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Key Business Concerns Driving Call Center Growth

To be sure, bottom-line business concerns are driving today's explosive call-center growth.

"Call centers are such an efficient way of communicating with your customers," Waugh says. "Companies can meet customer needs at a fraction of the price it takes to do it in person. And once consumers start doing it, they like the idea of picking up a phone and getting what they need immediately."

Additionally, call centers increasingly are viewed as essential support facilities for companies expanding into global markets. "Why enter a market without supporting it?" Waugh asks. "That's another reason call centers are growing so rapidly."

Broad demographic trends and shifting consumer preferences affect business fortunes of all kinds, and call centers are no different.

"Ultimately, everything is driven by population growth and consumer expectations," says F. Barry Tapp, president and founder of Tapp Development Corp., an Oklahoma City-based real estate development firm specializing in call centers and customer service facilities. "Given the aging baby boomer population in the U.S. economy, we now see millions of persons in their prime earning years nearing the age of retirement with a lot of discretionary income."

The United States has experienced a surge in demand in durable goods and consumer products and the finance, insurance and real estate sector, Tapp says, including growing demand for retirement security and insurance. "With the increase in demand for these service-related items, and with the technological revolution making shopping for these items so easy, obviously some of the primary candidates for the call center application would be in the retail consumer goods, financial and investment sectors," he says.

A Meeting of Global Minds: The International Call Centers Summit

If your firm would benefit from learning how to expand its call center reach into new locations around the globe, there's a particular piece of U.S. geography -- and a date in spring 2000 -- that need to be noted on your calendar. Left: Tee it up: The International Call Center Summit begins April 9 at the Reston National Golf Course. The place? The Hyatt Regency in Reston, Va. The date? April 9, 2000. That's the start of the four-day International Call Center Summit, which is expected to draw some 200 corporate call center strategists and other officials. The International Call Center Summit is organized and managed by Toronto-based MW Productions. "The International Call Center Summit is truly an international event," MW Productions co-founder Janice Waugh says. "It's designed for the call center strategist -- the person who has responsibility for global call center issues. Sometimes it's a manager, sometimes it's a vice president. Rather than having to travel to conferences all over the world to determine what strategy to use, these people can come to the International Call Center Summit and obtain information that otherwise would take a long time to gather." The International Call Center Summits, launched in 1994, are "social and interactive from the world go," Waugh says. "It's not a huge trade show. In fact, the group stays together, and we deliberately don't have breakout sessions. Attendees will hear speakers discuss how to set up in Asia or Europe, but they'll also be able to talk to other people who've already done it. Those attending can get a lot out of the program, but they can get just as much from each other. And after three and a half days, they've acquired a lot of information." Corporate end users, though are a key part of the Summits. "It might be Compaq from Singapore, Dell from Europe, or a pharmaceutical firm or airline from somewhere else," Waugh says. "They might talk about human resources, out sourcing or e-commerce. They give anecdotes, stories and experiences. Then we add the consultants, who give the details, facts and statistics." Delegates at the Reston Summit will: explore one-to-one marketing in a global context, discover the value of cross-border alliances and how to best manage them, see how IP Telephony and other innovations present new opportunities for global call centers, research call center sites around the world, learn from the successes of others at case study presentations, and network with colleagues at the Interactive Forum, breaks, meals and receptions. For more information on the International Call Center Summit, visit www.mwprod.com or call toll-free at (800) 267-4529. Who Should Attend? Executives and senior managers responsible for: globalizimg their organization's call center activity managing multi-national call centers finding new ways to manage international sales or customer service operations economic development activities related to the call center industry