ISLAMABAD:Offshore call centre business is trending in twin cities due to availability of bilingual human resource and easy registration procedures of Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB).
Talking to reporter, owner of a private call centre Mumtaz Ali said that a call centre could be registered online with PSEB by paying nominal fee of Rs 20,000. He said that after the completion of the application form, routine procedures would take around two to three working days, after which a provisional registration certificate would be issued.
He said most of the call centres in twin cities were working on the marketing projects with the objective of cold calling. The outbound call centres contacted the businesses and customers in other countries with alias name and local number, he added.
Explaining the working of call centres, Mumtaz said that after registration a business would be permitted to make calls internationally using internet, adding that the calls made over internet worked on ‘Voice Over Internet Protocol’ and such calls were cheaper than the traditional telephone calls.
The success of the offshore call centres, he said, was in using the local numbers as clients were not able to differentiate between local and offshore calls.
Answering a question, Mumtaz said that the size of call centre varied from investment to the nature of work, but the ideal size would be 10 seats. “Employees of a small call centre are easy to train and risk factor is also minimum”, he added.
He said that anyone with the a good business plan along with existing knowledge of offshore business might setup his call centre, but patience and good links within the industry would be key to success.
Hamza Abbas, employee of a private call centre, said that students and fresh graduates preferred to work in call centres as they could work in evening and at night due to time difference with the other countries.
A fresh call centre agent would normally get trained within 10 to 15 days. The only demand of the call centre industry was consistency that enabled the employees to secure handsome salary packages, he said.