UK insurance group, The Budget Group of Companies, has signed a lease for a contact centre facility in Cape Town, worth R100 million over the next three years.
The 200-seat contact centre will be up and running by June, and could be expanded in future. The contact centre will be an extension of Budget`s activities in the UK, where it plans to double its customer base to 1.6 million by 2006. The local centre will operate in real-time and be fully integrated with the UK contact centres.
South African telecommunication utility Telkom has devised a technology solution specifically for this centre, which a press statement says reflects Telkom`s ability to provide advanced solutions to the contact centre industry and its international clients.
Budget Group chief executive Peter Winslow says the insurance group chose to locate in Cape Town after considering a number of other locations. "We have chosen Cape Town primarily because we are very impressed with the contact centre skills available, including the service attitude, the accent and employees` willingness to learn, all of which is an unbeatable combination."
He says the group is in an expansion phase and the establishment of the contact centre in Cape Town is an extension to Budget`s existing capacity, and will not lead to contact centre job losses in the UK.
The Budget Group already has an affiliated company in SA, Budget Insurance Brokers, which was established in 1998.
Budget has registered the new contact centre as a South African company under the name of Fusion Outsourcing Services, so it will have to pay SA company tax.
Winslow, and Franco Cotumaccio, Budget`s MD, contact centres, accompanied by Cape economic development organisation Wesgro CEO, Ismail Dockrat, met yesterday with Ebrahim Rasool, minister of finance and economic development in the Western Cape, and Clifford Sitonga, executive councillor, City of Cape Town, to inform them about the company`s decision to locate in Cape Town.
Budget has worked with a variety of companies in SA to bring the project to fruition - among them Emmanuels Staffing Services, Lurie and Associates, Spescom DataFusion and Telkom.
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