Vodacom outsource call centre jobs to its outsourcing partner Merchants

Vodacom has decided to outsource a larger portion of its customer service to Merchants, a South African business process outsourcing (BPO) provider. By Staff Writer

BPO is commonly known for call centre services outsourcing, which makes up 67% of the total industry.

Merchants has been running Vodacom’s prepaid customer service for the past ten years, and recently expanded its offering to cover other areas of the business as well.

Merchants announced on Thursday that it has launched a second Vodacom customer service centre in Cape Town.

With the addition of this centre, Merchants is now accountable for operating the prepaid, postpaid and enterprise customer services for Vodacom out of both their Johannesburg and Cape Town centres doubling the total staff compliment to around 1 000 people.

“Vodacom outsources to several partners of which Merchants is one and as a result of the significant improvement in our performance, Vodacom has decided to outsource a larger portion of their customer service to Merchants. This is a very big win for us,” to Haroon Cassim, general manager of the Vodacom account at Merchants, said in a statement.

During the launch, Merchants said it exercised a great deal of care in ensuring that areas affected did not impact peoples’ jobs.

“As a responsible employer, and in line with the company’s focus on putting people and customers first, 300 jobs were transferred to Merchants during this period of exceptional growth,” said Cassim.

Launched at the beginning of the year, the Cape Town contact centre staff compliment initially consisted of 300 people, but Cassim said more growth has taken place. “The Johannesburg site grew from 500 to 900 seats and I expect the Cape Town site to be the same size by the end of this year.

Ugestra Alwar, Managing Executive: Customer Care at Vodacom, said, “As South Africa’s leading mobile network, being flexible in meeting our customers’ needs is key to our success and Merchants’ ability to execute on our ambitions and contribute towards the improvement of our service, has strengthened our relationship.”

Vodacom’s rival MTN announced on Wednesday that it plans to outsource some of its Call Centre facilities in a bid to optimise its operations and enhance customer experience.

MTN said it has adopted a hybrid outsource model which will result in it retaining some call centre facilities while others are outsourced to a third party vendor.

The company expects the process to be completed by September this year.