South Africa can become a hot spot for outsourced contact centres

How South Africa can take advantage of Europe’s economic climate to become a top destination for business process outsourcing, including call centres

South Africa can take advantage of Europe’s economic climate to become a top destination for business process outsourcing, including call centres, according perhaps unsurprisingly to Full Circle CEO Franco Cotumaccio.

With the uncertainty in Europe, companies were looking to outsource call centres to cheaper labour centres and SA could benefit. Earlier this year, US online retail giant Amazon said it would expand its call-centre operations in Cape Town, creating 1400 jobs by the end of next year.

Full Circle was established in 2005 and helps international companies to move their call centres offshore. Cotumaccio said on Wednesday that SA had a "rich proposition" globally that put it at an advantage ahead of peer countries such as India.

"We have great English language skills and an established resource pool of English-speaking people … we are very much aligned with countries such as the UK," he said.

SA has in the past attracted many top international call-centre outsourcers, including Aegis BPO, Fusion, Genpact, Stream, Sykes and Teleperformance, as well as IBM and Deloitte, which provide a variety of services in English and Dutch for customers worldwide.
Cotumaccio said Full Circle made it easy for international companies to set up call centres in SA. It enabled companies to set up test or pilot project call centres. Full Circle also provides the office space, infrastructure, human resources and training. If the pilot project is successful, Full Circle would then also take care of the transition to a full outsourced call centre.

The company has assisted some prominent international companies such as Amazon and Bloomberg. To date, about 10000 jobs have been created in the sector and close to half of these have been in Cape Town.

Call centres generate an estimated R6bn for the Western Cape economy and employ 30000 locals, the provincial government said. Earlier this year, Western Cape economic development MEC Alan Winde said the province’s call-centre industry had become a global contender for offshore call-centre operations. This was in part due to the strategic focus placed on the industry by the economic development and tourism department, through its promotion agency, Business Process Enabling SA.

Cape Chamber of Commerce president Michael Bagraim said yesterday that the future of the call- centre industry in SA was "bright" and the government should be "pouring more money into the sector to encourage its growth".

"Our people are willing to be employed at lower wages compared with other countries…. It is an industry which is growing, especially in Cape Town," he added

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