Move to lessen communications costs

                                                                                         

Costs of telecommunication are a major concern for call-centre managers, particularly for those providing outsourced customer support, telesales and other services to clients, says Kevin Jacobson, a voice business unit manager at Storm, a telecommunications company in South Africa.

He says one of the contributing factors to high costs is when agents make fixed-line calls to a customer’s cellular number.
In this case the mobile operator charges the fixed-line operator an interconnect fee of R1, 25 a minute for connecting the call and this is passed on to the company that originated the call. If this interconnect fee was reduced it would make a big difference to telecommunication costs. He says the regulator, Icasa, has released a discussion document relating to this issue.

To avoid this cost, call centres are at present using least-cost routing services that convert fixed-line calls to cellular. On average this reduces the cost of the call from R2 to Rl, 32, but requires call-centre Operators to sign a 24 or 36 month contract, depending on the service provider and operator involved.
If the interconnection costs are reduced by Icasa and the saving is passed to the customer, it could negate the need for least-cost routing, says Jacobson.
He says whether or not this transpires, it makes more sense for companies to move to Voice over IP (VoIP) for all their calls.

In this case, fixed line and cellular calls would all be routed from the call centre over a leased data line to the VoIP service provider, and forwarded from there directly to the recipient’s network provider, whether it be Telkom or one of the mobile operators. The move to VoIP can reduce telecommunication costs for call centre operators by 25% to 30%, depending on the mix of local, national and international call traffic, says Jacobson.

About the author:
Storm is a telecommunications company in South Africa that provides businesses with Internet connectivity that is fast, cost effective and reliable. High quality voice and data solutions which include VPN's are offered.

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