{"id":549554,"date":"2006-07-19T07:18:10","date_gmt":"2006-07-19T07:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/549554-monopoly-hinders-sector-s-progress.html"},"modified":"2006-07-19T07:18:10","modified_gmt":"2006-07-19T07:18:10","slug":"monopoly-hinders-sector-s-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/549554-monopoly-hinders-sector-s-progress.html","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Monopoly hinders sector\u2019s progress\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn the other hand, government is championing the local call-centre industry and saying it has high hopes for its future.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n

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. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cOur research shows that 10000 jobs have been lost in SA by losing offshore business to competitors such as these.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n

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. <\/font><\/p>\n

If promulgated as currently drafted, this legislation will preclude call centres from making unsolicited calls, for example for the purposes of marketing and telesales. <\/font><\/p>\n

He says this could cut out 20000 to 25000 call-centre jobs. <\/font><\/p>\n

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. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cEnglish is the first language in these countries. They are turning out large numbers of graduates and employees have a positive work ethic,\u201d says Jones. <\/font><\/p>\n

On the positive side, the local industry is experiencing good growth, especially in the banking, insurance and cellphone industries, he says. <\/font><\/p>\n

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. <\/font><\/p>\n

Another promising growth area is the public sector, because governments worldwide see call centres as the ideal vehicle for delivering services, says Jones. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cIn this country, the SARS has a truly world-class call centre and so has the trade and industry department.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n

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. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is probably an ideal model for public-sector call centres.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n

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. <\/font><\/p>\n

He says Rod Jones Strategic Solutions has developed training courses that provide fundamental guidelines for setting up or re engineering a call-centre operation. \u201cWe have developed two others for designing, building and deploying a world-class call centre and for managing it.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n

INet-Bridge ||\u00a0 <\/font>Discuss this article<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE call-centre industry is facing many challenges, not least of which is that government continues to maintain a monopolistic telecommunications environment resulting in high prices, says specialist consultant Rod Jones, of Rod Jones Strategic Solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}