Cape Town is considered one of the ultimate destinations to establish call centres, attracting some of the world’s largest business processing outsources.
Call centres in the City of Cape Town, South Africa, provide approximately 40,000 jobs and generate ZAR8 billion (US$814.5 million) for the provincial economy.
The industry has been defined as one of the top areas of domestic capacity and development by the fifth Industrial Policy Action Plan.
Rob Kane, chairman of the Central City Improvement District, said: “The Cape Town central business district continues to see growth in the (call) centre industry as more outsourcing companies both locally and abroad notice the consistency of excellence and quality the environment offers,”BusinessDay reported.
The Western Cape Economic Development and Tourism Department aims to launch 10,000 additional call centre seats by 2016.
Teleperformance, Serco and Capita are three of the big international corporations which recently opened call centres in the city.
Capita has recently announced its plans ZAR500 million (US$50.9 million) investment in the Cape Town call centre industry.
The company has more than 100 million clients, including Amazon, Bloomberg and O².
Gareth Pritchard, chief executive of officer of Business Process enabling South Africa (BPesA), said: “The central business district is very popular with both local and international companies due to its good transport links, excellent infrastructure, availability of property and access to a large, educated talent pool.”
According to Pritchard, Cape Town is the business hub of the Western Cape, experiencing a growth in its “base of high-end skills in financial and legal services among the talent pool”, which makes its idyllic as “a world-class off-shoring location”.
Alan Winde, Western Cape minister of finance, economic development and tourism, feels South Africa can lead in the call centre sector because of its “exceptional services to clients at a competitive price”.
