How Will The Corona Virus Effect Worldwide Call Centers?
There are three ways that the coronavirus will effect the call centers worldwide, the big question is not if it will effect the industry it is how big will the impact be? Travel, staffing levels and proximity will all play big roles in US companies policies regarding their worldwide call centers.
The larger the country the larger the threat of a pandemic exposure there is. More people more ways for the virus to spread and the larger the city, the more confined spaces exist and more public transportation and markets are packed with people. So many of the favorite off shore locations for call centers are likely to be effected which can effect production and so much more. The big centers in the Philippines and India will likely be the first to be effected.
In addition the companies that have large call centers in India and the Philippines are likely to stop travel by their employees to these locations making doing business in those and many other countries even more difficult. The air travel will also be more difficult as the virus spreads, employees of companies that are task with travel to those call center locations may end up stuck for weeks or months if the threat level changes in that location while they are visiting. Amazon suspended all non essential travel on Feb 29th and many Fortune 500 companies will follow.
Countries that have a lot of tourism will be more likely to have the virus enter the country. Larger BPO companies have centers in many countries and there are usually travel between each of those locations which will likely cease as the threat of moving the virus from one center to another one in another country will be a big threat to those large BPO’s.
Once the virus is determined to be in call center areas staffing levels are likely to be effected as the best response to this virus is a quarantine. This will challenge many centers as the bigger the city the bigger the likelihood of quarantine. A work from home strategy as a disaster plan will be important for the centers effected by quarantines.
It is very likely that this virus is going to have a temporary effect on all centers worldwide. This is the real truth. So the following questions become more important than if and when it will effect the industry.
- So if it does hit your call center how are you going to deal with it?
- How long will it take for the threat to pass?
- Will clients go back to that same strategy after the virus has passed or will this have companies looking at their outsource strategies and making changes?
- Will this have long term effects on offshore centers and drive more business nearshore to reduce the travel requirements?
- Will it drive more call center work back into the US?
- If companies restrict travel long term how will that change the industry?
- How will this effect call center equipment manufacturing?
We will explore these questions in future articles.
