Ringing the Changes

Several reasons underpin the rise of the call center business, but important among them is the Dominican Republic’s proximity to, and warm relations with, the US. According to Nearshore Americas, the Dominican Republic remains the principle call center and business process outsourcing (BPO) hub of the Caribbean, where more than 60 call centers have made it the fastest growing industry after tourism. By 2010, the sector was reported to account for 40% of overall revenue generated by the local economy. In fact, the country has marshaled the private sector, universities, and software industry entities into ClusterSoft, an NGO geared at promoting the Dominican Republic as the preferred nearshore IT outsourcing destination. Data from Nearshore Americas for 2012 reveals that the capital city Santo Domingo accounted for 78% of the contact center market, due largely to its greater population of educated employees, while Santiago took 18%. The overall contact center employee number had risen six-fold from 5,000 in 2006 to 30,000, with 56,000 anticipated by 2016. Of the total number of contact centers, 67.6% were servicing international markets and 69.1% of employees spoke English. The latter is testament to the state’s English Immersion Program that with over 50 centers nationwide has provided the job market with thousands of fluent English-speaking undergraduates. Local contact center business was identified as 66.2% inbound, 24.6% outbound, 8.0% BPO, and 1.2% knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). And in terms of clients, the four largest vertical industries serviced in descending order were telecoms companies at 43.9%, finance at 17.8%, IT at 6.4%, and medical at 5.3% as of 2012.