Summary of 2012 in the field of call & contact center outsourcing

The ending year, despite unfavorable macroeconomic conditions, has brought small growth, estimated for 3-5 percent, in the external call & contact center industry. The companies using outsourced telephone service more often than in the previous years were interested in development of campaigns connected with maintenance of their previous clients and their service.

A good year for not many companies

2012 was another year, in which the group of the leading outsourcing contact centers (having over 100 stands) strengthened its position on the market. The strongest entities – to larger extent than in the previous years – were not satisfied with the service of the largest contracts only but they also undertook realization of smaller orders. On the other hand, the clients displayed a cautious approach to commissioning their processes to external partners. Also the number of organized tenders for large-scale projects decreased. At the same time, telesales that was the most popular in the previous years, this year was systematically ousted by activities promoting increase of clients’ loyalty, aimed at extension of pending contract or increasing its value.

After the slowdown period in 2011, financial and insurance companies begun to return to their former activeness in cooperation with outsourcing call & contact center companies – a couple of tenders of the monthly value from several thousand to one million PLN were announced. Also orders from automotive, telecommunication or FMCG industry appeared on the market. The end of the year also brought a big tender for verification of client databases of PGE Obrót.

Long-term development forecasts for the call & contact center market in Poland have been verified and decreased from between ten and twenty percent to the level of 3-5 percent. Despite this fact, there are a lot of companies that achieved much greater increase of income, e.g. Voice Contact Center improved its last year’s result by as much as 40 percent. It is to great extent the result of significant expansion of the scale and scope of cooperation with its current clients, mainly from the publishing, telecommunication and finance sector. The company also obtained new orders from companies operating in these industries, which had not been served before.

Due to the search for savings, in 2012 the enterprises were more eager than in the previous years to test the services of smaller call & contact centers which often work only in the success fee system. However, in majority of cases it did not entail wider cooperation. Small numbers of stands which may be offered by each of such entities results in the fact that the largest clients face the necessity to use services of a couple of partners at the same time, whereas contract management in a scattered system is pretty complicated and cost-consuming.

Call center development areas

Despite the general market uncertainty, the power industry bravely chooses external contact center services. This year, next local branches of companies from this sector announced tenders for telephone service or improvement of contact with the clients of their services, consisting e.g. in SMS notification of the new invoice.

In 2012, similarly to previous years, cautious opening of the public sector to the telephone customer service could be observed. However, contrary to the previous announcements, offices and institutions decided in vast majority to build the call center within their own structures – after two-year preparations, the Telephone Service Center of the Social Insurance Company was opened in December and the works on the Resident Communication Center that is to open in the middle of this year in the capital city are also pending. Nevertheless, looking at experience of the western markets, cooperation of the public sector with outsourcing companies seems to be inevitable in further future.

Rotation of employees

Frequent personnel changes are all the time a great challenge for outsourcing call centers, particularly in large agglomerations. For a couple of years, the rotation has stayed at the level of 20-30 percent and it has depended on a number of factors, inter alia on the types of realized projects. It relates mainly to employees with short practice, who often change their employees. More experienced consultants are more stable professionally. The main rotation factor in this group is moving to better paid positions in the widely understood service sector and moving to internal call center departments of enterprises and institutions. On the other hand, the general negative opinion on the work of telemarketers results in difficulties in recruitment of new employees.

Yet, the call center sector is all the time one of more significant branches on the labor market – it generates over 140 thousand jobs. What is more, these are often workplaces in smaller urban centers. For a lot of years, this kind of job has been taken mainly by young people, looking for a job for the first time or having small professional experience. The increasing interest in working as a consultant also among the people over 50 years of age is a very positive trend of the last 12 months.

2013 marked by consolidation

Consolidations and acquisitions will be a more and more frequent phenomenon in the whole outsourcing sector, also in call & contact centers, since the strategy consisting in gathering resources, capital and know-how through mergers of the companies will decide on the competitive edge. In 2012, DataContact Group acquired Universal Agent. This is another acquisition after the merger of Voice Contact Center and Call One on the outsourcing contact center market. Due to increasing competition in the industry, further consolidation of this sector may be expected in 2013. On one hand, these will be acquisitions realized by large entities, on the other hand – small, local call centers will not be able to manage on the more and more demanding market. Thus, the largest companies which thanks to large scale of operation and high quality of services will offer the most competitive price to the clients will grow in strength. The current economic slowdown may significantly accelerate this phenomenon.

Adam Kotrych,
President of the Management Board of Voice Contact Center