A number of communications sector officials believe mobile companies’ reliance on outsourcing firms in providing some call centre services to their customers will not harm the service quality. This is especially since the company should devote itself to its main business, which is providing communication services. Perhaps the most significant competitive advantage that differentiates a company from others, in their opinion, include the rapid response to customer inquiries, and providing special services, like customer service for the hearing impaired.
Dr Hamdi El-Leithi, Chairman of Linatel Telecommunication, believes the mobile companies have recently heavily relied on the special customer services to provide added value to their customers, and to keep them on. He also believes that the market has become saturated in terms of the number of users, and that there are no more customers to compete over. Every company tries to keep its market share, competing over keeping on the current customers.
El-Leithi added that the international trend now is directed towards expanding in the call centres’ activities. Different sectors now use the call centres’ services, like banks and financial institutions, car companies, and companies working in the electronic devices sector, even the e-commerce sites are in need of call centres’ services.
El-Leithi ruled out the possibility that mobile companies would dispense with the outsourcing companies in providing the services of call centres, as they devote themselves to their main activity, the communication services. However, they care about contracting with companies that provide call centre services in a way that can make them able to meet the satisfaction of the customers.
In the same context, Talaat Omar, Vice President of the Scientific Society of Telecom Engineers, said customer service is one of the most important factors affecting the customer’s decision while choosing the mobile company he/she will subscribe to.
He added that the mobile companies’ reliance on outsourcing companies in providing the services of call centres will not stop, despite the mobile companies’ trend of increasing the number of workers in their customer service departments. He believes that this approach aims at improving the quality of the service they provide to their customers.
He clarified that what will give a company a customer service edge over another is the good training the employees receive. This would start from the way they reply to the customer’s call to having the basic knowledge about the most common problems and their solutions.
Moreover, the employee must be trained to rapidly transmit the information to help the customer in the shortest possible time, in addition to providing special customer services, like the services of the hearing impaired or deaf people.
