CALLFORCE: Global BPO Services Drive Exceptional Customer Experiences

The CallForce story began 22 years ago, then a flexible staffing company providing HR and recruitment services to the South African Contact Centre sector. After 15 years of building the business, a shift in strategy came to allow a global brand to be built. Extensive work with

Deloitte brought the decision to pivot the business into a business process outsourcer in 2015, many aspects of which the company was already expertly delivering. Today, BPO represents 95% of the business, focused on delivering contact centre solutions from South Africa to the global market.

“Our customer-centric approach combined with the expertise for process optimisation, state-of-the-art technology support and continuous skills development enables us to optimise contact centre and other BPO solutions that deliver the ultimate brand experience,” CallForce abridges, of an approach which affords the agility and flexibility to deliver customised BPO services across many industry sectors, achieving high levels of speed to productivity and operational performance. 

These sectors include telco, financial services, e-commerce, logistics and energy, among others, with solutions supported by smart technology platforms that open up new channels and individual touch-points to enable engagement in seamless interactions with customers across multiple channels. “Our operation is built on the premise of providing exceptional customer brand experiences in a cost-effective and operationally efficient manner through the delivery of customised, innovative contact centre solutions and BPO services from South Africa to the global market,” CallForce begins.

CX WORLD LEADER

Following three years in second position, South Africa has just been named, for the second year running, the most favoured offshore customer experience (CX) delivery location in 2022, tied statistically with BPO heavyweight India. The honour, awarded by the annual Ryan Strategic Advisory Front Office BPO Omnibus Survey, truly consolidates South Africa’s position as the emerging leader in global CX delivery and as a CX delivery location of choice.

“With the recognition of South Africa as the favoured CX offshoring destination in both 2021 and 2022,” expressed CallForce at the news of this prestigious ranking, “it sets us on an international stage as a tech-savvy, accent neutral talent pool with the ability to deliver professional and empathetic support to complex customer queries.” South Africa was also recognised as the world’s leading BPO outsourcing destination in 2021, and has been ranked in 2nd every year since 2018, growing at approximately 22% annually.

“Through the combination of our talented youth, omnichannel strategies and innovative processes we continue our efforts to keep South Africa on the international stage. With the active involvement of the Global Business industry body, BPESA, and strategic partner Department of Trade and Industry (the DTI) to support the growth of 500,000 new jobs by 2030, the recognition of this success is a strong indication to the global market of the innovation, agility and professionalism within the South African global business services (GBS) sector.” 

There was also personal glory to celebrate for CallForce, taking home gold for the Best Outsourced Public Centre award at the Contact Centre World Global Awards in January, a prestigious industry ceremony hosted by ContactCenterWorld.com, which holds around 215,000 members in 200 countries.

“We are humbled to have taken gold from over 2000 entries from over 80 nations,” CallForce enthused. “We would like to thank our clients, our teams, our leadership and agents for working so hard and in close collaboration each day to be the best versions of ourselves. This ranking was a true testament to the delivery excellence from our team and a motivating factor in helping us create over 900 new jobs during the course of 2021, of whom 95% were previously unemployed and from disadvantaged communities.”

For CallForce, innovation and the ability to pivot and change has long been key to its success. Some of the solutions implemented in a wholesale digital transformation journey include speech analytics, AI-driven customer conversational analytics, digital engagement solution and performance management tools to optimise our its own team’s performance.

“Gaining an advantage in an increasingly competitive market means having to challenge the status quo to create the optimal customer journey using the right people, the right technology and the best innovative processes that bring it all together,” CallForce states.

“Our successful and proven formula empowers our people with optimised processes and customised technologies that strategically support our business in a unique and personalised way of engaging with the end consumers we support.”

“Our agility and adaptability in customising our proven formula to fit our clients’ unique needs is what gives us a competitive edge,” CallForce reiterates, one aspect crucial to differentiating it from other BPO operators in a highly competitive market. “We are now building contact centres of the future that need to be supported by personalisation and omnichannel support, in the client environment as well as the day-to-day operations of our entire business.”

GLOBAL BPO EXCELLENCE

“A digital mindset is not just the implementation of technology,” CallForce is at pains to add, “but the strategic planning of the right technology coupled with cultural alignment – this is when the adoption process becomes successful. We have integrated, customised and built out technologies that strategically support our business in a unique and personalised way and will keep updating this process to ensure we stay current, relevant and optimised.”

Despite the many challenges the GBS sector was hugely successful in its rapid deployment of a hybrid working model to ensure business continuity. The South African market is conducive to stiff, but healthy, competition, with a huge number of BPO brands setting up operations to deliver services into the international market.

“The positive response from our sector to the global pandemic not only displayed our resilience as a nation,” CallForce stresses, “but also put us on the map as a country for further growth and job creation.” Over the course of the last two years CallForce has been able to secure exponential growth, and between September 2020 and 2021 achieved a 159% growth trajectory allowing it to create hundreds of new career opportunities for South Africans.

“As we continue to strengthen our partnerships with global leaders in the BPO sector,” the company says of its future intentions, “we are in ongoing discussions about different business models that would strategically create additional growth for our organisation in support of contact centres all over the world, and our strategy is based on an organic business plan coupled with an acquisition strategy in both international and local markets.”

“We have placed significant focus on the power of our networks and influential partners world over to support the growth of our business through strategic partnerships that create exposure, credibility and quality referrals in a highly competitive landscape.”

Alongside this ongoing focus on furthering its global footprint in a world that is driving digital transformation and exceptional customer experiences, CallForce is constantly on the lookout for new competencies and sectors to explore in order to broaden its client base, and extend the reach of its exceptional customer engagement and retention ratios, significant cost savings and optimisation of operational efficiencies.

“We’ve chosen to place a great emphasis on the US and UK markets as they have shown real potential in attracting jobs to South Africa,” the company explains. “We are also always looking for the right opportunities in high growth industry sectors that would professionally extend the operations of our business into new market sectors.” 

While the provision of intelligent, tailored and digital-driven solutions is its overarching aim, CallForce’s closing thoughts serve to underline the central importance of its agents and employees. “We have a philosophy that our people sit at the centre of our organisation, and our agent universe is our client universe,” CallForce sums up. “Our people-first culture elevates our people as the greatest asset and through the continual investment in their ongoing development, we are able to create a positive impact on their daily lives which translates into a positive experience that they will deliver to our clients.”