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Central & Eastern Europe a 'Compelling' Nearshore Customer Service Outsourcing Option for the West
Datamonitor's prediction of rapid growth in western investment in this region is underlined by regional specializations that make the case even more compelling for sending contact center agent positions to CEE. In addition, CEE countries compete on lower prices than in western Europe and North America. Of most importance is their value proposition on higher-end contact center services.
In a speech on Wednesday 2 November at the Offshore Customer Management International Conference in Prague, Peter Ryan, call center and outsourcing analyst with Datamonitor, will outline the key emerging trends in the CEE's contact center industry, pitched against other global offshore contact center destinations including what could, from the nearshore outsourcing perspective be dubbed CEEs rival, North Africa.
According to Datamonitor, the Czech Republic and Poland are ideal locations for customer care servicing German speaking nations, whose offshore options are very limited. In addition, however, both countries have an excellent base of fluent English speakers.
The Baltic countries continue to emerge as the location of choice for contact center investors from Scandinavia, due to both close ties linguistically and culturally.
Meanwhile, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia have become obvious choices for Italian firms looking to outsource customer service.
In Datamonitor's view, Hungary remains a very diverse contact center offshore location in the region, with noted fluent speakers in all major western European languages.
"While some challenges face CEE in terms of maintaining their offshore contact center industry, including agent attrition, wage & property inflation and macroeconomics, the future looks bright for all countries providing customer care," says Ryan.
* Offshore outsourcing: outsourcing destinations located abroad. Outsourcing entails allowing another company to handle specific needs of the primary firm, which that firm cannot or does not want to do. This allows companies to focus on their core competencies and contract out other types of services
** Call Center Agent position - Agent positions are desks from which call center agents make and/or receive telephone calls to internal or external customers. This is taken to imply that the call in question involves communication between the agent and the customer.
