Bilingual workforce helps call centre business to trend in twin cities.

ISLAMABAD -- Offshore call centre business is trending in twin cities due to availability of bilingual human resource and easy registration procedures of the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB).

Talking to reporter, owner of a private call centre Mumtaz Ali said that a call centre could be registered online with PSEB by paying a nominal fee of Rs 20,000. After submitting the online application form, routine procedures would take around two to three working days, following which a provisional registration certificate would be issued, he explained.

Ali said most of the call centres in twin cities were working on marketing projects with the objective of cold calling. The outbound call centres contacted the businesses and customers in other countries with an alias name and local number, he added.

Explaining the working of call centres, he said that after registration a business would be permitted to make calls internationally using the internet, adding that the calls made over the internet worked on 'Voice Over Internet Protocol' and such calls were "cheaper than the traditional telephone calls".

The success of the offshore call centres, he said, was in using the local numbers as clients were not able to differentiate between...