Least-cost routing supplier Storm has secured The Dialogue Group as one of the first large customers for its voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) service, since the liberalisation announcement came into effect in February.
Industry observers say similar announcements are expected in the course of this year as contact centre companies finalise evaluations of benefits associated with the various VOIP offerings and pricing.
Telecommunications is a key cost component, after staffing, in the call centre industry. VOIP is seen as a technology that can help contain that cost.
Storm joint-CEO Tim Parsonson says his company installed the equipment in December, and in February, Dialogue officially signed the deal.
Storm will supply Dialogue with the necessary equipment free of charge and then charge for the calls made per minute. Parsonson says Storm's rate is 30c to 50c for a local call per minute and from 50c for an international call.
Projected savings
Dialogue has cut its monthly telecommunications bill by 34% and predicts a saving of between R2 million and R4 million over the year, says Storm.
Dialogue will use Storm's VOIP technology to carry voice calls cheaply over Storm's international data backbone network, and use Storm's low-cost interconnect agreements with international telecoms providers in the UK. Dialogue will also benefit from using predictive dialling and data access systems.
Outbound calls from the call centres are converted into data and placed on the Storm network backbone at the Dialogue office in Cape Town. These then go out through the SAT-3 undersea cable to the UK, where Storm connects to a number of international telecoms operators, to allow calls to be carried to the ultimate destination at the lowest available rate. This "outbound" service is aimed at telesales or promotions campaigns.
The "inbound service" allows one of Dialogue's clients' customers to call a toll-free or local call number in whichever country they are in. Their call is carried over their telco provider's network, which then interconnects with Storm's network. The call is then placed on the Storm VOIP network and transferred to the Dialogue call centre in SA.
Run to stay still
"The global outsourced call centre market is phenomenally competitive," says David Drew, MD of Dialogue SA. "You have to run just to stay still to maintain internationally acceptable levels of quality, cost and value-added services."
Dialogue is Europe-based, with sales and marketing offices in London, Seattle and Cape Town. The local operation has a capacity of 1 100 seats, with headquarters in Cape Town and offices in Johannesburg. It provides outsourced contact centre services to South African companies operating nationally and in sub-Saharan Africa.
Storm says that as technology advances, Dialogue will look at more advanced predictive dialling boxes in the UK to improve outbound call efficiencies, along with automated load-balancing to allow groups of inbound call centres in different locations to be used at maximum capacity.
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