Dalian dials into phone action
Monday, August 11, 2003 Posted: 0209 GMT (10:09 AM HKT)
HONG KONG, China (Reuters) -- A growing group of Western companies are quietly building the northeast China city of Dalian into the next big Asian telecommunications hub for offshore call centers.
The list of firms calling on Dalian, either directly or through contractors, for their offshore customer service or helpdesk needs, in the past year includes Dell Computer Corp, General Electric and Motorola.
Worldwide air courier FedEx Corp is also considering a call center in the city, either directly or via a contractor, sources say.
The growth has been so rapid that telecoms giant British Telecom is looking into possible investments in the area, a spokesman said.
In each case, the firms are using Dalian as a low-cost support center for their operations in Japan, which lies about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) to the east.
Dalian is even closer to South Korea -- both ethnically and geographically -- and many Korean firms are also said to be considering offshore call and back office centers in the city, according to industry executives.
The city's development into a major call center parallels similar trends in India, the Philippines and Singapore, whose abundance of English language speakers have attracted firms looking to support their U.S. operations.
In a recent survey, India and China were listed as Asia's top outsourced call center countries, with 96,000 seats in India and 38,000 in China, but most of the Chinese positions were believed to be local language operators. The Philippines was third with 20,000 seats.
India's call center industry was projected to grow 65 percent next year to 158,000 seats, and China's was expected to rise 41 pct to 53,500, while the Philipines was expected to grow to 40,000.
In most cases, customers call a local number in the United States or Japan and have their calls routed to offshore centers without ever knowing it.
edition.cnn.com |
