The city of Berlin has currently 130 contact centres employing 8,800 agents, an increase of 8.3 and 7.3 per cent respectively over 2001 figures. Outsourced activity has already a 47 per cent share while 15 per cent of the centres are internationally active. These are the conclusions of a report divulged this week by the Berlin Business Development Corporation (BBDC).
“The call center sector is still among Berlin’s leading growth fields. There are currently 130 call centers in the city with a total of 8,800 employees. That was ten more centers than in the previous year, when 8,200 people were working in the sector. At the end of the year 2000, that figure was still put at 7,000 employees working in 90 call centers, explains Hans Estermann, BBDC Executive Director.
It should, however, be noted that these are not absolute figures. Some centers have been taken over by others, some have closed down altogether, and others are entirely new additions to the sector or have improved their market share,” he adds.
With 1600 agents employed, finance is the leading vertical market in Berlin, followed by telecommunications, with 1560, and information technology with 975. Tourism, automotive industry and public institutions are among the last with 240, 180 and 105 agents respectively.
Despite finance market having the lead, the telecommunication sector is hot on its heels and is likely to overtake in the following times: compared with 2001 figures, finance decreased the number of agents by 4.8 per cent, while t elecommunications went up 20 per cent.
Media sector (increasing the number of agents by 81 per cent), public institutions (75 per cent) and retail and mail order (with an increase of 47 per cent) are among the top burgeoning vertical markets, while automotive industry (-28 per cent), energy (-23 per cent) and information technology (-4.4 per cent) are the ones which lost the most significant number of agents in a year time.
While mobile communication via SMS still hardly plays any role in the day-to-day activities of most centers, the study reported that more than a quarter of all centres do use web applications. After conventional telephone calls, e-mails, with a 72 per cent share, are the second most widely employed channel of communication.
Reporting on the command of foreign languages, BBDC found out that 43 per cent of Berlin contact centres provided services in English, while 21 per cent in other languages (French, Polish, Russian, Italian, French and Spanish).
Filipe Samora
2003-03-21
Em Foco – Pessoa