Telecom Operators’ Call Centres and Subscribers’ Issues

The adoption of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) model by Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) in the management of their call centres has helped to a large extent in easing difficulties subscribers faces in accessing call centres.

Before the adoption of outsourcing model in the call centre operations, subscribers who have issues with their service hardly speak to humans for resolving such issues rather they where meant to follow interactive voice response system, in most cases does not resolve such issues.

But, with outsourcing, the chances of subscribers that put call to call centres to speak with humans have increased.

However, the greatest challenge facing outsourcing of call centres to the ‘so’ called experts is training.

Most of the attendants at almost all the GSM operators call centres are not knowledgeable in the products and services offered by the operators.

 There have been situations where different attendants offer different explanations to a particular issue of a subscriber.

What this suggests is that the attendants are not properly trained in the products and services of operators they represent, rather emphases are concentrated on politeness of attendants to subscribers calling the centres as against training on services of the operator they interface with their subscribers.

Recently, this writer had issue with the service of transferring airtime to a subscriber which was not delivered while the airtime was deducted.

However, the writer put several calls to the call centre of the operators all the three attendants he spoke with could not offer explanation on what happened and how to revert the airtime that was deducted.

A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from telemarketing, clientele, product services, and debt collection are also made.

In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letters, faxes, live chat, and e-mail at one location is known as a contact centre.

A call centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for call centre agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one more supervisor stations.

It can be independently operated or network with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs.

What this means is that a telephone or internet service provider that is based in Lagos with its major transmission equipment installed in Lagos can give service to a location such as Abuja or Uyo by simply installing another transmission equipment and trans-receiver station that will transmit calls from the sundry location to the major switch at Lagos.

Subscribers to the service in Abuja or Uyo as the case may be will enjoy the service without having to see the people rendering the service but agents not directly employed by the service provider as well as their equipment.

The question that arises is how can this subscriber reach out to the service provider when he or she has issues with the service? Such issues as recharging of phones, where recharge card numbers have been scratched off, SIM card issues among others.

These issues are addressed through contact to the service providers’ call centre located mostly at major towns or at the operational base of the operator depending on the coverage of the operator as well as the technology in use especially for internet service providers.
Subscribers of GSM networks in the country in the past 10 years have not had it smooth reaching call centres of their network to address issues.

 There has been tells of woes as subscribers often time spend 60 minutes waiting to talk to call centre agent while others don’t ever talk to human beings but machine in the name Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

Interactive voice response (IVR), is a technology that allows a computer to detect voice and keypad to detect voice and keypad inputs, IVR technology is used extensively in telecommunications, but is also being introduced into Automobile system for handsfree operation.  IVR System can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed.

 IVR systems can be used to control almost any function where the interface can be broken down into a series of simple menu choices.

 In telecommunications IVR systems generally scale well to handle large call volumes.
More so, the claim by operators that their call centre service is 24 hours has been found deceitful as none of the operators’ call centres could be reached between 8pm and 7am.

Efforts by Operators
As the industry gets matured operators have begun to adopt different strategies to manage their call centres for effective service delivery. MTN has expanded its call centres to accommodate large number of agents to be able to attend to many subscribers at the same time. The telecommunications giant has also refocused its management by outsourcing it to a more competent company for the management of its call centres for an improved service delivery.

Airtel on its part having identified call centre outsourcing as the way forward to addressing the inefficiency of management of its call centres have signed an agreement with Spanco to operate and manage its call centres.

Kapil Puri, Chairman & Managing Director, Spanco, said:  “Bharti Airtel was the pioneer of adopting the BPO model across all its areas of operations in India.  The experience and success that it achieved created a whole new sector in the country that is now regarded as the global centre of excellence for outsourcing.

Currently over 4,000 people are employed in Africa supporting Bharti Airtel’s customer service operations.  Going forward the number of people employed in managing Bharti Airtel’s customer service functions will increase as Bharti Airtel expands its network and customer base.

It is the expectations of subscribers that as these initiatives and more take root, operators should intensify effort on training their call centres attendants on the products and services the offer for better understanding as well as improvement in their ability to resolving issues.