By Doreen Hemlock and Niala Boodhoo Business Writers
The largest call center company in South Florida is opening its first offshore location in the Caribbean region -- in the Dominican Republic.
Plantation-based Precision Response Corp. said Tuesday it plans to employ an initial 300 people at the center in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros, with capacity to expand to 600 workers there handling work both in Spanish and English. The expansion highlights a trend to what some call "near-shoring," that is, U.S. companies setting up offshore operations nearby instead of in far-flung India or the Philippines. The reason: Offshore operations closer to home are easier to monitor for managers, just a short plane ride away, and conveniently reached in the same time zone. The Dominican Republic is especially popular for the nearby centers because of its relatively low costs -- comparable to India and less expensive than Jamaica and other English-speaking Caribbean islands, said Philip Dickenson Peters, chief executive of Zagada Markets Inc., a Coral Gables firm focused on Caribbean offshore services. While it generally costs $25-$30 per agent per hour to operate a call center in the United States, including labor, computers and other expenses, operations tend to run $14-$18 in Jamaica and other English-speaking islands, $12-13 in Mexico or the Philippines and likely $9-$11 in India or the Dominican Republic, Peters said. Plus, Caribbean centers offer extra perks: lower employee turnover than U.S. counterparts and what Peters calls the "the hospitality dividend." In the islands, call center jobs are among the better-paid positions, with workers tending to stay put longer. Plus, employees are familiar with demands of U.S. clients, since tourism has brought a "long legacy of dealing with Americans and offering them customer care," said Peters. Proximity and lower costs help explain why Verizon International Teleservices has grown its Dominican Republic operations handling phone calls, data entry and other services to roughly 4,000 employees since 1996, serving both international and domestic clients. And its Dominican job count should grow by at least 10 percent next year, thanks in part to the booming U.S. Hispanic market, said Jorge Aboudara, sales director at the company's Miami business development office. Indeed, demand is so great that the Verizon unit is opening its first call center in Jamaica this month, shifting some of its all-English work to that former British island to concentrate in the Dominican Republic on its bilingual, Spanish -English services. Its job count in Jamaica should reach 600 next year. Just how much the Caribbean operations might draw from U.S. centers remains unclear, however. Precision Response Vice President Alicia Miyares said its offshore centers boost U.S. operations, because the company tends to use multiple locations for each client to ensure quality control and serve as backups if needed. Verizon's Aboudara said Caribbean centers generally compete with other offshore sites, not U.S. locales. "When a chief financial officer has to cut costs, he has no choice but to look where it's less expensive," said Aboudara. "It's a problem of survival, based on costs." Precision Response employs more than 10,000 people worldwide, including 6,000 in South Florida. Overseas, it operates in India and the Philippines. Doreen Hemlock can be reached at dhemlock@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5009. Copyright 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel