Implementation of voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), reducing telecommunications costs and the regulatory environment were the main topics that concerned delegates at a conference in Cape Town yesterday.
Dave Tolmay, a director at Johannesburg-based call centre operator e-Centric, said his company reduced its telecoms costs by 56%, meaning real savings of R300 000 per month, since it began to deploy a VOIP solution using VoxTelecom's technology.
"We were very hesitant about deploying VOIP as there was a lot of hype around it and almost everyday I was approached by various people wanting to sell us a system. However, once we moved to our new premises, we found we could get the quality we needed for outbound calls and it has worked well."
Tolmay said his company deployed the Asterisk open source PABX system, which cost the company next to nothing compared to spending around R670 000 for a standard commercial system.
"A mistake many people tend to make with VOIP and open source technologies is that they think it is either free, or it is unreliable. It is neither of these, and we have proven that cost savings can work," he told ITWeb later.
Pressure on government
Greg Brown, head of geographic information service management at UK telecoms company The Carphone Warehouse, said SA's telecoms charges, equating to 21c, are at the top of the range for keeping the country globally competitive and something must be done to reduce that cost. The Carphone Warehouse operates a call centre operation in Cape Town to service its home market.
"Continuous lobbying pressure of government is needed so that something is done to achieve a better cost," Brown said.
Ian Measures, associate director of Fusion Outsourcing, which operates call centres for the UK and SA insurance group Budget Insurance, said SA works out to be about 35% cheaper than the UK in operation and location of the call centre. He noted that quality of South African employees was comparable to that in the UK.
Measures, however, pointed out that the call centre industry was mobile and constantly changing and used the example of British power utility Powergen, which recently announced it would repatriate its call centre operations from India back to the UK.
Fusion Outsourcing will expand its South African operations, and plans to open a new building in Cape Town in April to accommodate 600 call centre operators.
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