Asian Outsourcers Gearing For Growth
06 March 2005
By Syed Amir Ali Hashmi
Asian Outsourcers Gearing For Growth
The Outsourcing trend is far from over, with the latest call centres net study indicating about 60 per cent of the call centres in the Asian major outsourcing markets expect to expand their operations in the next 12 months to keep up with demand. Some of the big names that are planning to expand are V Customer. Daksh, GE. Teleperformance India etc.
Callcentres.net’s “2004 Asian Call Centre Industry Benchmark Study – Dynamic Asian Markets conducted by ACA Research, and supported by Kelly Services, Avaya and witness systems found that China, South Korea, India and the Philippines have emerged as the star performers of the past year.
In the coming 12 months, 83 per cent of all call centres in these markets anticipate some sort of change to their operation, with about 2/3 expecting to grow their operations. This trend is led by India with 64 percent predicting growth. The Philippines at 53 per cent and China at 50 per cent.
During the last 12 months, all of the markets with the exception of the Philippines spent considerable time and effort developing and upgrading their technology and phone systems.
Staff recruitment continues to be a problem for Asian call centres, especially in the Philippines and Korea. The concept of “teleworking”, or working from home, is becoming more popular especially in call centres in China and India.
Mr. Dhirendra Shantilal, Vice President and Managing Director (Asia) of Kelly Services, commented that the call centre business for Kelly Services Asia has seen a substantial growth. “There has been and increase of 20-30 per cent more organisations approaching us for our assistance in staffing call centre positions. It is evident that this industry is still in the growth stage in Asia. When demand exceeds supply due to the fast growth, the scale is tipped towards the workers naturally. As a result, companies have started paying special attention to career planning and ongoing training of their staff as they realize the importance of retention.”
For some organisations, outsourcing was inevitable, as shareholders demanded maximised profits. But as call centre sizes in the major Asian markets continue to grow, so do their levels of staff turnover. Over 50 per cent of staff that leave these call centres leave to work in a competing facility, which on a supply and demand basis will have an impact on wages. Interestingly, with the exception of South Korea, staff costs are between 40 per cent – 50 per cent of operating costs for Asian call centres compared to 60 per cent and 70 per cent in first world environments.
“With a high rate of attrition among call centre staff, hiring right talent and retaining them becomes very important. Kelly Services has invested considerable resources to ensure that we are able to find the right talent for our clients. One of this is KellyConnect, an interactive training system to train inbound and outbound call centre against.”