Communication breakdown
A brief poll among colleagues showed that about 75% have had awful experiences when calling call centres. Calls not answered, problems not solved, interminable queues and waiting.
However, many people said that some call centres met their expectations, solved their problems and left them feeling that they’d been dealt with courteously.
Andrew Condon, commercial director of the TCT Group of companies, said sometimes call centres can help, but that sometimes they can be a hindrance.
“A call centre is not just there to route a call to an agent. It’s there to solve problems and to answer queries. Many people have had bad experiences when dealing with call centres and this is something that needs to be looked at.”
Condon said often the problem is that different departments in organisations, particularly the government, have disparate systems and communication problems.
“If there’s no link between systems it doesn’t matter how good your call centre is — the problem a consumer has is unlikely to be resolved quickly and efficiently.”
However, he said many multinational companies are turning to South Africa because of the high level of call centre skills and expertise here.
“German carrier Lufthansa, for example, has a call centre servicing clients all over the world in South Africa. They have a follow- the-sun strategy whereby their call centres across the world can hand over their services to branches in varying time zones in line with business hours in different regions and this has worked very well for them.
“The major advantage is that they can attach a rand overhead to what would usually be a euro- based cost.”
Condon said that call centre strategies need to take into account the scourge of spam — unsolicited contact.
He added that telephony costs in South Africa are too high.
“They are coming down but telecommunications costs in South Africa are a serious problem and growth inhibitor for the call centre industry.”
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