Identifying South Africa as a cost-effective location for servicing the customer contact needs of international businesses, the Dialogue UK Group has invested in a call centre operation in Cape Town, with plans to expand employment to 1 500 people on a permanent basis.
Dialogue UK Group Chairman Jason Drew said on Tuesday that the group’s initial investment of R20-million in the local operation — trading as Dialogue Communications — was expected to rise to R70-million over the next three years, with the staff compliment growing from 110 to 1 500 full-time employees by 2005.
A founding director and former MD of French internet bank Zebank, Drew said he had assembled a team of top-level IT, marketing and operations experts from the UK and Europe to build the business to service the international English-
speaking market.
Its South African operation already serviced several multinationals operating locally, including Shell, Pfizer and British American Tobacco, in addition to a number of nationwide newspaper and other publishing groups, as well as the Western Cape government.
It was envisaged that ultimately two-thirds of the client base would be international and the balance directed at the local market.
Drew said the call centre industry worldwide was predicted to generate an income of $59-billion this year alone to match the growing demand for customer contact solutions in such fields as financial services, travel, home shopping, healthcare, cellular telephony, and other public services provided by central and local government.
South Africa’s share was estimated currently to be worth R532-million, but it had the capacity to soar once its full potential was recognised and more foreign companies established call centres offshore.
“The function of call centres is rapidly expanding, embracing not only the management of customer relationships but also the generation of sales and revenue, using multi-channel contact servicing. So over and above telephone contact, call centres are supporting contact through electronic communication
options such as e-mail, text messages and faxing.”
Dialogue UK’s decision to invest in South Africa was prompted by the establishment of fibre-optic links between the European and African continents along both the east and west coasts, the world-class service levels of call centre staff in the country, high rates of fluency in English, relatively low levels of staff turnover and the close similarities between the countries’ cultures.
Drew said according to an international report on the industry across a range of countries, South Africa’s skilled call centre workforce worked harder than its international counterparts — 243 days a year at 42 hours a week, compared with international average of 220 days a year at 36 hours a week.
“Until recently the majority of UK companies outsourcing their customer contact services tended to look to companies in India, since operational costs are lower than in the UK and Europe. However, continually interrupted power supply issues, the marked time differences and a productivity rate lower than in South Africa, are encouraging organisations to consider this country, which offers excellent value and is supported by high standards of local telecommunications, banking, financial services and IT,” Drew concluded. – I-Net Bridge