.

"To meet the increasing demand for support services out of India, we will be hiring another 400-500 employees by this year-end and scale-up our operations to undertake product and technology related projects," declared AOL's executive vice-president Neil Smit on Tuesday.

Although the subsidiary has a lower attrition rate than the call centre industry (currently at about 40 percent), the management is introducing innovative campaigns to attract and retain the best talent in the industry.

As AOL's largest single such facility, the Indian in-bound call centre caters to its members worldwide, especially in the United States on a 24x7 basis round the year.

Investment figures have not been disclosed.

Besides six such centres across the US, the company has another facility at Manila in the Philippines, where about 1,000 employees operate.

"Our business expansion plans are driven by member needs, and we see India as a great place to fulfill this need. We are impressed by the skilled workforce, which is motivated and trained to perform at optimal level," Smit stated.

The state-of-the-art facility handles about 10 million calls annually from the global firm's 35-million members, averaging 22 calls per day.

"We handle over 10 percent of the 110 million calls generated every year by our members seeking support in multiple services ranging from Internet usage, registration process for advertising products and content, including news, music, video and streaming," Smit disclosed.

On an average, an AOL member spends about 70 minutes per day going online to access mails, conduct interactive sessions, chat, and download music and video clippings.

"To enhance our service portfolio, we are also launching the AOL 9.0 Optimiser this September for broadband connection through digital signal processing and cable lines," he said.

Another customised product on the anvil is Super Buddies, which enables animated icons (emoticons) to pop up on the screen for use to express the various moods of the members through e-mail and chat.

The centre also plans to have a dedicated team to effectively tackle the menace of spam on the Net and facilitate seamless quality service to its members.

AOL, however, has no plans to offer its Internet services in India currently.

Outside the US, it has about 8 million members in Europe, Australia, and Japan.