Contact centre outsourcing, a cost-effective solution for modern retail

Trinh Thi Oanh

In the next five years this field of business is going to grow even more and so will its influence. Vietnamese contact centres are going to serve not only the domestic market but also reach out to the international market. The growth of retail has been the main driver of this growth.

The retail market’s potential

World analysts have said that after Vietnam joins the TPP, retailers will not immediately be able to approach the Vietnamese market and change it. Still, foreign investors are showing increasing interest in the Vietnamese retail market and are taking steps to prepare set up here. The reason is that Vietnam holds a lot of potential with its 90 million-strong population, of which young people account for 60 per cent, and that modern retail is only accounting for 25 per cent of total retail revenue.

According to the General Statistics Office, the retail revenue in 2015 was VND2,470 trillion ($111 billion), up 10.6 per cent on-year. However, modern retail, namely supermarkets and malls, only accounted for 25 per cent of all this. The percentage is a lot lower compared to that in other countries in the region, such as the Phillippines (33 per cent), Thailand (34 per cent), China (51 per cent), Malaysia (60 per cent), and Singapore (90 per cent).

This unexploited potential, coupled with the numerous trade agreements Vietnam signed is going to lure many big retailers to the market. Japanese Aeon, South Korean Lotte Mart, French Auchan, Walmart from the US, and Thai Central Group and Berli Jucker Co.’s entrance and mergers and acquisitions in Vietnam in the recent years are a demonstration of this market’s appeal.

Big retailers in Vietnam

At the moment, Aeon has three shopping centres in Vietnam and shows no signs of stopping. The Japanese company plans to have 20 shopping centres in Vietnam by 2020, making a total revenue of VND18 trillion ($807 million). Aeon knows that Vietnamese consumers are very fond of Japanese goods, so it strives to ensure that Japanese goods account for one third of the total goods on sale in its shopping centres, while Vietnamese goods and goods from other countries each account for one third. With this formula, Aeon’s shopping centres attract 30,000 visitors each week day and 70,000 each day of the weekends. This is a success that many retailers in Vietnam envy.

In 2015, Thai retailer Berli Jucker (BJC) became the owner of all Metro supermarkets in Vietnam at the publicly-announced price of $710 million. BJC also has shown interest in buying 30 supermarkets of the Big C brand, put on sale by their current owner French Groupe Casino. This not only shows BJC’s high expectations for the retail and distribution market in Vietnam, but the company’s hope to lead the market.

With the participation of big brands with big investment plans, the Vietnamese retail market is going to become more exciting, and competition among retailers is going to be increasingly fierce. Then, whichever brand is able to create trust and bring to customers the perfect shopping experience is going to gain their loyalty.

The importance of contact centres for retailers

To compete, besides ensuring product quality, a retailer cannot ignore customer services.

The mind-set of Vietnamese consumers has changed in the past decade. They no longer want only high quality products. Because living standards have risen and the internet has brought about a revolution in communication, they demand more in terms of customer services, service culture, and added value from spending money on a product.

Therefore, when entering the Vietnamese market, retailers have to pay more attention to customer care as well as to standardising and professionalising customer touch-points. Online interaction is a very popular trend among young customers.

In order to create the perfect shopping experience and increase the number of loyal customers at a low cost, one of the effective tools is setting up a contact centre.

In the past ten years, the Vietnamese contact centre outsourcing industry has seen impressive growth. At the moment, some companies are providing high quality contact centre services on par with companies in traditional outsourcing markets, such as India, the US, or the Philippines. Hoa Sao Group, in collaboration with contact centre software solution provider Vocalcom, has been providing services for its numerous partners not only in Vietnam but also around the world.

The multi-channel contact centre service provided by Hoa Sao, where brands can approach and show care for customers across all channels, including voice, web chat, SMS, and social networking, is a great tool for retailers to strengthen their competitiveness. By building a professional contact centre while saving costs through outsourcing, along with having a customer-oriented business strategy, brands will find it easier to seek new customers as well as retain existing ones.

By Trinh Thi Oanh - Deputy general director of Hoa Sao Group