Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

August 01, 2007

Study Examines the Contact Center Market in Central America

By Susan J. Campbell


Central America is becoming an important force in the global contact center arena. As a result, this area needs to be studied and fully understood by both companies considering the region for expansion and competitors to understand the dynamics now and in the future.

Zagada Institute studied this region and found that the Central America Nearshore market has shown impressive growth with its current 21,000 agent population expected to approach 40 percent annually over the next 24 months and to reach nearly 40,000 agents by the end of 2007.

The report also reveals that an estimated 95 percent of existing agents are bilingual and are ideally positioned to continue to serve the customer care needs of U.S. companies focused on the expanding Hispanic market. While this market currently exceeds 43 million, it is expected to return substantial growth over the next decade.

U.S. multinationals and outsourcing specialist companies are being attracted to the region due to the accelerated provisioning of bilingual agents across all segments of the Central American Nearshore market. Cost savings is a big driver and firms are reporting an average savings of 35 percent from their regional operations as well as on projects that are outsourced to Central American third party call center providers.

Levels of growth and service experience are used to categorize the region into three growth niches. The first niche is considered to be Maturing and includes Panama and Costa Rica. The second niche is labeled Contending and includes El Salvador and Guatemala. The final niche that includes Nicaragua, Honduras and Belize is considered Emerging.

In addition to the region’s expanding bilingual agent population, Zagada also identified additional factors that are supporting the growth of the Central America Nearshore market. These factors include stable parliamentary democracies; competitive telecommunication rates and coverage in key urban areas; extensive bilingual programs among the region’s institutes and universities; low cost and adequate physical contact center office capacity in key markets; and business friendly economic development agencies.

Strategic and natural challenges for accelerated expansion also exist for the area. These challenges include the timely development and preparation of sufficient bilingual agents to meet the growing U.S. company demand as well as the need to accelerate connectivity beyond major urban centers.

The study also found that while domestic and internationally focused agent positions will reach 40,000 by the end of this year, overall annual growth in agent positions will increase by an average of 38 percent over the next 24-month period.

Key challenges still remain for the region, but strong growth driven by consumer demand and the promise of cost reduction will continue indefinitely. While it is not expected to dominate the outsourcing market, Central America will be a formidable player.
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
 
 


Related Contact Center Solutions Articles

    Mitel Integrates Contact Center Solution with VMware View

    With an objective to bring desktop virtualization to the contact centers, virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions provider VMware Inc. has integrated Mitel's Contact Center Solution for VMware View. This integration enables contact center managers to better serve customers with centralized administration and better security as well as the ability to reduce costs. [ Read More ]
    02/14/2012

    Blending: The Key to Broadening Call Center Quality without Additional Resources

    While many a corporate call center has found, in recent years, the need to tighten its belt, other call centers with shallower pockets, such as those that support non-profit groups or government agencies and civil services, have found the budget crunch to be even more dire. [ Read More ]
    02/14/2012

    Is Improperly Used CRM Dragging Your Customer Support Down?

    While companies have been adopting ever more technology to try and support their customers to the best of their abilities - the sales figures for customer support solutions and applications bear witness to this - customers have never been more dissatisfied. Weird? A bit. And it might just be a function of improperly chosen, implemented and used customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. [ Read More ]
    02/14/2012

    VXi Launches UC ProSet for Contact Center Users

    The UC ProSet wired headset designed especially for unified communication users in contact centers and offices has been launched by VXi Corporation. VXi Corporation has improved its unified communication B2B line with this new headphone, the UC ProSet, which incorporates several features for ease and fashion of contact center users. [ Read More ]
    02/14/2012

[ View all Contact Center Solutions Articles ]

Socialize with us

FREE Contact Center Solutions eNewsletter

Click here to receive your targeted Contact Center Solutions Community eNewsletter.[Subscribe Now]

Industry News

Featured Resources

Contact Center Solutions Glossary of Terms

Press Releases

About the Contact Center Solutions Community

    Welcome to the Contact Center Solutions Community The Contact Center Solutions Global Online Community, Sponsored by Interactive Intelligence, is designed to serve as the industry's premier resource for information and research on Contact Center Solutions technology and deployment strategies.