From China with love....

I'm sat here in Hong Kong with LimeBridge colleague Tony Bruno looking at what's new since last year in China, whilst scoffing dim sum of course....

1 Most sizeable call centres have moved out of Hong Kong into mainland China, the Philippines or Malaysia.
2 Singapore is offering tax breaks and grants to attract regional centres. Employing the right quality of people to work in them remains a challenge, however.
3 The offshore market in China remains focused on BPO rather than voice. Despite this we have one client now with English speaking tech support in Beijing. This is being supported by Philippines workers living in Beijing. Apparently the wealthy class brings in domestic servants from the Philippines providing a limited English speaking workforce

One issue in common with the previous blog from the UK is how do you really justify investment in service. The prevailing attitude in China is one of "it isn't necessary" or its really about "product, price and distribution". Like all things, its not that simple...You cant just say they're wrong. If you believe in the importance of word of mouth then the drivers of vsat (very satisfied) behaviour and dissat (dissatisfied) behaviour will be top of mind. These will include service, but certainly not exclusively. We all need to work out the proportion of each due to product, price, brand and availability as well as the service elements. The more mature and competitive the market, the more that service becomes the differentiatior. But even then service might only be a quarter of the weighting. In less mature markets, it can matter less.

On to Australia tomorrow and then New Zealand to see what they think - watch for the latest posts over the next few days