Call Center Changes in the Making

This is not new news, but important news for communities that depend upon call center. The initial story centered on South Florida, but the underlying trend is important for many places to pay attention to.

Call centers won't disappear overnight, but the industry's days of expansion appear over, Datamonitor said.

About 50,600 U.S. call centers now employ 2.9 million people. Datamonitor expects those totals to dwindle to 47,500 call centers with 2.7 million employees by 2008.

Many of the jobs will move to lower-wage countries such as Canada, India, the Philippines and Mexico. While the typical American call center worker makes $10 an hour, the average wage for the same job in India is $1.20 an hour, Datamonitor analyst Mark Best said.

Large companies such as Microsoft and Dell already route customer service calls to India.

More here.