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| South Africa has emerged as the preferred choice of location for contact centre deployment. It presents companies with the opportunity of achieving cost savings when compared to European centres with the added bonus of improvements in efficiency, service levels and revenues.
This view is supported in a recently compiled report by Datamonitor, which concludes that “South Africa occupies an important position in most firms’ global operations portfolios.”
For requirements originating in the U.S., South Africa slots between near-shore locations such as Canada and Mexico, which offer close proximity and also cultural affinity (to the U.S.), and more traditionally the offshore locations such as India and the Philippines that offer the U.S. cheap labour.
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The Benefits Of South Africa As A Contact Centre Destination
As one of the largest English speaking contact centre destinations, South Africa offers excellent opportunities for outsourcing. The country’s warm and vibrant customer friendly people have an excellent work ethic, professionalism and a “can do” attitude.
The following highlights demonstrate why & how South Africa has become a strong player in the contact centre outsourcing market:
- English is mandatory in schools as a day to day necessity
- Other European language skills are widely available
- Adult literacy runs at 84% compared with other off-shore countries
- Wages are much lower than the UK & Europe and labour is plentiful
- Education and training is world class - NVQ to MBA level in contact centre management is available and offered at leading institutions
- The South African government is heavily involved in and committed to developing the call centre service sector
- In a recent survey of competitiveness carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) South Africa (24th) is ranked higher than Germany (28th) and India (29th)
- The contact centre agent base is larger than Scottish and Welsh combined and 2.5 times greater than Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland combined
- New sites are growing at more than 14% per year
- Property is relatively inexpensive and sites are better equipped than EU equivalents
- Telecommunications, power and transport infrastructures are of a world class level
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The following table demonstrates how South Africa scored favourably over its competitors:
Its accent, history and culture make it a prime outsourcing market for the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, with Afrikaans-speakers being able to serve a Dutch-speaking market.
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South Africa versus India as a Contact Centre Destination
South Africa is emerging as India’s rival in business process outsourcing, mainly due to its better infrastructure, lower regional labour costs and cultural advantages.
Datamonitor expects that there will be 939 call centres in South Africa by 2008 – almost double the current number of 494. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 14 percent. The total number of agent positions is predicted to rise to 69,600 in the same period.
Currently, as many as 70 percent of South Africa’s offshore customer service agents serve clients in the U.K. market
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In summary, the above comparative chart clearly shows that South Africa is the offshore, outsource, contact centre country of choice with a strong cultural affinity to Europe, a short time difference of GMT+2 hours, advance skill levels and excellent voice and accent skills, a large human resource pool and exceptionally low staff turnover levels (circa 5%) all supported by professional contact centre management.
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Cultural Alignment with Europe and the U.S.
South Africa offers a higher quality, more culturally aligned front-office and back-office location where labour costs run at two-thirds of their U.S. or European equivalents in the business processing outsourcing (BPO) space.
Culturally, South Africa is a close match to the U.K., and agents would be expected to need only minimal cultural orientation. The accent tends toward neutral, and is commonly understood by British consumers.
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