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‘iSON is Setting Global Standard for BPO Business in Nigeria’
Emma Okonji
Having signed the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) deal with Airtel Nigeria, MTN Nigeria and with some financial institutions, to manage their call centre operations, iSON, a global BPO operator, says it is setting global standard with its operations in Nigeria, in the areas of staff training, welfare and growth.
Head of Operations at the iSON branch in Abeokuta, Mr. Shobhit Saxena, who made the disclosure during a recent media tour of the BPO facilities in Abeokuta, said the runs a multilingual centre that addresses the needs of customers in several languages, thus, giving subscribers the opportunity to express themselves in any known Nigerian languages and English.
“As a global body with several years of BPO experience, iSON is keen at setting a global standard for BPO business in Nigeria, in the areas of staff training, welfare and development. We organise regular training of newly recruited staff on soft skills and technical skills and we ensure good welfare package and better working environment for our staff, in line with global standards,” Saxena said.
He added that aside setting global standards, iSON generates employment and has employed over 1,000 staff from within Abeokuta in Ogun State, since it commenced operations of the Abeokuta BPO centre about a year ago. The centre, which manages complaints and enquiry calls from MTN subscribers across the county, offers free medical care and transportation for staff and has created different channels where members of staff could have full relaxation and entertainment during break hours.
Speaking on the techniques of managing call centre operations, Saxena said complaints and enquiry calls are distributed to customer care representatives who are trained to interface with customers in a very polite and satisfactory ways, such that any customer that calls in, is attended to promptly without the slightest delay.
According to him, iSON has an electronic board where all calls that are routed to the centre, are recorded and the exact time it takes for a customer care representatives to attend to customers, is also recorded. With this, the activities of customer care representatives are monitored and checked at all times, in order to ensure that customers get the best and fastest attention from customer care representatives at the centre.
Speaking on the core values of iSON BPO centres in Nigeria, the Chief Marketing Officer of iSON Nigeria, Mrs. Opemipo Alebiosu said the BPO centres are managed on cost efficiencies, which include operational cost, opportunity cost and fixed access cost, thereby taking away the worries and burdens of managing customer satisfaction in a call centre operation. As experts in BPO business, we manage customer satisfaction and remove such burdens from telecoms operators, including financial institutions, whose call centres are being managed by iSON, to enable them concentrate on their core businesses, Alebiosu said. According to her, the BPO is a sensitive aspect of human relations and must be handled with care and dignity, in order to bring about full customer satisfaction.
She said iSON operates three different businesses, which include iSON BPO; iSON Technologies and iSON Innovation. iSON BPO is the largest independent BPO service provider in Africa, and ASEAN regions, serving over 200 million customers, by providing analytics, customer experience management, and voice process solution. The iSON technologies is a system integrator, managed service provider and strategic outsourcing player, providing end-to-end Information Technology (IT) services and solutions across Middle East, Africa and ASEAN regions, while the iSON Innovation and Investments, was recently launched to provide a platform for start-ups and entrepreneurs to setup viable business in Africa. It supports start-ups by providing the needed seed funding and other strategic inputs.