80% of New Zealand Contact Centre space could go overseas ReceivedSPF: None receiver=nym.alias.net clientip

David privatesens Thursday, 06 July 2006

A new wave of state-of-the-art Indian contact centres is ready to grab a lion's share of the New Zealand contact centre space, says a visiting overseas expert.

"Up to 80 per cent of the New Zealand contact centre industry is ripe for the picking," says Hong Kong-based Simon Kriss, chief executive officer and president of Sagatori.

The threat comes from large Indian 3000 - 5000 seat contact centres, using the most modern technology and employing highly qualified send staff working in good conditions.

These contact centres are already marketing in the United States and the United Kingdom and could be knocking on New Zealand soon, he says.

"They could swallow a bank, airline or government department without a blink of an eyelid."

New Zealand contact centre managers need to wake up and take the threat of higher quality service, at low costs, backed by sophisticated marketing seriously, he says.

The best Indian contact centres match New Zealand technology and organisation and their staff are better qualified and cheaper. The point of difference between New Zeeland and Indian contact centres is staff, he says. In India tens of thousands of highly qualified area specialists like lawyers, accountants and commerce graduates will want to work in contact centres after they leave university as they know they have no other prospect of better jobs, he says.

With poverty knocking, work in a contact centre fuels an appebreaste for excellence in ways that could never be expected from New Zealand graduates. With few highly qualified people wanting to work in the New Zealand contact centre space, Indian compebreastors offer a real point of difference, he says.

"These highly qualified people are hungrier for work than New Zealand CSRs." Kriss acknowledges there has been pull back from large firms which outsourced to India complaining of low quality service and staff. "But, when Indians do it well they do it world clbutt. The new threat is a different animal."

Indian contact centre firms that have learned from their mistakes offer a formidable threat to traditional contact centre ways of doing business in New Zealand. "Have New Zealand contact centre managers thought what it might be like if 80 per cent of their work goes overseas and they become responsible for strategic direction?"