South Africa has the potential to overtake the Indian outsourcing industry if proper incentives are given to contact centre agents.
This is the view shared by contact centre operators that believe SA has the potential to become one of the biggest outsourcing hubs in the world.
In an interview with ITWeb, Karl Reed, sales and marketing director of telephony vendor Elingo, said retaining staff is one of the major challenges besetting the local contact centre industry.
“Contact centres should provide clear incentives to their workforce if their businesses are to flourish. Presently, there are alarming figures of contact centre agents hopping from one contact centre to the next in search of greener pastures.
“This has not done any good to the industry, as businesses are spending more time training new agents who would have filled the void,” Reed said.
Staff turnover
He added that in order to check on staff turnover, contact centre managers should provide a clear career path to their employees.
“If you ask a lot of contact centre employees about their ambitions or career prospects, you will be surprised that the majority of them do not have a clue. In most cases, you will also discover that the majority of them are paid peanuts in comparison with the cost of living.”
Reed also explained that a lot of organisation do not realise that the contact centre forms the front-line of their businesses, adding that in most cases, leadership in these businesses do not have time to communicate with their contact centres.
Kgabo Badimo, MD of Spescom DataVoice, notes that the human element of any contact centre is by far its largest capital expense, as it can run at up to two-thirds of the total cost of running the centre.
“This makes managing human capital a vital aspect of operating a successful contact centre,” says Badimo.
“Setting key performance indicators and measuring people's performance against these indicators, as well as optimising the scheduling of staff and organising shifts around the needs of employees, can go a long way towards ensuring contact centres are happier, more productive and more profitable working environments,” he notes.
However, Badimo adds, improving performance and productivity in contact centres is not all about driving KPIs and KPAs because people are not robots.
“Having this data is helpful, but it needs to be used in innovative ways to optimise the workforce, improve performance, decrease staff turnover and increase loyalty. To really unleash the potential of the human element of the contact centre, the people need to feel valued, something which indicators and measures alone cannot achieve.”
Badimo is of the view that inspiring people and making them feel valued is important in any environment, but particularly contact centres where employees are affected by unhappy callers, a stressful environment and long hours.
“Contact centres, as an industry, are prone to agent churn, which disrupts service and lowers customer satisfaction levels and can lead to increased costs due to the need to constantly train new agents.
“The simple fact is that when people feel they are valued, they are happier and more productive, they are more loyal, more likely to be at work on time, and the end result is a better customer service and lower staff turnover, which means happier customers and lower costs for the contact centre in training and hiring new staff,” he says.
Beautiful SA
In comparison with India, Reed believes SA sells itself far too short. “South Africa is a beautiful country with a lot of educated people on top of excellent infrastructure.”
He also said in SA, a cosmopolitan country with 11 official languages, it will be easier to train South Africans for the call centre business.
“It won't be difficult for one to identify an Indian call centre agent in a conversation, but as with South Africans, they can easily adjust their accent, which is a major plus.”
He also pointed out that the other reason why India continues to dominate is because the country has lower telecoms costs and it takes staff training seriously.
In that vein, Reed concluded that the country still has a lot to learn from its Indian counterparts.
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