1,000 new telco jobs for SA

·21 Oct 2013

Paris-based customer experience company, The Webhelp Group, is set to open its first site in South Africa, creating 1,000 new jobs.

The company will open a 7,500 square meter state-of-the-art facility in Cape Town, and a 4,500 square meter site in Johannesburg this week (21-25 October 2013), having secured a contract with an unnamed telecommunications company.

The South African operation will be known as Webhelp South Africa and aims to recruit 1,000 people in the country over the next 12 months and is actively tendering for business.

The new venture will enable Webhelp to service international contracts, operating a blended onshore and offshore model from the site.

Craig Gibson will join Webhelp South Africa as CEO, having previously helped establish Vodacom’s retail presence in South Africa, growing Ernst &Young’s JD Edwards enterprise resource planning (ERP) practice and creating demand at Dimension Data’s Customer Interactive Solutions among a range of blue chip financial institutions.

David Turner, CEO, at Webhelp UK, said: “We have seen a trend over the last 12 to 18 months of organisations repatriating work from other offshore locations such as India and the Philippines as a result of poor customer experience.”

“All of our research tells us that SA can deliver an equivalent customer experience to the UK for certain processes. We firmly believe that our UK, Romanian and South Africa capability gives us the best possible blend of off, near and onshore capabilities.”

Gibson said: “South Africa successfully delivers BPO services to the domestic markets of Australia and the UK. The language and culture of these countries is closely matched, enabling us to offer a far higher standard of customer service than some traditional BPO markets such as India and the Philippines.”