African Countries Advised to Standardize Call Centers

Christopher Bell, Interactive Intelligence’s Channel Manager for Africa , has called for the creation of a call center association for Nigeria and other African countries as a way of promoting a standard for call centers.

He said that such associations have already been set up in Zambia and Zimbabwe, and plans are underway to set one up in Kenya.

A statement issued today by Interactive Intelligence group quoted the contact center consultant, Rod Jones speaking from Lagos Nigeria,“call centers are helping African governments to provide efficient and effective services to citizens.”

Rod Jones, said this ahead of an Interactive Intelligence-sponsored masterclass for stakeholders. He said that with leading edge technologies such as speech recognition and voice commands, call centers have evolved and transcended beyond ordinary telephone calls.

“As we have evolved to become a customer direction center, we’ve moved from telephone calls into SMS text messaging. We’ve taken on the email and social media channel and for customer interaction,” he said.

He said that they have already done it in South Africa. He added on that the most effective aspect of the government is their revenue service.

Christopher Bell said that  masterclasses held in various parts of Africa, especially in Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia are conducting dialogues that are being stimulated and more organizations, including government, are developing interests in the diverse possibilities of setting up call centers.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth in the industry in the wake of the seminars“, said Bell. “If you keep the momentum going by stimulating dialogue, you make people aware. We exposed some of the participants for the first time to what a call center is all about.”

Organizations in Nigeria such as telecoms companies and financial institutions, are quickly adopting call centers, according to Mbuela Luwawu, Managing Director of Odilum Technologies Limited, an Interactive Intelligence partner in Nigeria.

Luwawu says: “Five years ago, no bank had a contact center but since 2009, you can pick up your phone, call your contact center and speak to your customer service officer directly. The adoption has been quite positive.” He also states that Nigeria has the ability to take market share away from India; he also predicted there will be lots of contact center outsourcing for Nigeria from Europe and America.”