ABSTRACT
In 2003 it was estimated that there were around 4,000 call centres in Australia (compared with 550 in 1998), employing around 160,000 staff. Potentially call centres are now relevant for all industries and all enterprises. In Australia location is highly concentrated. The majority are situated in Sydney and Melbourne where they represent approximately 70 per cent of the total multinational call centre market in the Asia Pacific region (Budde 2004). Nevertheless, Australia has been witnessing a tendency to relocate call centres from central business districts (CBDs). This trend has already been identified in the northern hemisphere, although infrastructure and staffing problems have limited the potential for cost advantages. Around 65 per cent of call centre costs are labour related, so where cost cutting is required, relocation and outsourcing go some way to accounting for the rationale for the much (over-) publicised offshoring of call centre activity (Budde 2004). The fear (or threat) that most call centres will relocate to offshore locations seems overplayed (see Taylor and Bain, Srivastava and Theodore this volume). The US research firm Datamonitor, in a report published in 2004, suggested that call centre employment in Australia would continue to grow at just under 10 per cent per annum until 2008. Despite the fact that India is expected to overtake Australia as the largest market for call centres in the Asia Pacific by 2008, factors including variable infrastructure reliability will militate against wholesale migration. The fact that over 50 per cent of Australian call centres offer languages other than English and have the capacity to carry out multi-lingual functions is also of increasing importance in location decision making (Invest Victoria 2004).
