‘Monopoly hinders sector’s progress’
“On the other hand, government is championing the local call-centre industry and saying it has high hopes for its future.”
He says the high cost of telecommunications results in a 20% to 30% premium on telecommunications prices compared with major offshore call- centre outsourcing competitors such as India and the Philippines.
“Our research shows that 10000 jobs have been lost in SA by losing offshore business to competitors such as these.”
The consumer protection and the data privacy legislation that are in the pipeline are likely to have a further negative impact on this market, says Jones.
If promulgated as currently drafted, this legislation will preclude call centres from making unsolicited calls, for example for the purposes of marketing and telesales.
He says this could cut out 20000 to 25000 call-centre jobs.
Meanwhile, African countries such as Botswana, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda are moving rapidly into the offshore callcentre market, and their governments are removing all barriers to entry, he says.
“English is the first language in these countries. They are turning out large numbers of graduates and employees have a positive work ethic,” says Jones.
On the positive side, the local industry is experiencing good growth, especially in the banking, insurance and cellphone industries, he says.
In addition, there is a lot of call-centre activity in the automotive, leisure and the fast moving consumer goods industries, and a number of larger outsource operators are doing well, he says.
Another promising growth area is the public sector, because governments worldwide see call centres as the ideal vehicle for delivering services, says Jones.
“In this country, the SARS has a truly world-class call centre and so has the trade and industry department.”
He says the department originally awarded a tender to eCentric to manage and perfect its call-centre processes on an outsourced basis, and the company then assisted the department to build its own infrastructure and handed over a working operation.
“It is probably an ideal model for public-sector call centres.”
Jones says the British government has set up a unified standard for government for more than 500 hundred departmental call centres in the country that are delivering low-cost, efficient and effective services, and Australia is following the same route.
He says Rod Jones Strategic Solutions has developed training courses that provide fundamental guidelines for setting up or re engineering a call-centre operation. “We have developed two others for designing, building and deploying a world-class call centre and for managing it.”
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