NAIROBI, Kenya, May 30 – Competition for customer retention in the telecommunications sector continues as Bharti Airtel on Wednesday announced a five-year deal with Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions, to provide technological and customer services to Airtel customer care centers in 16 African countries.
In the first year of the new agreement Avaya, in collaboration with a Dubai based company, Mara-Ison Technologies, will equip the centers with up to 3,000 seats in the region as well as 10,000 IVR ports, systems used to manage high outgoing and incoming phone call volumes.
Avaya will also provide Airtel contact centers with work force optimisation (WFO) solutions, to boost the performance of agents interacting with subscribers – a step that will see management of 28,000 customers simultaneously.
Jayant Khosla, CEO, Anglophone at Bharti Airtel says proper customer service is now the best strategy if any telecoms company is going to attract and maintain new customers.
“Our partnership with Avaya is in line with the rapid evolution and extends from traditional voice, data world and will provide superior customer service and extends from traditional voice based and social media interactions,” added Khosla.
Under the new technology, customers will also be able to send and receive video messages.
Avaya Vice President for Emerging Regions Nidal Abou-Ltaif says all the operations will be managed from Kenya and that it has no intentions to change its headquarters while serving the African region.
“Our aim is to bring technologies to our countries and become local. We want to make sure we get the youth, especially the new graduates to be able to use this new technologie,” said Abou-Ltaif during the signing of the deal in Nairobi.
Information and communications Minister Samuel Poghisio who witnessed the signing said: “this is the kind of the business partnerships we are encouraging. We already have positioned ourselves as the technology hub in East Africa, and we want to move on to position ourselves even in the sub-Saharan Africa. And I hope that is the reason why Kenya has been picked.”
