By Demet Dyanch: staff writer for Seawave Media and the call centre outsourcing service The Market Leaders.
Call Centers provide a valuable service to both customers and businesses alike. As the First Point of Contact, trained call center agents are skilled in all levels of communication and responding to queries, handling calls, and serving customers. From a business angle, call centers relieve a business of this very important first point communication so that the business can focus on its core goals.
Many more businesses, small and large, are investing in outsourcing their call center services.
Over the years, many call centers are now being outsourced to countries world wide.
Aisa is one of the top five locations for outsourced call centers and here is why….
Aisa has a large and fast growing economy. Whilst the West has developed many IT and infrastructure systems and functions effectively, countries in Aisa are stepping up to the mark.
The biggest benefit of outsourcing to countries in Aisa is it’s far more cost-effective.
Lets take India for instance – an eclectic country with a fast developing business sense. It has a large population of young people, who can speak English very well, are educated and hungry to succeed.
The salaries paid to these employees are less than would be paid to a western employee since the national average varies from location to location. Even though the amount paid to the employee is less, the employee feels satisfied as the quota is very good. The end result is that you can pay employees less in India (less than you would to an employee in say the UK) but it is still a more than reasonable salary in India. Plus you basically get the same or even better quality of service for your money. Business Savvy!
Not only are your costs reduced with salaries but is the running of the call center. It’s not cheap to run a call center when you consider the equipment that needs to be bought, sustained and developed; not to mention the growing rate of technology that requires systems to be continually updated. In India, the costs of these tangible goods are cheaper. It’s also cheaper to run the office from a utility point of view -where electricity, water, and gas etc are cheaper than the West.
India is a fast developing country and has a highly advanced satellite-based telecommunication network helps in high-speed transfer of voice and data from all over the world.
As a nation hungry to become developed, the Indian government is very supportive of the IT industry and does all it can to nurture it.
So, India has been a country where many call centers have popped up and have been offering this call center service to many businesses worldwide.#
The success of this has resulted in other countries in Asia to jump on the bandwagon. The next to follow was the Philippines. The Philippines like India is a country that is developing at a fast rate. For businesses in the west, like in India, the Philippines are a cost-effective country to run a call center. Like with India, the salaries paid to employees are less than the UK, and the cost of running the infrastructure is also less expensive. The Philippines have been so successful in marketing their outsourcing services that they have actually taken over India. One of the main reasons why is thought to be because the Philippines has a large English-speaking population with a literacy rate of 94%, and a large, and cost-competitive workforce of IT professionals?
For US companies particularly the Philippines are a better bet. The Philippines having previously been an American colony resulted in a lot of American Culture being infused within its social modern culture. The Philippines are more Americanized, and this certainly helps when communicating with Americans who call the call center. The sense of familiarity works!
The UK, London and other regions, like Bradford; for example, have a large Indian population. Indian culture and dialect are not new to the UK, so speaking with an Indian still holds some sense of familiarity, where trust can develop. The UK is a much smaller country than the US, tiny in comparison, and though an icon of a country, the size being smaller impacts the outsourcing options. If Americans like the familiarity of the Philippine call center agents, and America has far more businesses than the UK by sheer size of the country, then it is no surprise that the Philippines have taken India over.
What will India do about this? See my next article for more.
This article was written by Demet Dayanch of Seawave Media and the call centre outsourcing service The Market Leaders (www.themarketleaders.co.uk )