Romanian contact center industry thriving despite countrywide recession

Romania, like most other Eastern European countries, enjoyed outstanding growth in the years leading up to the financial crisis. But now, the country is slogging through a recession. GDP from Q1 2010 was a anemic -2,6% and Q2 only slightly better at -1% .

But by digging deeper into Romania’s economy on an industry-by-industry basis, it’s clear that some sectors in Romania are in fact thriving in spite of the broader economic slowdown. The contact center business offers a shining example of one such industry.

Romania leads Eastern Europe as a contact center outsourcing destination, thanks mostly to these factors:

- experienced professional local players on the market
- excellent multilingual labor pool
- low production costs.

In the following interview, we asked a CallPoint manager in Bucharest to help explain Romania’s advantages in the call center business in greater depth:

How big is the contact center business in Romania and what are the expectations for the years to come?

The contact center industry in Romania employs over 20,000 people in over 250 centers. Most contact centers are small, with less than 50 employees, and also specialized in a single sector, such as IT.

The Romanian contact center market, with an estimated turnover of 120 million EUR last year, is increasing rapidly. In the next 5 years, many experts foresee that its value could increase to 350-500 M EUR.

What main services are contact centers offering in Romania? Are they serving offshore clients only?

The outsourced contact centers in Romania are diversified, mostly offering inbound and outbound services, as well as email management, chat and other back-office services.

The Romanian-based contact centers can be divided into 3 general groups:

On-shore players (local call centers serving Romanian customers). This is the fastest growing sector. Large local companies are realizing that outsourcing can both improve quality and reduce costs. The largest Romanian companies that are outsourcing in 2010 are telecom companies, followed by banks and financial institutions.
Nerashore players (serving Western European countries). Because of the excellent multilingual labor pool in Romania, large multinational companies from France, Germany, UK and Italy choose to outsource call center work here in Romania. There cost savings are 50% on average, and the top centers all conform to European quality standards. This trend will accelerate in 2011, as large Western European companies realize that Romania is a better option than Marocco or Tunisia, first and foremost for cultural proximity reasons. Companies in Spain are also now starting to realize these benefits, but this is too soon to draw conclusions – we will have to wait till year end to talk about a real trend.
Offshore players (serving clients from other continents, mostly USA and Canada). About 70% of young Romanian graduates speak and write proficient English. US companies are now more and more tempted to outsource contact center services to Romania – primarily technical support operations — because of the talented Romanian IT pool available and affordable prices. The largest countries where North-American companies are outsourcing remain India, Philippine and Pakistan – but Romania is becoming an interesting alternative which may soon threaten the larger Asian countries.
What is the typical profile of an agent working at CallPoint?

The employees working in our call center are mostly university students (23 years old on an average) in their final years of study or young graduates. 70% of them spent 2 years on an average abroad. The level of qualification of call center personnel in Romania is therefore extremely high compared to other countries. This is especially true in Bucharest: the city has, by far, the highest number of multilingual universities in the country. Two of the most prestigious universities, ASE and Polytechnics, offer channels in which 100% of the classes are in French, German, or English.

What is CallPoint’s global perspective in Romania?

Our global perspective in Romania–as well as at the group level–is to build long-term collaborations with the largest European companies in the following fields: banking & financial institutions; insurance, telecoms & software, travel & leisure; and retail & e-commerce.

We are successfully serving 25 multinational companies in 16 languages, operating onshore, near-shore and offshore.

The reason why we are growing by 200%-300% in Romania every year, since we started operations 3 years ago, is because we have been managing to combine high Quality standards and outstanding multilingual abilities-these are our two main assets.