ICT Group withdraws market research services

US-- Call centre owner ICT Group is to withdraw its market research services hot on the heels of a slump in research call volumes last year.

As part of CEO John Brennan's strategy to improve profitability the company said yesterday it will cease performing MR services and limit its telesales activities. Call volumes associated with these areas were down 30% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2008.

Going forward, Brennan said the company would focus resources on its customer care and business process outsourcing (BPO) services, which saw 15% growth in the same period, as well as its technology services offering. Latest figures attributed 75% to 80% of ICT's total call volume to customer care and BPO.

The company's market research services included phone, web and interactive voice response (IVR) surveys. According to its website, ICT has over 600 automated CATI workstations, and its call centres in the US, Costa Rica and the Philippines offered multilingual interviewing capabilities.

At this stage it is not known how many dedicated research staff were employed by ICT and how they will be affected by the service withdrawal.

In a statement, ICT did warn of staff cutbacks and the closing of all or part of six call centres in the US and Canada, as well as reduced capacity at centres in Europe and Australia as part of wider cost cutting plans, including the increased use of lower-cost offshore operations.

A company spokesman did not return calls seeking comment.

Author: Brian Tarran