subject: Exploring Opportunities In Latin America [print this page] Currently, the most intriguing question is how far North American companies will go in penetrating emerging markets of Latin America in their zeal to find cost effective call center location.
According to Datamonitor, Mexico appeared to be one of the most attractive countries of Latin America for establishing cloud call centers for small, mid-sized and large businesses. The country has been stable for over a decade and represents a realistic alternative for reasonable investment in a new call center.
Statistics reports reveal a clear trend that number of call center agents positions increase. There were about 51,000 agents working on inbound/outbound calls in Mexico, while in 2007 there were already over 190,000 agents working in answering services for North American companies. It is quite realistic that number of call center agents in Mexico alone might increase to 500,000 within quite short period of time.
Mexico is rather advantageous place to establish remote contact office due to several reasons. First, it is an excellent source of Spanish-speaking, cost-efficient labor force that is able to service Spanish-speaking customers from the USA and Canada. Second, the country has proved to be a prospective partner with its stable political environment and rather sound economic situation. In addition, Mexico is a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement and is in close geographic proximity to the US and Canada.
Despite Mexico represents considerable share in the call center market in Caribbean and Latin American region, there are other countries that offer favorable opportunities for virtual office location. While there were about 200,000 agent positions in CALA region in 2002, this number increased to over 670,000 agent positions across the region in 2007.
Although overall growth trends were estimated to be promising in terms of starting inbound/outbound call centers in Latin America, there are numerous challenges in the countries that might smother success of new ventures in the region. Some countries in the region have been torn by political instability, increasing domestic and foreign debt and overvalued currencies that increase costs and investor uncertainty.
Nevertheless, majority of countries in Latin America, including Mexico and Chile, represent remarkable opportunities to outsource answering services despite the fact that economic turmoil in some countries like Argentina show no prospect for exorbitant growth of call centers.
Latin America is quite favorable and promising region for North American companies to establish their call centers in the region. Attractiveness of the region is supported by inexpensive labor force that has sufficient bilingual skills to provide answering services to English-speaking and Spanish-speaking customers from the US and Canada.
