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Cutting telecommunications costs is a big issue.
By Bronwen Elisabeth Roberts
Internet Cuts Phone Costs
EVERY call centre in South Africa has been approached by voice over internet protocol (VoIP) or least-cost routing suppliers.
Tim Wyatt-Gunning, joint CEO Storm, says VoIP offers savings across international, national, and cellular calls, whereas least-cost routing only saves money on cellular calls and a small amount on international calls.
Call-centre operators can save about 50% of their costs on international calls, 40% on local calls and 25% on national calls using VoIP through a service provider.
Wyatt-Gunning says Storm pays for its call-centre customers' VoIP infrastructure, equipment and bandwidth, including the leased line and charges them a rate per second for calls.
"This makes a big difference because a lot of calls are less than one minute, and with the public-switched network the minimum charge is for one minute."
Due to the interactive nature of the business, on average of 40% calls to call centres are international, whereas in a typical company only 5% to 10% of calls are international, says Wyatt-Gunning. "Half of our call-centre customers are purely internationally focused."
With overseas call centre operations such as Budget, which provides services to its UK customers from Cape Town, almost 100% of the calls were likely to be international, he says.
SA is an attractive destination for offshore call-centre outsourcing for UK companies because of its favourable time zones, English language and relatively low labour costs. However, the cost of telecommunications that can be achieved in a call centre is not yet quite as low as in competing countries.
However, bandwidth costs are expected to drop by 30% by the end of this year, and then South Africa will be almost on a par. Once bandwidth costs come down, IP-based solutions will emerge whereby call centres can be set up in major centres and calls can be routed automatically to agents at any location, even to a home office, according to call load.
The concentration of call centres in SA used to be predominantly in the Western Cape, but there is a lot more market growth in Gauteng. It is easier to operate in Gauteng because of agent availability, a more dynamic market and equipment suppliers and service providers who tend to be more proactive.
About the Author
Unlike most businesses - call centre, voice and data costs are a "cost of sale" ie. critical in establishing your commercial viability. By carefully designing your voice and data networks Storm can help reduce costs, and help improve business communications and customer service.
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/25603.html
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| Some other articles by Bronwen Elisabeth Roberts | |
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