The shrinking of offshore revenue in 2012 for both the Argentinian and Chilean contact center outsourcing market translates to a spurt in domestic revenues, according to a report from Frost & Sullivan.
In Argentina, the domestic market accounted for 90.9 percent of the total market revenue in 2012 and is projected to rise to 92.1 percent in 2019, as many outsourcers are investing in innovative applications. In Chile, the domestic market generated 84 percent of the revenue in 2012, but is expected to slightly dip in favor of offshore revenues after 2014.
Chile lost considerable contact center outsourcing orders to its neighbors, Peru and Colombia. However, both Chile and Argentina will continue to offer significant contact center outsourcing services to other Latin American countries and the offshoring shares of Latin America are expected to increase to 50.7 percent in Argentina and 6.6 percent in Chile by 2019.
"Both countries have talented, experienced contact center personnel and strong infrastructure, so it is reasonable to expect that the markets will diversify into more specialized services to create more value per contact," said Frost & Sullivan ICT Research analyst Martin Ramirez, in a statement. "Some of these specialized services include software support, financial banking consulting, and health/medical virtual diagnosis."
To change the perception of the contact center market as a commodity service provider, innovative contact center leaders in Chile and Argentina are looking to branch out their services to offer a more professional platform and increase margins. Gradually, they have begun integrating communications and marketing, IT and financial services with their contact center services.
"Revenues from the telecommunications vertical are likely to decrease in the next two to three years due to the slowing down of Spanish mobile telephony as well as Chile's market saturation and Argentina's unmet portability expectations," said Ramirez. "This will drive the contact center market to more promising industries such as healthcare, retail, government and education."
"This will drive the contact center market to more promising industries such as healthcare, retail, government and education," Ramirez said. “The thinning out of Spanish deals will be compensated by an expansion in business from Latin America, and may even lead in Argentina to a development of Portuguese speaking resources. Revenue shares from Latin America are expected to grow the most at a compound annual growth rate of 9.3 percent within the forecasted period. However, Spain is the biggest consumer of the Chilean market's offshore services and despite its share loss, the country will continue to dominate the Chile's offshore revenues in 2019.”