Infotech Lead Asia: Vietnam’s contact center industry is likely to reach $11.4 million in 2018 from $4.2 million in 2011, up 15 percent.
There are several contributors to the significant growth. Vietnam’s economic growth rate has been among the highest in the Asia Pacific region in recent years, with an annual GDP rate of 7 percent – 8.5 percent.
With customer service becoming a key focus in Asia Pacific, Vietnam is improving customer relationships for greater loyalty, brand recall and profitability.
Basic applications like Automatic Call Distributor (ACD), Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and Call Monitoring (CM) are still leading the trends in the Vietnam contact center market.
ACD is the biggest contributor that accounts for almost 40 percent of all applications and is still growing at a fast rate as majority of contact centers’ primary purpose is to support incoming voice calls. It is forecasted that in 2018, ACD will reach the saturated status of 31.7 percent from 37.3 percent in 2011 and start to slow down. The same will happen to other current major applications like CTI and IVR.
BFSI and Telco are the largest contributing verticals and are likely to remain so due to an ever- increasing customer base and an adequate supply of capital to invest in new technologies and solutions. The customer-intensive industries of BFSI and Telco are characterized by large deployments of centers with 200 seats and above. This size band will grow in prominence as these two industry verticals are likely to dominate revenue contribution.
“Most contact center projects in Vietnam are deployed by banks, financial institutions and Telco service providers. These sectors require a high level of customer care; large seat numbers are needed to always be available to serve customers,” said Dao Thi Minh Thao, Research Associate, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan APAC.
Currently, the less than 50 seat contact centers comprise of only more than 2 percent. Over time, the market is expected to see a higher growth of less than 50 seats and 51-200 seat horizontals based on the increasing demand from the SMB segment as well as more integrated, cost-effective solutions provided.
Vietnam has been established as a credible low cost alternative destination for offshore and outsourced services. Hiring IT professionals in Vietnam is 30 percent-50 percent less expensive as compared to other outsourcing countries like India and the Philippines.
Studies have showed that Vietnam with a strong workforce of more than 15,000 IT engineers of software outsourcing alone and its low labor cost is an undeniable advantage that drives international companies to this new ideal outsourcing destination.
Though the language barrier is a drawback, almost 80 percent of the workforce is comprised of young, enthusiastic college graduates with science degrees that are always keen to learn. Vietnam is propelling their way up in the IT outsourcing industry.
