Key trends

The South African call centre industry is the most advanced on the continent due to the marketing of several benefits to overseas operations: relative low labour costs, neutral English accents, government’s openness to deregulation, sophisticated technology solutions and refined outsourced business models.

However, South African operations are beginning to sit up and take notice of an emergent African call centre industry. Three key trends are being watched.

The proliferation of GSM networks in Africa is opening up communications at the local loop. Recent research by Wireless Intelligence indicates that the GSM networks in Africa by Q1 2005 serviced 85.4 million users. User growth has already tipped 48% in since Q1 2004. The room for further growth of the African GSM market is substantial.[1]

Deregulation is another trend. By taking a more “hands-off” approach to national telecommunications infrastructure, governments are beginning to see the benefits of stimulating economic growth. There are increasing opportunities for private sector market-makers to innovate off established infrastructure or set up new GSM or broadband networks free of legacy infrastructure.

A further trend stands in Africa’s favour. US and UK customers are becoming increasingly used to hearing cosmopolitan accents when calling a contact centre. This is both a reflection of globalisation per se as well as the fact that in the US and UK local populations themselves are made up immigrant communities. There is therefore a lower barrier to entry into the call centre market for African operators where a communications infrastructure offering literacy and English language proficiency, especially in Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. This trend has a direct bearing on job creation for a low skilled labour market, offering job opportunities that did not exist five years ago.

Reality checks

Nevertheless, it is still difficult to do business in Africa. While there is a well-established call centre industry in South Africa that competes with India and Ireland for international outsourcing contracts, the same credibility does not extend to other African countries. There are two reasons for this: overseas clients require assurance that African call centre agents meet first world standard as customer touch points, and local knowledge of business dealings is necessary for the brokering of outsourced call centre operations.

Two strategies have been adopted to address these challenges. Overseas companies partner with African businesses as a means to enter the local market and ensure international standards are met. African based call centres, on the other hand, seek out enabling technology partners operating on the continent with expertise in call centre managed services. This latter partnership draws on cutting edge technology platforms (with common standards), training solutions, and business processes to leapfrog existing call centre operations, including those in South Africa.

ENDS

[1] GSM Association statistics Q1 2005, www.gsmworld.com.