Impact Of The Call Center Industry Marketing Essay

Since customer service is given a lot of importance all over the world these days, thus call centers are in vogue. In order to keep up with their competitors, all companies need to avail the many services and advantages that call centers offer just to stay in the business. There is a lot of data available on the internet about call centers and their technology, some of this data has been summarized below:

A.FOREIGN LITERATURE:

The social and economic impact of the call center industry in Ireland by Charles Jobs

West Chester University, Chester, Pennsylvania, USA.

This article tells about the call centre industry in Ireland. Call centre job is a white collar job and flakes and laminate industry. This article also tells this is the main employment industry in Ireland, and the social and economical effects of this industry.

3.6 percent Irish workforce get employed due to call centre industry. In Ireland it considered as industrial development agency Ireland. Call centers are now days plays their role as a strategic employer sector in Ireland.

Their public perception is that the call centers are the white collar sweatshop of the 21st century.

The question on which the research focuses mainly is:

RQ1: How do call center job pay compared to other Irish industries sectors?

Researcher also monitored the services which call center industry offers in Ireland which are of course related with the customer retention and satisfaction. (Charles Jobs, 2007)

Goodbye Call Centers: India Can’t Bank on Outsourcing to Stay Competitive, India West, News report, Michel W.Potts, Jun 06,2005

This article gives a clearer picture of the call center industry in India. This is crucial to the research because India happens to be our immediate neighbor and unless our country matches up to their level of outsourcing services, we cannot possibly think of defeating them in the global outsourcing race. The article mentions that if India really wants to take lead in IT , he should change his course of action.

In the view of economical critics, India has been seen as short term paradox.

Due to 20% percent increasing wages rate in the IT workers of India. Many American companies has losing his interest from this, previously they are considered it as cheaper market than other countries.

Mauritius, Dubai Haiti, Cairo, Bangladesh and Egypt are giving tough competition to India in this industry.

Many American companies like Texas instrument and general electric have already shifted from India to Egypt and Mauritius as they have workforce of 1000 people and they working for Microsoft.

The author said that India should work or improve its value chain and make it as their competitive advantage.

India should also improve its education and infrastructure in order to compete globally.

India should upscale its standard from data processing to software products. Not even this only he should upscale the every activity from manufacturing to service.

The author said that due to the government intervention, infrastructure, scales and partnership can be improved.

India should think that companies not only see low cost, so they also work in the area of manufacturing, scaling, quality etc. and improve its mastery.

He further said that increasing wages rate is a good sign of buying power due to which more foreign investment will occur.

This report tells us that if our country works hard and fast enough, we might just be able to leave India behind in the outsourcing industry.

Accents, Wages Threaten India’s Gains on Outsourcing, Siliconeer,News Analysis, Siddharth Srivastava, Mar 21,2004

This article highlights a major problem that India has been facing over the past several years and for which it has received much criticism

The main problem is that Indians accents are different from Americans and British. Just because of this many American companies shift back to U.S.A. from India due to malcontent.

Problem is that one of its customer complaining that they not respond and not give this service best. They have no knowledge about the people or area from where they called so in this way they cannot explore, feel out or confront the problem of customer.

Although American companies have lower cost advantage in India but they are also fearful of low quality business and process outsourcing.

Annually Indian outsourcing industry is expanding from the rate of 60 -70%. Revenues are also increasing at growing rate but from low level skilled workers.

Foreign companies go there where they found low cost and good infrastructure. Many companies move their business from one country to other another just because of this, so India must be learned from this.

Malaysia, Philippines and china are giving tough competition to India in this field. Many foreign companies had been moved here.

The solution of these problems is that India should improve its quality and retrained its employee or workforce or get good command over speaking English.

Due to substantial cost difference many of managing head of call centre think that this business would not moved from here at least.

Many gurus have been warned India that their low cost strategy is short term and in near future may be any other country can be price competitive. In spite of seeing short term aspect they should also focus on long term strategy which includes better quality, service, infrastructure, value chain and training of manpower.

This article gives us a bright outlook of the future of Pakistani call center industry since we know that our neighbor is facing quite some problems in its outsourcing industry

B.LOCAL LITERATURE:

Call Centers; the new name given to customer services by Shabbir H.Kamzi:

This article emphasizes upon the importance of call centers in today’s world. To gain an edge over their competitors, the companies are now looking for technology or services that differentiate them from the rest of the businesses. In this article writer tries to tell us that the world population is growing huge day by day and it’s not an easy task to cater to each and every customer personally and for that reason the call center technology is used because it makes the interaction so much easier and faster and the customer can be fully satisfied. Furthermore the database set up by these call centers makes the access to information more simple and easy. The article also makes a note of the two success stories in the Pakistani call industry that are TRG and ZRG and how their establishment has opened up new avenues for the new-born call center industry in Pakistan. The writer also states that these call centers are emerging as major employment providers and are also becoming a major source of foreign exchange earnings. The article also refers to an analyst’s view that India may be a little cheaper but it suffers from a dialect problem which gives Pakistan a major advantage over its neighbor because Pakistanis have a clearer and simpler dialect and accent. The article also provides us with a positive outlook of the call center industry in Pakistan considering our country is not short of quality manpower at competitive rates.

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Call center as a profit generator: A call center can save you money and even generate additional revenues by Maaz Ahmed Shamsi.

The writer of the article starts off by making a note of how the call center contributes to product support and productivity levels in an organization. It’s for this reason that the managers nowadays view it as a profit center rather than a cost center.

Call center provides high level customer services which can help a company distinguish itself from its competitors. Also since a call center is a 24/7 unit, it helps the customers round the clock. The writer also states that a call center can directly generate sales for a company by dialing out to potential customers and creating a need for the products and services of a company. Also, the company can answer the queries of customers and listen to their comments.

The writer predicts that the call center operations will continue to increase in importance as the organizations focal point of the customer experience.

Millionaire dreams: are call centers proving to be much awaited antidote to our lame duck local tech scene , by Salman Siddiqui

The writer has taken a very detailed view of the current state of call center industry in Pakistan and has given us a lot of important facts. The article mentions that call centers are only just the tip of the huge business process outsourcing (BPO) iceberg. The BPO services offered by an offshore firm may include many areas other than the call centre operation; such as developing software programs, building computer graphics and animation modules, accounting, legal research, medical transcription, financial analysis etc Also the article mentions that foreign companies, like those in the US, save up to 40 per cent in revenues through outsourcing back office operations such as call centers to cheaper offshore firms. But while jobs get created in these offshore locations, many are also lost in the country from which the work is outsourced. Forrester Research predicts that 1 in 9 jobs in the US information technology industry will move overseas by 2010.

The writer also makes a note of the leaders in the outsourcing industry; he tells us that currently, India leads the sector, earning 3.5 billion dollars in revenues last year.

The article also mentions that the number of call centers in Pakistan is fast increasing. These Call centers are already challenging the working norms in the country, where one is required to work at odd hours.

This article also tells us that India is reaping the benefits today because of its education system, especially its high caliber technology learning institutes like IIT, which was developed way back under a long-term plan. Serious neglect of academics in the past is gravely limiting Pakistan in its capacity to provide skilled manpower to the global BPO markets. At the moment it seems the only advantage we have over India is our relatively better English accents, a tag line that has been drummed to death by all parties concerned. But if we are to generate 100,000 agents in the next three to five years, we can’t use it as our only trump card. India is set to become the world’s largest English-speaking force by the year 2010, and with its accent reduction training centers we’ll soon lose that advantage too. The trick is to concentrate on developing long-term strategies.

Call Center Industry to raise employment: Minister for Information Technology, Reports Business Recorder April 12,2005

This piece of news from Business Recorder states that Minister for Information Technology, Owais Ahmad Khan Leghari said that due to facilities and incentives provided by government, call centre industry is booming and employment rate is also increasing because of it.

The call centres which are running in Pakistan are full of art facilities and equipment, this industry is also fulfilling the requirement of human recourse.

In his workshop he addresses the call centre agent that it’s good that IT companies are concentrating on quality, because without it we can’t compete internationally.

He further said that those call centre agent who are dealing in urban areas, they should be more trained, skilled and should high command on speaking English

More than three thousand people are working in call centre industry and every month the rate is increasing.

Board has stated a project of 6 days training workshop that would result in participants becoming Contact Operations Performance Centre (COPC) Registered Co-coordinators. COPC measures processes within a contact/call centre and determines their robustness and efficiency. The COPC certification gives a certain amount of confidence to international customers and credibility to the operator. This news tells us of the confidence that the ministry of IT has in the call center industry and the initiatives that they are taking for training the local people to be effective call center employees.