Under the new initiative, Silah, a multi-award winning business process outsourcing (BPO) and customer experience provider serving the GCC region, will now provide regional companies with call centre agents, team leaders and managers for their contact centres.
Using empirical data from the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report (Report), the world’s most comprehensive annual report on strategic trends and operational performance metrics for the call centre industry, Silah’s CEO validated the critical market need for Silah Talent and the reason Silah’s launching this service from Bahrain.
“The report shows that 50% of existing call centres in the GCC sees growth in their operations in the upcoming months. While access to experienced team leaders was cited as the key drivers for a company’s success, the numbers also demonstrated that there is a shortage of good customer service agents, not just in Bahrain, but around the region. Using Silah Talent, companies will save time and money usually spent in recruiting and training staff in the essential skills required to operate a world-class contact centre operation, as well as benefiting from access to the Bahrain workforce,” Joe Tawfik, CEO at Silah said.
“As per the Report, GCC contact centres are expanding and adopting new media channels very rapidly and is on a steep learning curve. Adoption of social media channels is being done in an innovative way, far ahead of global trends, and the region is unwavering in their investment of new technology. The effective management of these new media channels to generate positive customer experiences requires new skill sets from staff, and our specialist manpower solution is designed to specifically address this type of issue,” Tawfik, added.
“Silah’s independent research also shows the region is lacking in the basics and is slow in implementing best practice methodologies. While considerable investment has been made in importing new technology, there aren’t enough local people trained to operate and utilize the systems effectively. The Report identifies that 35% of GCC companies don’t empower their agents, which is significantly lower than the global average. This characteristic highlights the need for specialized call centre training. This is another gap Silah Talent will help fill,” Tawfik, said.
“Silah’s world-class training and development facility will provide the necessary expertise to Silah Talent candidates. Providing regional job opportunities for trained Bahraini call centre agents, Silah Talent will help source employment opportunities for the youth and those returning to the workforce. Customers can now hire fully trained staff and take advantage of Silah’s best practice methodologies.”
The report compares individual contact centre’s performance with others of similar size; industry and geography, helping companies identify strengths and weaknesses in key areas of operations management, technology and people.
“The GCC is ahead of the Global sample in use of Social Media – 41% versus 31% for the Global sample. The big difference lays in the use of SMS: in the Global sample this is just 28% vs. nearly 44% for the GCC,” the report revealed.
The GCC seems clear on the key drivers. Staff availability is a challenge, Joe said, as there are parts of the region where the only solution for staffing centres seems to be ship staff in from other countries. This clearly gives countries in the region with a strong work ethic and access to a local labour pool a key advantage
“The GCC exhibits a far more positive outlook for contact centre development than the rest of the world, with higher expansion and new centres opening. This might be a factor of the relative immaturity of the sector in the region.”