subject: Telecom Prices Hold Back Answering Service Deals [print this page] Telecom Prices Hold Back Answering Service Deals
The primary aim of the answering service industry is to make a significant cut in costs. Business firms all over the world are hiring offshore BPO firms for a single main reason: cheaper services. The offshore call center units are being built in markets which are less expensive. From a cursory glance of the business outsourcing industry you will understand that these units are all based in countries which have a developing economy. The infrastructural facilities come in later. Primarily it's the cost to get the job done.
There is a slight hitch there for some economies. Despite knowing that a call center hub can change things drastically for them, they are unable to make use of that. A case in point would be South Africa. South Africa has all the advantages that BPO investors look for. Save one. The telecom prices in the country are too high. The answering service industry is having a tough time making the numbers toll free because the prices are too steep. Jack Morrison, a business outsourcing planner, says, "South Africa is too expensive when it comes to business costs to be incurred. It defies the cardinal logic of an offshore destination: cost cut."
The high telecom price is not the only problem here. The latency rate is way too high as well. The latency rate is the amount of time it needs for a packet data to go and come back to a point. Because of the delay in the data transfer, the call center industry is taking a beating. Regulating call volumes on the part of the inbound call center team becomes tough. This, in turn, leads to a call clutter. Customer care services are affected. Customers may also be facing long hold times. The whole BPO process, which is essentially dealing with telecommunications, goes for a toss.
The governments of such destinations are waking up and taking notice. They realize that they are losing out on the lucrative call center pie. There are numerous economic models out there for them to study to check how much BPO hubs have changed the fate of countries. In places like India and the Philippines, the answering service industry is a real money spinner. Thousands of jobs are generated every month. This is extremely handy for governments who cannot cope with rising populations with industries and enough jobs. It would be a fairly expensive deal if governments lose out on all this revenue because they were not able to provide proper phone and internet connection.
Let's go back to the example of South Africa. Sensing their drawbacks, the government has sanctioned a 320kms long optical fiber network set-up. This will make it easier for the BPO firms to build a call center hub there. Their efforts look set to pay off. Other administrators who face problems in offering themselves as premiere offshore answering destinations need to sit up and take notice. There is a lot of work in this sector and the possibilities are shooting up alright. Now is the time to join the roller coaster.
