The Future of Call Centers in Pakistan

By Munawar Iqbal

Some experts claim that Pakistan is at the brink of a technology revolution but when we analyze the ground realities thing seems to be totally otherwise. There is nothing wrong in being an optimist but to have an objective conclusion we ought to have a pragmatic approach. When we talk about growth in IT sector, it would not be a pessimistic view that progress is too little, too late. Moreover sometime it looks like even deteriorating. It's a fact that in the past few years we have witnessed positive growth in many areas of the industry. One of the growth phenomena was of call centers. But now I seriously doubt that call centers are here to stay.

The people who think the business of call center should thrive in Pakistan present the argument that our neighbor India, has been in this business for last so many of years and is able to earn more that $ 18 billion every year. This viewpoint further suggests that by providing these services Pakistan could also fetch a huge amount as Pakistan has all the tools required to catch up India. They further claim that Pakistan is now an alternate to the west for call centers and that is the theme, they want to catch on.

While making comparison with India, several factors should be considered who have contributed and as a result India has emerged as a major location for IT-enabled services such as call centers and customer support centers. Lower input costs, reasonably good infrastructure, a trained English-speaking workforce and a favorable time zone differential vis-Ã -vis the US that has spurred the growth of the call center industry in India.

Yes, Pakistan is blessed with almost all of above mentioned attributes and the folks who bank on these similarities with India have some other reasons to be hopeful. According to this viewpoint Pakistan could grab the opportunity as government of India is all set to impose a income tax on all call centers owned by foreign companies and a proposal is under consideration in New Delhi to tax activities conducted over International Private Leased Connections (IPLC) that carry India's voice and data traffic.

I do believe that comparative analysis is a must to lay solid foundations of success. But before turning the weaknesses of our competitor into our strength we must not commit the mistake of being selective or wishful in the process of making comparison. I wonder how we can overlook the recent report of Springboard Research, which says that the introduction of the 15% Sale Tax in the financial year 2006-07 increased the price of computers which increased the cost of doing business. The average price of PC reported by local assemblers and retailers increased up to 20%.

The above mentioned report further elaborate that this is one of the factors which have negatively impacted the growth of the IT sector as evident by export figures for the first six months of the financial year 2007-08. If the value of exports for the first six months is extrapolated to the full year it would be 149.37 Million, which is a growth of 28.7% over the previous year. This is well below the growth registered in previous years. The question is very simple that if we are dealing with same mind set at the helm of affairs who can not comprehend the disaster that our computer industry is facing how and why they would be any different in regard with call centers.

Read More at Pakistan Computer Association

Pros & Cons of Outsourced Call Center and Inhouse Call Center Setup

Whether you are planning to setup your own call center or you are thinking to outsource it, you must keep all the pros and cons of both the options in mind in order to make a rational decision.

Pros & Cons of Call Center Outsourcing

PROS

• No infrastructure investments
• Predictable and manageable costs
• Latest updated contact center technology
• Access to specialized skills
• Saving on manpower & training
• Ease of accommodating changing business needs
• Reduced operating cost & overheads
• Easy scalability of call center operations
• Save on cost of changing technology
• Enhanced Productivity and Customer Service
• Increased efficiency
• Allows business to focus on core business functions
• Cost effective competitive edge
• No Human Resource & Management Cost
• Redundancy

CONS

• Dependency on third party
• Loss of direct operational control
• No direct contact of Contact Center staff with Marketing staff
• Difficult integration with other internal company functional organization or applications

Pros & Cons of In-house Call Center Setup

PROS

• Fully owned call center infrastructure and technology
• Constant monitoring on premises
• Direct contact with Marketing and Administrative teams
• Company own administration
• No sharing of resources or premises with any other company

CONS

• Capital intensive
• Very high cost of infrastructure deployment
• High maintenance and upgrade cost (hardware, software, and consulting services)
• High costs of employment recruitment, training & retention of employees
• Deviation from core business functions
• Slow or difficult scalability of operations
• High start to end time frame