Leading technologies such as speech recognition and voice commands have led to the evolution at African call centres, which are transcending beyond ordinary calls and now embracing SMS.
“As we have evolved to become a customer direction centre, we’ve moved from telephone calls into SMS text messaging. We’ve taken on the email and social media channel and for customer interaction.” said Rod Jones, contact centre consultant.
Jones was speaking in Lagos, Nigeria ahead of an Interactive Intelligence-sponsored masterclass for stakeholders.
Meanwhile,Christopher Bell, Interactive Intelligence’s channel manager for Africa has recently called for the creation of a call centre association for Nigeria and other African countries as a way of promoting a standard for call centres. He mentions that such associations have already been set up in Zambia and Zimbabwe, and plans are underway to set one up in Kenya.
“Call centres are helping African governments to provide efficient and effective services to citizens”, said Jones.
“We’ve already seen that in South Africa. The most effective aspect of the government is our Revenue Service. They have built and operate a true world class call centre and it has been responsible for tremendous improvements in revenue collection by the government.”
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