Middle Eastern societies are changing. Its consumers expect high levels of customer service and a quick response to queries. The utilization of contact centres to provide customer services has traditionally been seen as a cost burden to organizations in this region; it is a ticked box to show that a firm is looking after its customers. However, industrial reform in the Middle East* is fast becoming a reality in several industries. For enterprises new to competing in an open market, keeping customers loyal is vital and a growing number of companies are beginning to understand the significance of doing so. According to a new report by independent market analyst Datamonitor The Middle East: bringing vendors to the contact centre mountain (Review Report), this is creating opportunities for contact centre technology vendors.
“Middle Eastern enterprises are trying to retain customers and grow relationships during a period of intense competition”, says Mona Sultan, customer interactions technology analyst with Datamonitor and author of the study.
“Enterprises in the Middle East need to raise the bar and improve their customer service levels. Whereas the easy option is to mirror western contact centre deployments, we're seeing that savvy enterprises are taking this one step further and really thinking about the needs of their customers in their region.”
Datamonitor expects the current fledgling contact centre technology industry in the Middle East will be worth US$46.1 million by the end of 2007 and to grow to US$60.1 million by 2010.
The total number of call centre agent positions (APs)** in the Middle East will reach 130,100 in 2010. This growth will be the result of an increasing demand for contact centres coming from enterprises that wish to build out their customer service capacity.
Hospitality and travel present both the biggest growth opportunity and challenge for technology vendors.
In the past two years, Middle Eastern countries have started to look ‘east' towards fostering and strengthening relationships with India and China – the two largest and fastest-growing economies in the world. The need to invest in non-oil and gas industries has played a significant part in the declarations made between Middle Eastern and Indian governments.
Furthermore, the geographic location of the Middle East to Europe places many enterprises in a strategic sweet spot. Traditionally, Singapore was the main hub for enterprises' Asia-Pacific headquarters; however, the Middle East has emerged as a very competitive alternative to Singapore as an entry point for western enterprises wishing to have transactions with India and China.
Datamonitor expects to see a degree of standardization in contact centre solutions sold to the Middle East, but these solution sets will tend to have advanced applications added to them.
Contact centre vendors need to make their offerings more appropriate to Middle Eastern customers by adding workforce optimization technologies, such as e-coaching and quality monitoring, and advanced skills-based routing to their solutions as this is a necessary requirement for those Middle Eastern enterprises wanting to emulate western practices of customer service.
There are several key challenges of which vendors need to be aware. Most notable is the need to be culturally sensitive to Middle Eastern working practices and religious norms. “Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 working hours, aren't always applicable in the Middle East” notes Sultan. In several Middle Eastern countries, working days tend to run from Sunday to Thursday, as Friday is seen as the start of the weekend.
Furthermore, as various Islamic religious obligations, such as Ramadan (the period of fasting) and Eid, follow a lunar rather than a Gregorian calendar, it can be difficult to conduct business in certain months. Observing lunar calendars in the Middle East can make it difficult to forecast sales opportunities in certain months: peaks and troughs apparent in summer months and winter months in western countries are not necessarily experienced in the Middle East.
Systems integrators such as HP and IBM have kept a close eye on the Middle East. The international reputations of these brands give them an advantage. To date many enterprises, local and international, have existing service contracts with the larger traditional systems integrators.
Sultan concludes that it is the “larger systems integrators that have the experience of working in western markets. This wealth of knowledge has helped many larger Middle Eastern enterprises transform their customer services operations, at the heart of which lies a contact centre.”
