Many Contact Centres Moving To M'sia - Interactive Intelligence

By Amanina Mohamad Yusof KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 10 (Bernama) -- The contact centre industry in the Asia Pacific is expected to see a compound annual growth of 8.7 per cent between 2009 and 2016 with Malaysia and the Philippines as the region's key markets. Interactive Intelligence Inc Executive Vice President Gary R. Blough said an analysis by Frost & Sullivan showed that the industry in Malaysia and the Philippines would grow by 14.3 per cent yearly. This growth would be supported by western companies relocating their outsourced jobs from India to Malaysia and the Philippines, he told Bernama in an interview. "I think, if you take a look at the trend that happened some years ago, the western companies especially were trying to save money. "So one of the ways to save money is by outsourcing their contact centres." Many of these contact centres were moving to Malaysia and the Philippines due to a bigger requirement for English speaking agents, and the accent seemed to be understandable in Malaysia and the Philippines, he said. So, language availability and lower costs were the key reasons why they chose Malaysia and the Philippines without sacrificing service quality, Blough said. He said finance and banking, manufacturing and travel were the top three industries which require contact centres. With a lot of companies shifting their contact centres to Malaysia, the local economy would enjoy a lot of benefits as it would drive revenue and create job opportunities, he said. Interactive Intelligence is a global provider of unified business communications solutions for contact centre automation, enterprise Internet protocol telephony and business process automation. -- BERNAMA