Internet Solutions’ Global Service Centre recognised as top cont
Internet Solutions’ Global Service Centre recognised as top cont
The Internet Solutions (IS) Global Service Centre (GSC) was recognised as a top industry performer at the recent Business Process enabling South Africa (BPeSA) awards ceremony, receiving the award for the Best SA Customer Service Centre in Gauteng.
The GSC is a dynamic and interactive contact centre located at The Campus, in Johannesburg, which serves all South African and African IS clients. Operating 24 hours a day, the GSC aims to attend to all IS client needs with the most efficient and effective level of service. The GSC fields 17 000 inbound telephone calls, 40 000 service requests and averages 15 000 successful network generated events on a monthly basis.
“Over the past two years, we have been working hard to create a fun, challenging yet highly rewarding environment for our staff to work in, while also meeting the needs of our clients through excellent client service,” explains Matthew Kaplan, Global Service Centre Manager at IS. “This is all aimed at developing the GSC into a world-class contact centre through the use of the best service technologies, as well as the most highly trained, qualified and professional staff.”
According to Kaplan, the GSC’s main internal focus over the last two years has been the growth and development of staff through a number of programmes. “Training and development is a key focus for both our staff and managers,” he explains. “For instance, we have implemented an in-house training and development centre, offering A+, N+, MCSA, CCNA and CCNP courses for our staff, who are encouraged to attend at least one certification annually. They are also encouraged to attend relevant seminars and receive soft skills training around call coaching and telephone and communication skills. Our managers, on the other hand, attend Generation Y management, interpersonal-style, people development, and team dynamics training, among others.”
Additional staff enrichment tools include bi-annual KPIs, positive environmental variables, like chill rooms, and management development programmes for staff that have been identified as having the calibre and aptitude to follow this non-technical path and become future leaders. “All of this has resulted in a staff attrition rate of just 4% for 2010, which is in stark contrast to the industry norm of around 25%, and is something we are very proud of,” says Kaplan.
“Externally, our focus has been on our clients’ experience when using our service, ensuring that it is of the highest quality,” he continues. “We conduct regular client satisfaction surveys to rate the initial interaction the client received when logging a call, as well as the interaction and service received when dealing with a specialist technician. This has enabled us to continually improve on our client touch points and evolve the processes we use in logging, classifying, prioritising, investigating, escalating and resolving their support calls.” Kaplan also believes that the company’s smooth transition to the ISO20000 international IT service management standard in August 2010, having adopted it more than two years ago, also improved the level of service offered to IS’ local and international customers through the contact centre.
“Having invested so much into both sides of our business, it is very rewarding to be recognised by an industry representative body such as BPeSA,” states Kaplan. As the national co-ordinating industry association representing the interests of the business process outsourcing and off-shoring sector in South Africa, the overriding aim of BPeSA is to deliver a national co-ordinated support services to the industry, to enable the development, growth and continued success of the sector as a whole. Accordingly, these awards form an important element in the recognition of operators who are doing exceptional work in this rapidly growing and increasingly important sector.
“The award re-enforces the positive client feedback the GSC has received, and confirms that our process enhancements and the training and development we are giving our agents and engineers is yielding the desired results,” continues Kaplan. “It should also reaffirm our clients’ trust in our ability to effectively outsource and support their networks by offering a truly world-class experience when dealing with the service centre. Our clients can rest assured that we will continue to raise our level and quality of service, especially as the GSC plays an increasingly important role in cementing our market leading status locally, while helping to drive IS’ expansion into Africa,” he concludes.