Telecel Zimbabwe to establish higher capacity Avaya based call center

Two days ago we published an update of Telecel’s annual strategy and operations as had been provided at a press conference in Harare. In the update, Telecel disclosed that they will be, in the coming weeks, commissioning a new call center to improve the company’s customer support.

Telecel issued a separate press release to announce the new call center. The announcement  has details of  capacity and technologies used. A summary of the main points first before you read the full press release:

• The call center will accommodate up to 90 support reps
• The software platform used is the Avaya Aura Call Centre (AACC) system.
• The software accounts for about 60% of the total cost of the call center.
• The system has interactive voice response (IVR) which is expected to handle about 30% of customer enquiries
• Humans will only man the call center between 8AM and midnight. The rest of the time, customers will (hopefully) have their issues resolved by machines (the IVR). Ironically, Telecel says in the release that “the new software will facilitate a closer relationship with customers”
• Telecel Customer Operations Director, Ntombizodwa Chinyenze is quoted in the release: “We are championing world class service delivery with memorable customer experience. All our service centres have been upgraded and we are adding more branches, so that we can be nearer to our customers”

View the full press release here. It’s great that some investment is going towards improving customer support. This is the one area that local mobile network operators have  all been seriously lacking.