馬來西亞熱線服務中心市場年增17%

Malaysian Contact Centre Industry Achieves Strong Growth at 17% per annum

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – 7 March 2008: The contact center industry in Malaysia has one of the region’s highest growth rates (17%) and is expected to increase by 34% in seat numbers in 2009 reports the 2008 Asian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report conducted by callcentres.net, Asia Pacific’s leading call and contact center research and publishing company.

The research, sponsored by Autonomy etalk and Genesys, involved interviewing 539 contact centres executives representing 2,488 contact centres and 259,699 contact centre seats across Asia. The study assessed contact centre strategy, revenue generation, operations, human resource management, technology, customer service, channel management, outsourcing, key performance indicators and management challenges. A total of 85 Malaysian based organisations were involved in the study.

Results reveal that the Asian Contact Center Industry is in a period of growth, at about 15% growth in seat size across the region. This result was not as strong as the regional growth figure of 23% predicted by contact centre managers in 2007. Singapore’s growth rate from 2007 to 2008 is reported at 8%, India 10%, Thailand 15%, China 19% and Philippines 23%.

The Malaysian contact centre industry has grown in seat size by a considerable 17% from 2007 to 2008, to about 33,000 seats. The average seat size per centre has also increased from 90 seats in 2007 to 167 seats in 2008 and is projected to grow to 225 seats by 2009. At least 15% of the market is operated by an outsourced provider. The Malaysian contact centre industry is primarily set up to provide customer service (66%) with technical support (10%), inbound sales (10%) and outbound sales (10%). This percentage of sales focused contact centres is considerably smaller than other markets in the region including Philippines (27%), China (40%) and India (50%).

Greatest Challenge - Human Resources

The study also revealed that the major expense in operating contact centers in Malaysia is labour costs, comprising 53% of the total budget. Technology represents 16% of the budget, and telecommunications 17%. Adding to these labour costs are expenses related to the relatively high levels of agent turnover in Malaysia, the average being 17% per annum as measured per centre, with a high of 39% in centres with more than 100 seats. When measured as raw numbers of agents leaving the centre, the agent attrition rate in Malaysia is 32%. The average cost to replace an agent in Malaysia is MYR3,335 or USD1,030. The average length of tenure for an agent who has left the centre in the last 12 months is 18 months. Both turnover rates and tenure are similar to 2007 rates of 18% turnover and 18 months tenure.

Managing agent recruitment (31%) and turnover (28%) are key challenges for 2008 mentioned by Malaysian contact centre managers.

Dr Catriona Wallace, President of callcentres.net, stated, “We are seeing tremendous growth in the Malaysian contact centre industry and it is has gained the attention of the international business community who are waiting to see how the Malaysian industry performs and whether it will position as an alternative outsourcing destination to India and the Philippines. The key challenge for the Malaysian industry will be to focus on improving its human resource management results, particularly in the larger centres, whilst in this period of rapid growth.”

“High levels of employee turnover can have a devastating effect on all aspects of customer service, disrupting operations and decreasing customer satisfaction, as well as increased costs for new hire training,” said Don Lee, Director of Asia Pacific, Autonomy etalk. “With such a highly competitive outsourcing market in the region and increasing expectations of customer service at or near Western market levels, organisations need to pay particular interest to the career development and continuity of their agents. In addition to formalised career development plans, coaching and training tools found in quality monitoring solutions along with performance analytics can be a tremendous asset in continuing education” he said.


Revenue Generation

The study’s results also suggest that Malaysia is not as focused on revenue generation in its contact centres as other countries including the Philippines and India. Currently 56% of the contact centre executives in the study stated their centres had no opportunity to upsell or cross sell to customers. Other than Thailand at 14%, Malaysia had the lowest percentage of centres (42%) in the region which had opportunities to generate revenue. Malaysia (69%) and Thailand (86%) have the highest percentage of contact centres in the region measured as cost centres as opposed to profit centres. In the Philippines 72% of the industry is a measured as profit centres, while China has 79% and India has 91% profit centres.

Of the up-sell and cross sell offers made by Malaysian contact centre agents (in the 42% of centres who recognised opportunities for revenue generation) the conversion rate of sales or offers to customers is 25% for inbound calls. The inbound conversion rate is lower than in Singapore (30%), Philippines (56%), India (56%), Thailand (57%) and Malaysia (35%) but higher than China (9%).

A promising result from the study was, when asked about revenue generation strategies in the contact centre, 89% of Malaysian contact centre executives (whose centres had revenue generation opportunities) stated that they had a sales strategy in place. One 11% stated that they had no revenue generation strategy.

Dr Catriona Wallace commented, “These results are important for the Malaysian contact centre industry as there is currently a global trend towards contact centres becoming profit centres and being the primary channel for sales and revenue generation. If Malaysia wishes to compete as an outsourcing destination then one of the core competencies the outsourcing sector has to develop as in other countries such as the Philippines and India, as well as in mature markets such as Australia and the US, is effective revenue generation techniques.”

According to the study, other areas that Malaysia contact centres are failing to capitalise on are next generation voice self-service and advanced speech recognition applications. Today, only 15% of Malaysian contact centres said they are using voice self-service (compared to 32% of Indian centres) and only 13% said they plan to implement it within the next 12 months. This low adoption rate is hindering Malaysian companies from achieving the efficiency gains and improvements to customer service that can be delivered by these advanced applications.

“Leading companies worldwide, including their CEOs, have recognised the power the contact centre has to drive customer loyalty and increase revenue,” said Michael McBrien, Senior Vice President, Genesys Asia Pacific. “To achieve this, companies need to expand their contact centre operations model by better segmenting customers and expanding the agent resource pool to experts to deliver targeted and relevant offers. Companies also need to understand and embrace the Web and next-generation voice self-service – these new technologies are redefining the customer experience and increasing companies’ ability to engage with their customers.

RESEARCH FACT SHEET

Key Findings of the 2008 Malaysian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report

Using a combination of telephone and online interviews, 539 contact centre managers representing 2,488 contact centres across all industry segments in Singapore, China, India, The Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia were surveyed. Some of the key findings for Malaysia, where 85 contact centre executives were interviewed, were:

Growth in the average size of a Malaysian contact centre

The average size of a Malaysian contact centre has grown from 90 seats in 2007 to 167 seats in 2008. The growth rate of the overall industry is estimated to be about 17% growth since 2007 (from a base of 28,000 seats) to about 33,000 seats. This is one of the highest growth rates in the region.

Contact handling through channels

In Malaysia of all contacts handled by the contact centres, the following channel percentages apply:

Phone – live attendant only 44%
IVR and live attendant 29%
Email 9%
Fax 6%
Letters 3%
IVR only 3%
Speech 2%
SMS 2%
Self service Web 1%
Web chat voice 0.2%
Web chat text 0.1%


Contact Centre Technology Next Purchase

Over the next 12 months considerable investment will go into contact centre technology in the Asian region. The next planned technology purchase (top 3 budgeted and planned for) in contact centres in Malaysia are:

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) 12%
E-learning 8%
SMS (text messaging) 7%


Contact Centre Management Challenges

The greatest challenges over the next 12 months as expressed by the Malaysian contact centre executives include:

Improving Customer Satisfaction 31%
Staff Turnover 22%
Recruitment 8%