Good customer service and high quality standards might be the key to successful contact centre provision, but identifying the outsourcing specialists capable of excelling in such areas is a challenge.

Helps comes in the form of a new report from researcher Datamonitor, which reveals the top contact centre outsourcers globally. The report assesses nine suppliers across three dimensions, which include client satisfaction, services and technologies, and market impact. The result is a classification of firms that IT managers should shortlist, consider and explore:

Shortlist: Teleperformance, TeleTech, Sitel, EDS, Convergys
Market leaders - and the research indicates the five companies have sufficient levels of market impact to provide the stability needed for long-term relationships. Each firm has varied and sophisticated provision, across vertical markets in multiple geographies and languages. Each of the companies is strong across various contact centre services.

Consider: Minacs and Sykes
IT managers should examine each company to assess whether they will be able to meet their exact needs. The research notes that while each firm performed relatively well in terms of client satisfaction, market impact scores were lower than shortlisted candidates. In addition, specialisation in particular functions or verticals is seen as potentially limiting.

Explore: ICT Group and Stream
While both have demonstrated leadership, Datamonitor’s research indicates Stream’s focus around technical support may lessen its chance of winning contracts in other functional areas. In the case of the ICT Group, its low market impact score, coupled with limited capabilities in languages, means potential concerns when bidding for global contracts.

Further reading

• The next big thing in outsourcing?
• Offshoring means Western IT industry is "dying"
• UK firms love offshoring - what about the staff?
• Outsourcing and the lack of skilled UK IT workers
• 2008 - The year of multisourcing and offshoring
• Gartner reveals top 30 offshoring destinations

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