According to a study conducted by Madar Research in conjunction with marketing communications consultancy Orient Planet, there were approximately 650 contact centers in the GCC at the end of 2008, with the highest concentration in the UAE, which accounts for over 46 percent of the total, followed by Saudi Arabia with 30 percent. The rest is accounted for by Bahrain (7.4 percent), Kuwait (6.5 percent), Qatar (5.4 percent) and Oman (4.6 percent). Contact center is defined as a centralized department in an enterprise from which all customer contacts are managed with computer automation using various communication channels, including over the phone, e-mail, SMS, web forum, chat or video. The GCC countries also accounted for over 17,800 full time contact center agents during the same period, which exclude on-call or freelance agents as well as offshore agents that provide services to GCC-based companies. UAE accounted for over 40 percent of estimated contact center agents in GCC, Saudi Arabia accounted for a slightly lower 37.6 percent and the rest is split between the remaining states. The operational expenses of contact centers in the GCC is estimated to total $20.6 million, representing an average cost per agent of $29,214 annually. The UAE accounts for half of the total value and Saudi Arabia trails behind at 28.5 percent. The average size of contact centers in the GCC in terms of agents would be 27 as at end of 2008, the size slides down to 26, when measured in terms of seats. This means a good number of contact centers across the GCC still have unoccupied seats, signifying plans to expand in the future. Saudi Arabia enjoys the highest number of agents and seats, at 34 and 32, respectively, which reflect the presence of larger-sized business establishments in its domicile compared to the rest of GCC. Bahrain lies on the other extreme, where an average contact center has about 23 agents and 20 seats. Majority of contact centers in the GCC are considered to be small (less than 50 seats) about a quarter (24.5 percent) are medium sized (between 50 and 250 seats), and the remaining 3.5 percent are considered large, or those that have seats that exceed 250. In a survey of over 330 sample companies in the GCC, Madar Research and Orient Planet also discovered that the banking and finance sector, which includes local and foreign commercial banks, investment companies, insurance, home finance and foreign exchange companies, holds the biggest share of the market at 28 percent. Travel and hospitality (comprising hotels, airlines, restaurants and travel or tour operators) accounted for 17 percent, followed by IT, telecom and electronics (15 percent); outsourced contact center service providers (11 percent); government administration agencies, excluding government-owned corporations (9 percent). A live agent via a telephone is still the dominant channel in the GCC, but youthfulness of the overall population in the GCC and the presence of a large working expatriate community with access to internet communication means a more aggressive adoption of other modes of contact center interaction such as SMS and e-mail. The dominance of telephone or a live agent as a customer interaction channel in the GCC, which accounts for approximately 74 percent of total channel utilisation, does not preclude rapid growth in the utilisation of e-mail, which accounted for as much as 18.5 percent of contact center interaction in the GCC at the end of 2008. There were at least 38 outsourced contact centers operating in the GCC in 2008, and they currently account for 5.8 percent of the total contact centers operating in the region at the end of 2008. These Outsource Service Providers (OSPs) include at least three operating companies with a presence in more than one country. Of the total OSPs, 37 percent operate out of the UAE, 29 percent out of Saudi Arabia, 11 percent out of Qatar, while the rest is spread equally among the three remaining GCC states. These 38 companies account for a total of 4,920 seats and 5,095 contact center agents, all contributing to a market worth approximately $157.07 million at the end of 2008. OSPs are significantly bigger in size compared to their in-house counterparts as OSPs account for 30 percent of the total contact center seats and 29 percent of total contact center agents found in the GCC in 2008, despite accounting for only 5.8 percent of all contact centers present in the GCC. Hence, OSPs employ an average of about 134 contact center agents, compared to an average of only 27 agents for the overall market. In terms of estimated revenues, UAE contributed roughly $67.75 million or 43.1 percent to the estimated total outsourced contact center revenues in the GCC, while Saudi Arabia accounted for 37.6 percent or an estimated $59.08 million. The number of contact center agents in Saudi Arabia is roughly 43.7 percent higher than those found in UAE, but UAE OSPs still managed to generate roughly 14.70 percent more revenues than OSPs in Saudi Arabia would have generated in 2008. Outsourced contact centers with a capacity of less than 100 seats (excluding captive seats) still dominate the GCC, accounting for a good 55 percent of the total market. Similarly, seats exceed the number of agents in over 55 percent of the OSPs, whereas the reverse is true for only 15.8 percent of them. Two of the latter are located in the UAE, and another two in Saudi Arabia, and one each for Oman and Qatar. So far, no outsourcing company in Bahrain and Kuwait has more outsourced contact center agents than seats. Based on the analyses performed on data gathering through secondary and primary sources, government agencies appear to contribute the most in the OSPs' combined revenues as at 2008, accounting for a quarter of the total market. IT and telecom companies, including fixed and mobile phone operators, internet service providers, application service providers and suppliers or resellers of IT products and services such as PCs, applications software and data communication products, account for 21.3 percent. The banking and finance sector contributed 19 percent, while FMCGs and retail and wholesale companies contributed approximately 16 percent to the GCC outsourced contact center revenues. Travel and hospitality account for 9.6 percent, while the erstwhile up-and-coming real estate sector accounted for a marginal 2.4 percent. Various sectors, specifically services (e.g. conference and exhibition companies, recruitment agencies), media and communication, education and healthcare sectors accounted for the remaining seven percent of the estimated outsourced contact center revenues in the region. At least 14 new OSPs could enter the GCC market between 2009 and 2013, most of which will be home-grown companies that start small. Madar Research and Orient Planet further expect a modest growth in terms of seats (3.98 percent CAGR) between 2009 and 2013, due to the high number of unoccupied seats particularly among small to mid-sized OSPs in the region. The number of contact center agents working for OSPs will also register single-digit growths (5.25 percent CAGR), in response to the economic situation that will likely depress the demand on outsourced contact center services particularly in 2009 and early 2010. As in the overall market, the region's industry should rebound on or before 2011, when oil price will make a comeback in the world market. End users' and OSPs' opinions differ on the key factors that possibly influence business decisions to utilise outsourced contact center services. On a five-point scale, with five as ‘extremely important,' end users rated ‘access to latest technologies without making upfront investment' as the most important factor that drive them to utilise OSPs with a score of 4.15, followed by reduction of operating expense (3.90) and access to expertise that is not available internally. On the other hand, OSPs believe that access to expertise that is not available internally among end users (weighing 4.3 out of 5) is the primary reason for utilizing outsourced contact center services, followed by reduced operating expense, improved quality of service and focus on core business. End users and OSPs were also asked to rate on a five-point scale various factors that tend to inhibit end users from utilizing contact center services. ‘Loss of control or leak of business information' emerged as the primary inhibiting factor among end users, gaining a score of 4.01, while it ranked among the minor inhibiting factors as perceived by OSPs. In contrast, OSPs rated ‘lack of awareness and appreciation of benefits' and ‘sizable investment in in-house contact centers' as the two most important reasons that keep end users from utilizing OSPs, garnering scores of 3.8 and 3.9 respectively. The same factors were less important to end users, scoring only 2.94 and 2.70, respectively. __
