The past decade was the decade of IT-enabled services, the biggest component of which is the call center industry. But the most important factor in the growth of the call center industry worldwide is VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, a format for transmission of voice through the Internet or any other packet-switched network.
Call center outsourcing involves locals from another country, say the Philippines, answering incoming calls from or calling out themselves to clients of US-based companies. This requires a sure and reliable connection between the two continents that only VoIP can effectively create.
This all started because back in the early nineties, when several multi-national companies realized the need to set up dedicated facilities abroad, VoIP was also made available. An offshore country serving as a cheaper base for low-end IT call center activities and remote answering services made perfect sense. Third-party call center service providers also made a huge play on the market, answering the need for companies to save on costs but helping them manage what were tricky offshore outsourcing campaigns back in the day. Since then, major players in the U.S. market have either set up their own call center facilities outside the country or are in the process of doing so.
VoIP has revolutionized the call center industry in many ways, and the reasons are simple and yet compelling:
• VoIP provides an easy and very cost-effective way of bridging the U.S. and an outsourcing partner located far away in another country. With the emergence of broadband and the lowering of fiber-optic cable prices, the expenses are now way below what companies used to pay back then for long distance telephony.
• Any user from anywhere in the world may use VoIP as long as there is a fast Internet connection. This enables greater flexibility in the deployment of call center answering services, ranging from big third-party call center providers to the freelancing virtual assistant mom selling U.S. products over the phone from her home in the Philippines.
• There is no compromise in the quality of call center communication with VoIP. Technology has gone quite far in improving VoIP, and most communication options built around this technology is even better than what we had before. A call center business relies heavily on effective communication over the phone, and VoIP provides a solution that does not deviate from these call center quality requirements.
• VoIP phone systems provide greater technological flexibility in terms of the availability of additional but integral extra features such as: desktop sharing, task simultaneity, multi-user voice conferencing, and relevant software integration. Call center technology has had astounding breakthroughs in reporting and call management that wouldn’t have been possible were it not for VoIP.
The call center outsourcing industry’s size is sure to reach greater numbers in the coming years, as evidenced by significant trends in more seats coming up and more companies outsourcing their call center operations to more parts of the world. International call centers grow at 50-70 percent a year, a staggering statistic that does not show any sign of abating. From now until the end of this decade, it is estimated that the call center outsourcing industry will create employment for more than 600,000 people across the globe. All this, with the help of VoIP.
Tags: call center, outsourcing, Philippines call center, Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP
