Australia answers the call

Business Asia, April 5, 1999

Australia is fast becoming a magnet for global companies wanting to service customers in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Telstra.

Telstra Regional Business Centres national general manager, Ms Mara Moustafine, said a recent survey of nine countries in the Asia-Pacific region showed that the Australian call centre industry was still leading the region and growing at 20 per cent a year.

"An increasing number of multinational companies are placing their regional telemarketing, customer care and technical support centres in Australia because of the overall value equation we offer," Ms Moustafine said.

She said companies established customer contact centres to cut costs while also delivering improved service.

While cost was an important factor, companies had realised that maintaining good relationships with customers was the key "differentiator" in attracting business.

Australia was ideally placed to deliver on competitive costs and service-oriented infrastructure.

Ms Moustafine said Australia offered a combination of political stability, a strong economy, world-class telecommunications and support infrastructure, competitive labour and accommodation costs and a highly skilled multilingual workforce.

"Australia is the only country in the Asia-Pacific able to offer a truly diversified and skilled multilingual labour pool, with good customer service skills," she said.

"Where else can you get three dialects of Chinese, Japanese, English and a number of other key languages spoken fluently in one place?"

The enormous growth in this sector was the key catalyst for Telstra establishing a dedicated Regional Business Centres (RBC) group last July.