Greater incentives, better training support and cheaper bandwidth were just three of the common themes to come up at a recent round table discussion on contact centres at ITWeb's Rivonia offices.
“SA is nowhere near achieving its potential. In fact, any successes in this area are a matter of debate,” says Paul Fick, MD of Spescom DataFusion. “If we are to stop bleeding business to India and other third-tier destinations, we need to see more government incentives put in place and the cost of bandwidth must come down.” ,,,,,
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Is anyone listening?
Almost inevitably, any conversation around contact centres must turn to the cost of telecommunications, which is universally identified as one of the major stumbling blocks in the way of the industry. Simply put, Telkom's exorbitant costs are choking it.
“Telecoms costs make up 40% of contact centre operations,” says e-Centric's Broome. “The problem is that there is no recourse if the major operator lets you down. We have had to become used to working with Telkom's non-existent business approach.”
Horror stories abound of contact centre operators signing agreements with Telkom months in advance of going live in new facilities – only to find that on the day they are supposed to start installing, Telkom shrugs its shoulders. It is no isolated incident, either, if the anecdotes are anything to go by.
For all the anger and frustration though, very few people are prepared to go on the record with their gripes. Jacques du Toit, director of Orion Telecom, is less inclined to pull his punches. He says SA's telecoms sector continues to be stymied by “punitive and superfluous” regulatory structures that are gravely impeding the development of the call centre industry.
“There's no doubt that we need to restructure the telecoms regulatory environment if we want to compete with the likes of India, Mexico and the Philippines,” says Du Toit.
T-Systems' Mould gives a sobering perspective: SA's telecoms costs are up to 20 times higher than other major contact centre destinations, making deregulation at wholesale level critical.
The good news is that Neotel's entry to the market, and Telkom's pending loss of monopoly over the SAT3 cable, should bring prices down in the not-too-distant future, says Storm's voice business unit manager Kevin Jacobson. “We're also seeing new technology making life easier. As wireless replaces Diginet, and the quality of the service comes of age, costs are coming down.”
