The crisis begins, closes 30 Call Center. That's why they went bankrupt.

The number of Call Center companies that have been closed from the beginning of the year to this day, according to market actors is larger but difficult to identify, since a large part of them are small businesses registered as Physical Persons.

H & L Communication opened in late August 2015. According to the description on the QKR extract, the company would serve in the delivery of phone services via telemarketing. Subject has switched to a list of businesses with passive status. The manager of this company, experienced in the sector, given its potential in Albania, took over three telephone centres in the city of Tirana. Currently, only one of them operates. The other two, one employing about 110 people, failed to survive on the market. According to the administrator, the causes were many, but the main was the lack of campaigns from the neighboring state.

When asked about the open Call Center, he expressed pessimism about “Monitor”. If the situation goes on like this, we won't be long. I made a life investment, I have a loan. I'm feeling like they're taking the job out of my hands”, " he said when he was asked how he viewed the following situation.
Even Universal Call, a telephone center, with offices on Zogu I Boulevard, is one of the new subjects of the business list that have been passed on passive status in Tax. Erion Nushi, company manager, told of “Monitor” that he closed the business because there is no more activity. Universal Call registered as business in October 2013. According to Mr. Niushi, the performance was very good for about a year and a half, but then they failed to link contracts to bring marketing campaigns from Italian marketing companies.

Even for Keydi Xhemaj, manager of another Call Center on the passive list, the lack of contracts with Italians became a cause of bankruptcy.
“I was no longer securing contracts, we went bankrupt after a year, he said when asked about the causes of closure.
AID Communications was also one of the telephone centres that switched to passive status. Roland Ziu, manager, indicated that his company went bankrupt after failing to obtain contracts from the Italian side.

In March 2017, for the same reason, the list of suspensions was added and Mr. Nicklovan Chela's activity: They couldn't provide any more contracts.
Apollonia Call, Victory Call Centre, Deta Calling, InterCall, CALL International Albania, Fercal, Ergocall, Quick Call Albania, CommerCall, Call Center Insieme, FKI Call, ALD Communications, International Communications are some of the other operators who have passed on to passive status this year, according to the list published by taxes. Subjects are generally new, created in the last two years, as call center activity began to become widespread in the country, exploiting the free cost of the Italian-language power and knowledge, which led Italian companies to transfer this service to Albania... as soon as the Italian government intervened to save the closure of jobs, leaving Italy to Albania.

In Italy, on April 1st, the law “for defunction” and call center, which tightened rules for the shift of activity from Italy to non-EU states and imposed fines of up to 50 thousand euros for violations such as the country's origin account of where the call was being carried out. Adopted in December last year, the law was given a transitional period to enter into force in order for companies to get acquainted with new rules, standards implementation, reporting the number of employees, address to headquarters, data protection, etc.

Italy's initiative for delocalisation alarmed Call Center companies in Albania, which were penalised because they were operating in a country that is not part of the European Union. Not in a few cases was the concern of bankruptcy and the risk of losing thousands of jobs. The government at the time had a pale reaction through a letter to the Italian side but failed to get any positive answers.

But in March from Italy came the final hit for a centrist call. 13 Italian companies signed a protocol of understanding with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentillon and Minister of Economic Development Carlo Clenda. This agreement envisions that “9% of activities directly conducted in Italy pass within six months of signing and new contracts -- at least 80% of the extrasuring -- be carried out on Italian territory”.
The 13 biggest companies bringing marketing campaigns to Albania engaged in the deal. These subjects make up 65% of the sector for the lap: Annie, Enel, Sky, Mediaset, Tim, Vodafone, Wind Tre, Fastweb, IntesanPaolo, Unicredit, Poste Italian, Ntv, Traintaglia.

The pressure seems to be working.

Elvis Huqi, manager of the International Communications Group, told “Monitor” that the reason for the closure of activities where more than 50 people were employed became high fines by the Italian government. He said he could not risk getting fines in such a amount, so he saw fit to close the activity. Before such pressure, Huqi said, and vulnerable by the state, many were closed, while others were involved in marketing titles.

Huqi said there were many small companies that had gone through the Forx activity.
For some of the companies, during phone interviews with Call Center companies that had gone into passive status, the accounting offices responded. According to offices, another company problem was the relationship with Italian customers who in some cases did not pay their bills.
Even Maria Sepa, regional manager for the Italian company AZ Marketing, said that exposed to fraud, Italian companies had decided not to liquidate the bills for a part of the business.

Only With Forex

The Reshat Petrela Street, near the former train station in Tirana, seems to be the favorite area of these activities. Only one of the buildings on this road performed nine telephone centres, out of which only three operated with telemarketing campaigns. The other six worked with Forx.

According to H&L Communications administrator, currently the only companies that have benefits are the ones dealing with online stock exchanges.
I tried to get you into one of my Forex companies, but the required guarantee was very high. I needed about 100,000 euros to become part of this” market, he told “Monitor”.

Companies operating in Forex, which have very high profits, have shown hermetic to the media to talk about their activity. From “Monitor” sources of individuals working in this sector confessed that before they started working on Forx companies they signed contracts where the important clause has been the preservation of secret within the doors of these companies.
Currently, according to the Financial Supervisory Authority, only three stockbrokers, Eurorade Sequirties, Prodata Securities and Smartcom sh. The operating area of these societies is the browser for the purchase and sale of client mail titles on the licensed market on the territory of the Republic of Albania.
However, according to “Monitor”, the number of companies operating unlicensed is estimated to be over 50.
The Financial Supervision Authority calls for caution during investment in the title market, and on its official page it has published the list of licensed societies.

Since the number of licensed subjects is few, there are many societies that exercise their activity without obtaining a license, and this leads to dishonest and dangerous competition through providing interest rates that go beyond reality and above all the apparent lack of transparency. Although most of them do not target clients in Albania, they cannot still be allowed to act freely for a very simple reason: the country's “Reputation is seriously jeopardised by risking even the development of a market that can provide major employment opportunities,-” said Mr. Alessandro Ungaro, executive director and board member of Smartcom.

Forex “you kidnap” operators

Telemarketing phones that are still resisting on the market indicate that another challenge they are facing is the lack of stable staff. They claim it is very difficult to find operators who will stay in the company for a long time. According to data that provided some of the telephone centres questioned by “Monitor”, the payment ranged from 220 lek/hour to 350 lek/ora, while flexible schedules.

In general, working at these telephone centers as operators, according to young people employed by them, is viewed with little opportunity to grow professionally and generally select it to have some more money.
However, according to phone centre managers, the next reason they are facing difficulties finding operators is the highest wages that companies operating in Forks offer. The Forex companies have also undertaken aggressive operators' recruiting campaigns, which, in addition to street advertising, have issued some of Tirana's main recruiting points.
Companies operating in Forex have a high-level salary, an average of 50,000 new amounts per month, as well as specific percentages depending on the amount the client invests in they call.

According to INSTAT data, the number of employees in the sector is estimated to be around 25 thousand. According to official data, in total, there are about 800 companies in this sector in Albania, with about 25 thousand employees. But, the data from the biggest employers shows there are 6-7 major companies, which together have about 10,000 employees.

Competition from other countries

The human capital is simultaneously Albania's strong and weak point in the Call Center sector compared to other countries. According to Maria Sepe, regional manager for Albania, young people in Albania are very good language connoisseurs, but energy at the same time, which in other countries, like Romania, does not find.

According to Ms. Sepe, if you work with the same number of operators in Albania and Romania, Albanians are many times more productive, but the biggest problem is that they are not stable in a job. Albanian operators leave for 10m more hours.
Second, the other concern it puts on is the <x0 pure “work. Unlike Albania, in Romania it works with clear game rules. A portion of Albanian companies work in campaigns for which they have not received authorization from the marketing agencies in Italy.
Italian marketing companies, apart from Albania and Romania, also work with North African countries such as Tunisia and Morocco, which we compete with which country will receive campaigns from Italian companies. In all these places, the primary advantage is the free cost of work.

Light on the Horizon

Unable to diversify, telemarketing companies are hoping to operate in new markets. Italy is currently market-exposed for them, and competition is high, since and the contract is no longer providing.
The Spanish market is one of the markets they see with perspective. Maria Sepe, from AZ Marketing, told “Monitor” that they have managed to provide energy and gas campaigns with Spain and expressed optimism.

Albanians recognise Spanish thanks to soap opera and thanks to their ability to absorb foreign languages. We hope that the sector will walk in this new market, otherwise the situation will not be good at all.
According to Mrs. Sepe, serious small companies operating in the telemarketing field must establish an association to protect themselves from companies operating without game rules and cheat. She told “Monitor” that the amulita caused by a part put all sector companies at risk.

Campaign fraud, Albanian bad reputation

Maria Sepe moved from Italy to Albania in 2010. With a long experience in the Call Center sector in Italy, where she had started as a simple operator at one of the biggest marketing agencies there, Maria was named Manager for Albania. Maria's task was to establish contacts between the Albanian Call Center and Italian marketing companies, which brought campaigns for companies operating in the country.

According to Maria, at first everything was going well. It kept in touch with more than 30 Albanian call center companies to which various campaigns were brought. Now Maria says she only has 10 contacts. Reason: Italians are no longer bringing campaigns to Albania. At least no longer for small Albanian companies.

Maria reports that it started before the Italian state approved the law and much before large companies, such as ENEL, signed consensus agreements to stop bringing contracts to Albania. Because, according to her, the mass campaign by Green Network Energy took place, where part of the small Albanian companies cheated on contracts by receiving income in the air. The work of operators working on Green Network's campaign was to phone potential Italian clients and to present Green Network bids. If the client agreed, the contract was connected. Many small companies opened at that time, which corrupted the market.

The serious companies I worked with, Maria said, which had a staff of approximately 100 operators, managed to make up to 500 contracts in a month, while companies with only 10 operators made 250 contracts a day, took the money, closed and disappeared.
These massive frauds of small companies created a situation of distrust in Italian companies, which began to dislike working with Albanian/monitore companies