Call Centres in Canadian world beating Quality

There are many reasons why call centres are moved from their original counties, but when it comes to comparing the USA and Canada, few stand out as so obvious.

Canadians have always enjoyed a proud tradition of being independent from it's monster neighbour, but when it comes to money people have to swallow their pride.

It is true that the strong Canadian dollar makes it lag behind when it comes to finding a cheaper source for call centre headquarters. But the disadvantages are soon outweighed by the pluses. The most obvious is language. In the Far East call centres can provide a huge pool of staff with excellent language skills, but there is hardly any difference between the Canadian and other North American accents.

So when customers make that phone call to an enquiry desk, they are not put off by a foreign sounding voice. It would be true to say that the administration structure between the two counties is very different, but with a cross culture, many large companies can do business with each other here, like no where else.

When it comes to finding a home for a call centre, Canada ranks highest in the Western Industrialised nations. With the best value out of all the G7 counties.

With many large and important companies making their home in Seattle, like Boeing; Ebay and Microsoft, it is not beyond the imagination that they would use this valuable resource across the border. The history of large call centres (as with many countries) only goes back about 20 years in Canada. But they have already made a big impact.

When it comes to any call centres, they fall into 2 camps.

Incoming &

Outgoing

By this I mean the type of calls that will be coming into that country and the types that will be sent out.

The first is the most obvious, as here lies the heart of why call centres are set up. A call centre in Canada will be well received when it comes to asking advice by a customer in the United States. Unless they are told where the person is at the other end of the line, they will never guess. So you can be sure of a smoothly running conversation.

Outgoing, is another problem.

We all know the true nature of this type of call. We can be polite and say it's all in the name of business and part of modern life. But few of us welcome nuisance phone calls, trying to sell us things we cannot possibly want. In the press, this area of phone business has generated more negative feeling than any other people might know. Slowly but surely the industry and the governments are moving to stop some of the nastier scams, where people end up with huge phone bill, they knew nothing about. But few people welcome a call in the evening by someone convinced they have won a major cash prize!

In many countries of the work law and order is barely under control, but few people can doubt the stability of Canada as a trading source for call centres. The figures are rising each year, with an estimated 800 new out-sources centres to open in the next 2 years. In 2002, there were only 450, but by next year, that could double!

Learn more about this author, Steven Lambert.
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