Growth is at the front of all stakeholders’ minds. As senior business leaders, you always like to believe that your company can continue to build internally and harness what you’ve already got to serve more customers and grow more profit.

In the current age of rapid new business advancements such as AI tools that boost productivity, e-commerce functions, hybrid working and online communities – it can be easy to overlook some of the more direct and tested means to grow your company’s profitability.

A solution that many large businesses in North America and Europe often overlook is outsourcing and offshoring some of their key business processes to Africa. Subcontracting some of your customer service and administrative functions to African countries as part of a business process outsourcing (BPO) strategy has become an intuitive way for international companies to develop an efficient global delivery network for your products and services.

CCI Kenya, a part of the wider CCI Global Group, is the largest and fastest growing BPO provider in Kenya, offering companies outsourcing services for the entirety of the customer life cycle, including:

• Customer service outsourcing and call centre support
• Customer acquisition and engagement support
• Administration functions – quality, compliance and back-office support  
• Customer loyalty scheme management (customer retention activities)
• Consumer sales, demand generation, digital marketing and omnichannel management

Despite so many companies transitioning to BPO and outsourcing their customer management services overseas for cost saving, flexibility, scalability and access to experienced workers, some companies are still hesitant to outsource their customer service function to call centres in Africa.

Rishi Jatania, managing director of CCI Kenya, explores why this is and why your business should potentially re-consider.

Why do businesses hesitate?

International companies have several general reservations when outsourcing their customer service overseas. Some of the most prominent reasons include:

Worries over poor service

Your customer service is representative of your company’s overall reputation, and word can travel fast. So how international subcontractors deal with your customers (or prospective customers) is crucial. Business owners worry that poor customer service will be the result when they choose to outsource their customer service functions overseas.

However, in reality, the sheer growth of the international BPO industry and the robust, international-standard training and development of customer service staff has seen international call centres lead the way in terms of quality. Overseas BPO call centre providers specialise in customer service delivery and work with you on strict contracted customer service SLAs. In most cases, a BPO provider can deliver much stronger and more cost-effective customer service than your internal functions can.

For example, CCI Kenya call centre has a growing workforce of over 3,000 employees within a $20m state-of-the-art custom-designed contact centre office in Nairobi. They have built a dedicated 100-member training and quality team, complete with training managers, process trainers, soft skills coaches and service trainers to ensure all overseas partners deliver excellent, cost-effective service to their respective customers. So much so, due to the quality of the customer service provided, CCI Global was awarded ‘Outsource Partner of The Year’ at the 2023 Excellence in Customer Service Awards for exceptional satisfaction rates from their clients and for providing best-in-class digital customer management strategies.

Concern over losing their brand identity

By international outsourcing, many companies fear they won’t be 100 per cent in control of their brand’s perception. For example, a proud regional heritage brand using overseas labour may have concerns their customers will think they’ve lost their way. However, in reality, many international companies and leading brands such as Microsoft, Sodexo and JP Morgan utilise overseas BPO services. For context, the BPO market is a $245.9bn industry (as of 2022) with an 8.5 per cent compound annual industry growth rate, meaning more and more aspirational international businesses are choosing to operate this way.

Overseas call centres have become a social norm. Smart companies always do whatever they can to eliminate costs, and overseas customer contact centres no longer detriment the brand perception. Consumers have also warmed to multi-cultural, international workforces in the fast-paced commercial environment, making them an even better option than ever before.

Processes will become complex and hard to manage

Some companies are indecisive on overseas call centres as they believe it will take too long to set up the infrastructure with a BPO partner and, consequently, it will be hard to manage the subcontracting partner.

While there will need to be an initial period of onboarding, customer call centres, such as the one offered by CCI Kenya in Nairobi, are used to working at pace with the initial set-up. As previously mentioned, BPO providers are experts in delivering customer service to already international standard frameworks and managed SLAs. They take the hassle out of customer service management and provide you with constant feedback on customer service quality levels and other KPI metrics to show you that excellence is being delivered to customers.

Once established, overseas call centres will allow you to:

• Provide vastly lower staffing costs (cost of living varies in overseas nations).
• Save time responding to customer inquiries
• Expand internationally via a global delivery network
• Have increased flexibility on contact hours and 24/7 customer service (sustain specialist capabilities)
• Easily transfer overflow calls and have more capacity in your business.

CCI Global and CCI Kenya: customer service strategies

CCI Global boasts headquarters established in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda and Ethiopia and is a leading African business process outsourcing provider offering specialist training since 2006. Therefore, it won’t surprise you that, since then, the business and those who represent it have gained an in-depth understanding of the offshoring industry, international customer service delivery and offshoring to deliver consumer sales.

CCI has transformed how many international organizations see African BPO services, and the continent is now considered the most beneficial location for business process outsourcing. CCI Group can not only take the pressure off expanding businesses, but the excellent services provided mean international companies are represented in the best light possible.

CCI Global is proud to be one of the top providers of BPO throughout Africa. The company acts to a high standard to support the customer service functions of both domestic and international clients in areas such as mobile technology, leisure sectors and recruitment industries. For information on outsourcing your customer service support, visit CCI Global.

More on outsourcing

IT outsourcing guide – what is it, pros and cons and providers

Outsourcing your business HR: when to do it, the benefits and the pitfalls