Will there be a call center war?
15 June 2009
Read by 1548 persons
The call center sector in Tunisia suffers from a lack of visibility in terms of control, development, skilled labor, financial resources, and regulation. Bidding wars over salaries could hurt the sector if nothing is done. And very quickly!
An increasingly strategic sector on this side of the Mediterranean, especially in times of crisis, call centers are beginning to develop in Tunisia, like in Morocco. With two undeniable assets: the ease with which Tunisians learn foreign languages and the geographical proximity to Europe.
However, for informed professionals, this sector is considered, despite its potential, as an epiphenomenon, even if the discourse suggests otherwise.
According to Ali Kassab, director of Vocalcom Tunisia - Call center technology, call center activity faces three major problems. The first problem is that there is no specialized training structure capable of immediately integrating graduates into call centers, which has led to a high demand that remains unmet. Mr. Kassab estimates that of the 60,000 Tunisian graduates per year, barely 3% would be directly employable in call centers.
The second problem is that no action is being taken by the Call Centers Trade Union to establish a joint training fund which, Mr. Kassab believes, could provide a solution... This refers in particular to apprenticeship training. The third is the absence of a collective agreement in call centers.
Result: call centers - especially small and medium-sized ones - are currently engaged in a bidding war for recruitment, offering salaries that they are unable to honor for long, according to some specialists. And here, our consultant sounds the alarm, saying that the sector is in real danger. We must be very careful because the sector is not yet mature enough. Certainly, it is an open market, that is to say a market where the law of supply and demand should fully play out. However, since the sector is not well regulated, the public authorities should ensure that there is no abuse, or at least limit it as much as possible.
The explanation is simple. For Mr. Kassab, in order to attract human resources, some call centers rely on salaries that often exceed their capacity. Moreover, in recent days, we have seen advertisements in some Tunisian newspapers displaying the amount of salaries offered, something rare enough to be noted.
As for whether "600 Tunisian dinars" is a high salary or not for a call center, Catherine POMARES, Contact Center Manager at Transcom (an 850-position call center), specifies that it all depends on the type of activity of the call center. In other words, you don't pay the same in a technical type of call center (generally engineers) as in a commercial type.
Furthermore, she believes that it is the small and medium-sized call centers that are engaged in bidding wars over salaries.
However, like Mr. Kassab, Ms. POMARES indicates that this is, at the limit, dangerous for the Tunisian call center sector, especially since "the Tunisian market is not yet mature". The proof is that in Tunisia, working in a call center is considered by many as a "job" and not as a "profession"...
In this game, the director of Vocalcom warns against the slide towards what he calls "the Moroccan problem..." of call centers. With a significant difference, however, since if the sector is resisting or even developing further in Morocco, it is simply because large structures are relocating there, and offering real career plans to applicants, which is not the case in Tunisia. For the moment, anyway.
As a result, there is fear that foreign investors will abandon Tunisia because of the lack of control over call centers - in other words, a good organization of the sector that has led to these bidding wars that disrupt turnover, market prices, and therefore market mechanisms. Mr. Kassab therefore proposes to implement a joint action to regulate the market, including the creation of a university curriculum, like in Egypt, where he says, between 5,000 and 6,000 graduates in "Call Centers" will be graduating this year.
And as you might expect, we wanted to know what the Call Centers Trade Union thinks about these issues. In vain...
Posted online on June 15, 2009
webmanagercenter.com
An increasingly strategic sector on this side of the Mediterranean, especially in times of crisis, call centers are beginning to develop in Tunisia, like in Morocco. With two undeniable assets: the ease with which Tunisians learn foreign languages and the geographical proximity to Europe.
However, for informed professionals, this sector is considered, despite its potential, as an epiphenomenon, even if the discourse suggests otherwise.
According to Ali Kassab, director of Vocalcom Tunisia - Call center technology, call center activity faces three major problems. The first problem is that there is no specialized training structure capable of immediately integrating graduates into call centers, which has led to a high demand that remains unmet. Mr. Kassab estimates that of the 60,000 Tunisian graduates per year, barely 3% would be directly employable in call centers.
The second problem is that no action is being taken by the Call Centers Trade Union to establish a joint training fund which, Mr. Kassab believes, could provide a solution... This refers in particular to apprenticeship training. The third is the absence of a collective agreement in call centers.
Result: call centers - especially small and medium-sized ones - are currently engaged in a bidding war for recruitment, offering salaries that they are unable to honor for long, according to some specialists. And here, our consultant sounds the alarm, saying that the sector is in real danger. We must be very careful because the sector is not yet mature enough. Certainly, it is an open market, that is to say a market where the law of supply and demand should fully play out. However, since the sector is not well regulated, the public authorities should ensure that there is no abuse, or at least limit it as much as possible.
The explanation is simple. For Mr. Kassab, in order to attract human resources, some call centers rely on salaries that often exceed their capacity. Moreover, in recent days, we have seen advertisements in some Tunisian newspapers displaying the amount of salaries offered, something rare enough to be noted.
As for whether "600 Tunisian dinars" is a high salary or not for a call center, Catherine POMARES, Contact Center Manager at Transcom (an 850-position call center), specifies that it all depends on the type of activity of the call center. In other words, you don't pay the same in a technical type of call center (generally engineers) as in a commercial type.
Furthermore, she believes that it is the small and medium-sized call centers that are engaged in bidding wars over salaries.
However, like Mr. Kassab, Ms. POMARES indicates that this is, at the limit, dangerous for the Tunisian call center sector, especially since "the Tunisian market is not yet mature". The proof is that in Tunisia, working in a call center is considered by many as a "job" and not as a "profession"...
In this game, the director of Vocalcom warns against the slide towards what he calls "the Moroccan problem..." of call centers. With a significant difference, however, since if the sector is resisting or even developing further in Morocco, it is simply because large structures are relocating there, and offering real career plans to applicants, which is not the case in Tunisia. For the moment, anyway.
As a result, there is fear that foreign investors will abandon Tunisia because of the lack of control over call centers - in other words, a good organization of the sector that has led to these bidding wars that disrupt turnover, market prices, and therefore market mechanisms. Mr. Kassab therefore proposes to implement a joint action to regulate the market, including the creation of a university curriculum, like in Egypt, where he says, between 5,000 and 6,000 graduates in "Call Centers" will be graduating this year.
And as you might expect, we wanted to know what the Call Centers Trade Union thinks about these issues. In vain...
Posted online on June 15, 2009
webmanagercenter.com
