Employment in contact centres continues to grow. Key Note estimates that, in 2007, the number of people working in front-line customer contact is 862,070. Staff turnover in contact centres is high overall, but is generally lowest in contact centres serving the public sector. Pay in contact centres rose significantly between 2003 and 2007, especially for managers, and a career ladder, supported by training, has developed.
Large purpose-built contact centres are located mainly in areas qualifying for Selective Finance for Investment in the least affluent parts of the UK, such as north east England, Northern Ireland and large areas of Scotland and Wales. Contact centres for the public sector, often outsourced to private-sector companies, were a major trend in 2005 and 2006 that continued into 2007.
The global business-process outsourcing market slowed down in 2006, amid concerns over security and infrastructure reliability, although IT outsourcing continued to expand rapidly.
The global consulting groups have a large but declining influence on the contact-centre industry's buying habits, because technology firms such as BT Group PLC have strengthened their own consultancy elements and can argue that they bring benefits of technical knowledge that the broad-spectrum consultancies do not possess quite so obviously. For consultants such as Convergys that specialise in contact centres, the future may be in integrating contact centres into overarching customer-relationship and business-processing programmes.
Indian outsourcing companies have opened contact centres in the UK to counter the threat of repatriation of work from India, but the country still remains the global offshore hub. However, barriers to future expansion in India include insufficient infrastructure, rapidly rising wages that reduce competitiveness and concerns about data security. China could replace India as the leading outsourcing destination by 2017. The Philippines is growing fast as an outsourcing centre, although difficulties include a growing scarcity of fluent English speakers. Some work that had been relocated to the Philippines has been repatriated because of poor customer service. South Africa, with a large number of English speakers, is a fast-growing location for contact centres serving English-speaking countries.
Offshoring has branched into multi-shoring — the location of separate processes where there are the greatest short- or medium-term competitive advantages. Repatriation to the UK of the activities most important for brand values is part of the multi-shoring trend. Expansion within the UK could be faster were it not for shortages of multi-lingual staff, and of workers with up-to-date IT skills. Taxpayers are likely to scrutinise more closely government contracts placed with outsourcers, including contact-centre operators.
The principal contact-centre businesses in the UK in terms of turnover are Vertex Data Science Ltd and Ventura (a trading name of Club 24 Ltd). CPM United Kingdom Ltd, ClientLogic (UK) Ltd, MM Teleperformance Ltd, Response Handling Ltd, Telecom Service Centres Ltd, Sitel UK Ltd, LBM Holdings Ltd and CJ Garland & Co Ltd account for the rest of the top ten. US private-equity investors acquired Vertex Data Science in 2007, and consequently, only one of the largest five contact-centre businesses in the UK, Ventura, is UK owned.
The 2008 contact centre will want voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and Internet protocol (IP) telephony, automated call distribution, automated and intelligent voice self-service menus, callback systems, converged applications and interactive voice response (IVR). Microsoft's entry into the customer-relationship management (CRM) sector signals tougher competition for long-established specialist suppliers, but also indicates that Microsoft expects the contact-centre business to expand. In addition, private-equity investors' interest in contact centres indicates their expectations of future growth.
Key Note forecasts that more than a million people will have jobs in UK contact centres by 2012. The customer-contact industry will be crucial to both employment and prosperity. To an increasing extent, centres will be composed of linked hubs of varying sizes, often with home workers linked in.
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