Over the last few decades, the contact centre industry has seen many waves of restructuring. Many industrialised countries first saw their contact centres re-locate where labour costs were lower, to see them come back after customers complained about the quality of service.

Now more than ever, contact centres have to juggle cost efficiencies with customer satisfaction, which can be a real challenge. Some developing countries like Turkey have been very good at seizing opportunities and developing expertise in that industry.

Although the success of Turkey in business services is noted now, it actually isn’t an overnight success. The first contact center was established in the 1990s and this sector has been growing steadily since then. According to Turkish Call Center Association, there were 1,229 call centers in the country in 2016, employing almost 85,000 people and generating around 4.5 billion Turkish Lira (NZ$ 1.8 billion). This represents a growth of 55% since 2013, and forecasts are that contact centres in Turkey will employ 300,000 people by 2030.

We look at what makes a country successful at delivering outstanding customer service.

  • Being in the right time zone

Contact centres have become a 24-hour business with companies locating some or all of their services offshore to ensure that their customers can talk to someone around the clock. A British company, for example, used a novel approach and offered their staff relocation to NZ so that they would have a team to cover night shifts without submitting them to working at night.

NZ is the perfect location for call centres serving customers in the Pacific region, including Australia, Japan and China.

  • Being able to set up a business easily

While finding office space at a reasonable price can be difficult in industrialised countries, various technologies nowadays make it possible to manage call agents remotely and remove some of those constraints. A country like New Zealand, with its access to digital technologies, cloud-based services and efficient internet connections is in a prime position to offer companies flexible solutions.

  • A skilled workforce

One of the reasons why businesses became disenchanted by offshore location was that the staff in those call centres often lacked the communication skills or a minimum level of education to deal with queries effectively. New Zealand education system offers a skilled workforce able to use all technology available to them to provide excellent customer service.