The Quest for Global Expansion: Xceed Re‐Visited

Abstract

The contact center is considered the face of any corporation since it is the sole direct interface between its customers, stakeholders, vendors, and employees and the gateway to the global marketplace. Not only is it responsible for solving issues, but its role has grown to include sales, marketing, customer services, and general information requests. Contact centers that once just answered telephone calls, now field queries from multiple channels – phone, fax, email, and web interaction. The global offshore outsourcing market for IT and business services exceeded US$55 billion in 2008. It was estimated that an annual growth of 20% would be realized during the following five years (Willcocks et al., 2009). As the global spending on outsourcing is increasing, so is Egypt’s eagerness to be placed on the map. The government of Egypt has taken several actions to support the industry and aid in its nourishment. Leading the way and acting as the face of Egypt is Xceed Contact Center, which has placed its focus on positioning itself, not as an Egyptian contact center, but rather, a state-of-the-art contact center that is headquartered in Egypt. Their focus on global expansion is paving their way to generate high revenues and provide the best service possible. This article describes the progression of an Egyptian company from a local call center to an international provider of call center and data entry services. It demonstrates the uniqueness of an Egyptian company managed by local expertise and competing at the global level; a successful model that is unusual and arguably against the conventional wisdom in many developing economies.