Differentiating the South African Value Proposition
For me there seems to be a glimmer of some sort of normality, even though we are still to understand the full impact of the pandemic.
South Africa’s agility and ability to deliver exceptional customer service has been displayed through the seamless and rapid shift to a remote business model and has created even more opportunity on the global BPO stage during such an uncertain and unsettling time.
The proven success of a hybrid model really outweighs the challenges as we work toward making our contribution of delivering BPO services to grow the South African GBS sector to 500 000 jobs by 2030 as we support the UK, Australia, New Zealand, United States and our own local market.
In hindsight, our CallForce team were able to achieve what we would have previously thought to be impossible (in the given timeframe):
- We were able to remotely recruit, train and deploy over 300 agents in a space of 8 days in a hybrid model successfully during level 4,
- We were able to transition the majority of our business despite the global halt in service delivery,
- Despite the high cost of data for our agents, we were still able to achieve even higher productivity levels,
- We are now able to extend the reach of our search for exceptional talent into previously untouched local destinations,
- We have been able to provide meaningful career opportunities to our youth in greater scale,
- The rapid adoption of digital omnichannel communication has created further opportunity to streamline operations & agent productivity,
- The change in customer behaviour has encouraged us to relook our business strategy and processes, highlighting the need for custom, human, authentic engagement,
- We also won a prestigious award recognising outstanding delivery by a technology/service provider which was such wonderful acknowledgement for our team.
In my 20 year entrepreneurial journey with CallForce, 2020 has definitely presented many “firsts”, both positive and negative, but I strongly believe that this global reset was the push we all needed to regain focus as we forge a new path for our businesses.
Thanks to Andy Searle, CEO of BPESA and the Everest Group for the updated South African value proposition as we reposition and rethink our approach in effectively marketing South Africa as an outsourcing destination in the light of COVID-19.
Our commitment is to continue delivering innovative, custom, outsourced contact centre solutions and BPO services from South Africa to the global market with resilience, authenticity and efficiency while providing meaningful career opportunities to the youth of South Africa and empowering them to continually deliver exceptional customer service to our valued clients.