So if you’re looking for basic call center work and you want to save money offshore, where do you go? India is, by some reports, tapped out, and labor costs are rising. The Philippines is a choice, but costs are rising there, too, due to the maturing call center sector. So where’s the next call center outsourcing frontier? Vietnam, apparently.
Vietnam's economic growth rate has been among the highest in the Asia Pacific region in recent years, with an annual GDP rate of seven to 8.5 percent. With customer service becoming a key focus in Asia Pacific, Vietnam is improving customer relationships for the purpose of greater loyalty, brand recall and profitability.
According to Dao Thi Minh Thao, Research Associate, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan APAC, these benefits Vietnam can offer are leading to impressive growth in the nation’s contact center industry that was estimated to be worth $4.2 million in 2011 and is expected to reach $11.4 million in 2018 – this translates to a brisk growth rate of 15 percent.
Another reason for the growth, found the report, is that the Vietnamese contact center industry is rapidly modernizing its technology.
"ACD is the biggest contributor that accounts for almost 40 percent of all applications and is still growing at a fast rate as majority of contact centers' primary purpose is to support incoming voice calls,” said Thao. “It is forecasted that in 2018, ACD will reach the saturated status of 31.7 percent from 37.3 percent in 2011 and start to slow down. The same will happen to other current major applications like CTI and IVR.”
The verticals that are primarily being served by Vietnamese call centers today include banking and financial services and telecommunications. These market sectors are flourishing due to an increasing customer base and an adequate supply of capital to invest in new technologies and solutions, noted Frost & Sullivan.
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