Making a call to the Middle East market

French firm Vocalcom, a call centre technology provider, has recently opened an office in Dubai, hoping to capture a stake in the highly competitive Middle East market. Eric Arnaud, who had spent 30 years working in the region for IBM, shared his views on the challenges being faced by the call centre industry.

Gulf News: How competitive is the Middle East's call centre market?
Arnaud: Highly competitive. The contact centres technology providers started operating in the region in the 90s, and most of the international key players have already established an important client base.

What challenges are the industry facing?
Education and regulation will be the next challenges of our industry in this region. Quality of service has become an important differentiator between companies for customers in Europe and the US.

It is a trend we can see emerging here, and many owners in the region are not sure how to go in the way of better customer retention and acquisition. The other major issue is the limitation on VoIP that prevents any major outsourcing business to set up shop in the GCC.

It is a major weakness against countries such as Egypt, India and the Philippines who are now the main outsourcing destination; and an expensive hurdle for international group in the region who cannot legally afford to consolidate their operations.

What are the future growth prospects?
Middle East is a fast growing market for our industry. Government, finance institution, distributors and all kind of companies are all made increasingly aware of the benefits a good customer service provides.

This will drive the industry and we expect an impressive growth in the range of 20 to 40 per cent per year in the region. And if the regulation issues are cleared we expect this number to increase even more.

What call centre projects loom on the horizon?
Our main objective for the region is to establish a strong distributor network to catch opportunities in all sectors of industry. So far we had very good response to our solution in both the private and the government sectors.

How does Vocalcom set itself apart from its competitors in the Middle East?
Most of our competitors are telecom equipment manufacturers who had to develop call centre functionalities under market pressure. Vocalcom is a dedicated 12-year-old contact centre company and was created as such.

Our products are geared towards the end-user or the business people, not the telecom engineer, and focus on the real issue of this line of business.