Member Profile: ChinaONEcall talks the talk Go back »

2008-07-18 | Southwest China

ChinaONEcall was born in the wake of a situation most people visiting China for the first time are unfortunate enough to experience.

"My father came over to visit me," says Greg Sinclair, now Managing Director of the English to Chinese phone translation service but then working in Kunming. "He found himself stuck in the middle of nowhere, totally lost. He had to call me up and pass the phone onto a passerby who I was able ask directions from."

That was in 2005. Mr. Sinclair set up his call center headquarters in Kunming in January 2007 and – with his father Michael as Marketing Director and a team of English-speaking locals - now handles calls from business people and tourists grappling with China's daunting language barrier.

With ChinaONEcall, customers buy minutes which they can use from anywhere in the world. One phone number puts them in touch with call center staff who work to deal with whatever translation problem they are faced with.

"We get all sorts of calls, obviously mostly from business people and tourists," says Mr. Sinclair. "Now though we are getting more and more written translation work, which we were not expecting. We are also getting a lot of calls from the UK and the US from people setting up things before they come out to China and who want to set up conference calls with our translators and a client."

Call center staff receive training when they start work, but an obvious prerequisite is fluency in English. Mr. Sinclair says although Kunming's many universities give his business ample choice for employees, it was initially difficult finding qualified staff.  However, the trade-off of working out of a second-tier city such as Kunming makes it worthwhile.

"We do have less of a retention problem than I think we would have had elsewhere as staff here are more loyal to a company," he says. "In Kunming the expenses are much less and here we can be one of the best employees in the city whereas we couldn't be in a place like Guangdong. And as we have a 400 number, the location of our call center is not relevant.”

When the company started, the Olympics were an obvious attraction for a service firm targeting tourists. However, the expected bump has yet to materialize, Mr. Sinclair says, because the spectators seem to be staying away. "I flew into Beijing from the UK the other day and the plane was half-empty," he says. "I'd have expected it to be full this close to the Olympics but people don't seem to be coming."

"We'd always anticipated [the Olympics] would be a slight boost but it was not part of our original business plan. There are other events to look at such as the Asian Games and the World Expo [in Shanghai]."

Mr. Sinclair is also hoping the company's recently acquired membership of the European Chamber will benefit ChinaONEcall. The firm joined at the beginning of July and Mr. Sinclair hopes to get to as many events as possible.

"I think we are looking to talk to a number of businesses in association with ChinaONEcall," he said. "We are looking for new customers and also for new partners so we want to get in touch with other members."