If one believes those advocating the widespread use of business process outsourcing (BPO), one might think it has dramatically and comprehensively changed the way the world does business. To an extent, perhaps, such a viewpoint may be right, but only in the sense that call centres have become intermediaries between companies and their customers - and not always with positive results.
Almost 80% of the 637 respondents located in 72 countries around the world answered that their call centres were captive rather than outsourced.
It's a moot point whether those call centres are always outsourced, and the most recent edition of the Dimension Data annual Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report seems to indicate that they're not.
On page five of the summarised version of the report - freely available from the company's Web site - is a chart depicting the answer to a deceptively simple question: "Is your contact centre captive or outsourced?"
Almost 80% of the 637 respondents located in 72 countries around the world answered that their call centres were captive rather than outsourced. This will be distressing news for global governments that bought into the idea that they could be call centre hubs of the world, create thousands of jobs, and in so doing, make a significant impact on growing unemployment.
Of course, 637 respondents are not very many in a global context. So it may be that this is just a sampling of Dimension Data clients. The methodology of the research also isn't made clear in the summary available for download. Still, it is food for thought. Is the BPO industry as big as it would have its potential customers believe?
First published in the June 2013 issue of ITWeb Brainstorm magazine.
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