Contact Centres

Industry Size and Composition | Labor Force
Business Competitiveness | Innovation

Contact Centre Location:
Greater Toronto - Greater Access.

American companies have long looked to Canada as a first-rate location for their contact centres. Findings from Site Selection Canada show that in the 18 months ending September 30, 2003 more than 37,495 customer service representative (CSR) positions were created and 118 contact centres were established across Canada, about 98% coming from U.S.-based customers.

With Canada’s greatest contact centre activity concentrated in Ontario (40%), and indeed in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) (34%), the Toronto region is ranked #1 among selected U.S. and Canadian cities in its attractiveness to meet the future growth demands of the contact centre industry.

The GTA has consistently outpaced its North American competitors in attracting international contact centre operations, including those for IBM, Minacs Worldwide, TDWaterhouse, Air Canada, RoyalSunAlliance and AMEX.

Strong testimonials from these global leaders reinforce PricewaterhouseCoopers’ competitive analysis of the North American contact centre industry, identifying the GTA's "contact centre readiness" as its’ key competitive advantage. Education, public transit, telecom infrastructure, language diversity and skilled workers all ranked as highly advanced and well positioned to meet the future anticipated growth of contact centres in the GTA.

Industry Size and Composition

• The GTA has:
  • 22% of Canada’s contact centres
  • 34% of Canada’s total CSR positions.
• That’s:
  • 2900 contact centres
  • 126,000 CSR’s
  • Annual growth rate of 30%

The largest concentration of contact centres resides within the manufacturing industry followed by financial services and utilities/technology and telecommunications.

Distribution by industry sector

Major Contact Centres in the GTA

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Labor Force

The GTA offers an abundant labor force to the Canadian and U.S. contact centre market
with low turnover rates across all industry sectors. The PwC 2001 survey of 343 contact centres in the GTA indicated a turnover rate of 21%.

Several colleges in the GTA have developed contact centre specific programs.

Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology
Client Contact Centre Training Program

The full-time program accommodates 25 students per year and runs in conjunction with the 3- year Financial Planning Program. During the students’ third year, there is a co-op job placement option where the students work in the contact centre industry for a 14-week period. The part-time program offers five contact centre specific classes such as Introduction to Contact Centres, Contact Centre Communications, Situational Selling and Contact Centre Lab.

Centennial College School of Business
Contact Centre Operations Program

This is a one-year full-time program with a 16-week paid work placement. The placement gives students product specific training in the industry and employers often hire the students upon graduation. Centennial College also offers a Contact Centre Management Program, a part-time program tailored to those currently working in the contact centre industry.

Additional Contact Centre Programs offered in the GTA:

• Humber College School of Health Sciences Emergency Telecommunications Certificate
• Academy of Learning Contact Centre Customer Service Representative Diploma
• Community Microskills Contact Centre Training Program
• Goodwill Toronto Contact Centre Training for Persons with Disabilities
• Goodwill Toronto Centre Training for Youth

Sheridan College School of Computing and Information Management
Contact Centre Management Program

This is a specialization course in management designed for professionals already in the related workforce. The program focuses on courses for contact centre managers and supervisors.

Companies locating in the GTA can benefit from job training and hiring programs.
For more information, go to: Government support programs.

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Business Competitiveness

According to the 2004 KPMG Competitive Alternatives study, Canada’s overall business costs are the lowest in the G-7 countries – 9% lower than those offering similar services in the U.S. In the GTA, contact centre and back office operating costs are about 5% lower than the U.S. average.

*Costs include labor, facilities, transportation, utilities and taxes.
Index (US=100.0)
CND $1.00 = US $0.80

Canadian operational efficiencies from labor savings alone still provide major benefits.

• Average GTA salary for a CSR is CDN $33,096, benefits/bonus included.
• GTA base salary for a CSR Manager is CDN $64,934.

Total compensation (base + bonuses + benefits) - Customer Service Representative (CSR)

Total compensation (base + bonuses + benefits) - CSR Manager

State-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure and price

“Overhead costs in Canada are cheaper because our prices for Internet access and land and mobile phones is lower than leading OECD countries”, says the Conference Board of Canada’s 2004 Connectedness Index.

For information on telecommunications service providers in the GTA, go to: Telecom & Utilities

•Access to public transit and availability of skilled labor were cited as the most important considerations in selecting a contact centre location.Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers, GTA Contact Centre Study, July 2001

The reasons for the GTA’s attraction of international contact centres are clear.

We’ll let some of our contact centre industry leaders tell you why.

AIR CANADA, GTA CENTRAL
“Greater Toronto provides us with qualified call centre agents who have specialized language capabilities.”

Lori Boyd, Contact Centre Manager, Air Canada

AMEX, GTA NORTH
“We use the full spectrum of Greater Toronto's modern telecommunications infrastructure to seamlessly integrate our high quality services to a discerning membership base across our world wide member service network.”

George Tsafaridis, V.P. International Call Centre Engineering, Amex Canada Inc.

GSH SHAREHOLDERS, GTA CENTRAL
“Among many other reasons, we came to Toronto because we saw the opportunity of operating from a competitively priced, premier location that’s consistent with our corporate culture and customer care requirements. Our Toronto call centre is the ‘hallmark centre’ we use to benchmark our call centres in New York City, London, Rome, Sydney and Johannesburg.”

Glenn Keeling, President & Chief Executive Officer, Georgeson Shareholders

IBM, GTA CENTRAL“There are 13 colleges and universities within an hour and a half of our call centre. We've been extremely successful at retaining our Toronto call centre staff. Our attrition rate here is 4.8%, well below the industry standard. Year to date, out of 1,682 call centre agents, we've promoted 59 within the company while only 10 chose to pursue other personal or employment opportunities.”

Bruce McIntyre, Business Strategies, IBM.COM Centres

ROYAL & SUN ALLIANCE INSURANCE, GTA WEST
“We looked at 35 sites before we selected a Greater Toronto Area commercial mall where our CSRs enjoy shopping, restaurants and other super amenities. We found very competitive lease rates and the small premium we pay to be in a commercial mall is a fraction of what call centres in more remote locations pay to retain staff.”

Jim Lord, Manager Administration and National Real Estate, Royal & Alliance Insurance Company of Canada

TD WATERHOUSE, GTA NORTH
“As the third largest financial centre in North America, Greater Toronto provided us with access to a securities industry labor pool of certified, multilingual customer care staff, state-of-the-art financial sector information technology and the latest telecommunications systems.”

Peter Gribbin, VP Operations, TD Waterhouse

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Innovation

Industry-leading customer contact solutions providers such as Nortel Networks and Siemens Canada, both located in the GTA, have the technology and expertise to outfit any contact centre looking to locate in the GTA.

Local providers offers and array of solutions including customer contact and voice portal, self-service, and advanced speech recognition. Their products and features are designed and tailored to support everything from basic to highly advanced applications, providing a consistent contact center appearance even when your contact center operations are widely dispersed.

Examples of products and services available include:

Centrex ACD
Centrex Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) provides call routing, advanced agent and supervisor features without the trouble and expense of other contact centre solutions.

CC MIS/Mini MIS
The Call Center Management Information System (CC MIS) increases the efficiency of contact centre operations.

ICM Link
Intelligent Call Management (ICM) link provides a CTI Interface between a central office switch and a contact centre’s host computer.

RT-1000
The RT-1000 is a Management Information System integrated with Networked Centrex-capable ACD in-bound contact centres.

Symposium TAPI Driver for ICM
Symposium TAPI Driver for ICM is software that provides translation services between a Windows NT telephony server and a DMS Centrex system.

HiPath ProCentre Suites
Packaged software applications that improve the effectiveness and efficiency of contact centre operations - multimedia skills-based routing, extensive agent and management tools, comprehensive reporting and integration with existing CRM front-office systems.

Source: Nortel Networks
Trango Software, a division of Seimens Canada

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