Cape Town has been voted the top international offshore contact centre location, toppling India from the number one position, according to a survey by UK research company Ion Group.
Local contact centres scored higher than their Indian counterparts on attributes such as the strength of technological infrastructure and linguistic capabilities.
The survey was conducted among 1 000 senior marketers at 1 000 top UK companies and respondents were asked to rank locations according to the quality of their call handling.
David Drew, MD of the Dialogue Group, the contact centre with the largest international client base in SA, says the announcement validates feedback the company has been receiving from the market recently.
"At this year`s Call Centre Expo in Birmingham the market view was that SA should position itself as complementary to the Indian industry instead of competing with it. Local agents were also recognised for performing well in highly technical areas," Drew says.
A factor that counted strongly in favour of the local industry is that SA is culturally aligned to Europe. In addition to English, the Dialogue Group offers clients targeting the European market services in Dutch, German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
Further evidence of the industry`s strength can be found in a Deloitte survey commissioned by CallingtheCape, the provincial non-governmental organisation that promotes the industry in the Western Cape.
The study indicated that first-time call resolution, a standard contact centre quality measure indicating the number of queries resolved on first contact, stands at 89% in Cape Town compared to 65.9% in India.
"The survey comes as a great compliment after all the hard work that has been put into promoting SA by the Department of Trade and Industry and CallingtheCape. The South African industry is very small compared to that of India, who are leaders in bulk, low-cost services," Drew says.
Contact centres have become a major source of employment in the Western Cape with some 11 000 people finding jobs in the industry. Employment is expected to grow by 25% next year.
Other parts of the country are now also positioning themselves for a slice of the contact centre cake.
The Dialogue Group`s Johannesburg contact centre is went live on 13 December with a team of 110. The Evolution Group, Dialogue`s parent company, announced a further R75m investment in Cape Town to restructure its fast-growing business at the beginning of last month.
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