Pastel Contact Centre shines amoung other SA winners at International Awards

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June 2008

Softline Pastel’s 145-agent contact centre, provider of support services to its accounting software customers, won multiple awards at the 3rd annual ContactCentreWorld.com benchmarking competition. Finalists not only represented their company, but also their country and region of the world, and Pastel was one of a number of South African contact centres to compete in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) category.

The awards, announced in London during June 2008, ensure that Pastel’s contact centre, along with those of Volkswagen SA, Sanlam, the Kelly Group, Standard Bank, and ABSA, will be listed as one of the top 100 industry performers for 2008 by ContactCentreWorld.com – the global conference, research and online magazine provider for the contact centre industry. The organisation has almost 113 000 members. BPeSA, South Africa’s national co-ordinating body representing the interests of the Business Process Outsourcing and Offshoring sectors calls ContactCentreWorld’s competition “the Olympics for the contact centre industry”.

The 800 global entrants for this year’s competition came from countries as diverse as Germany, Turkey and Latvia and included brands like Vodafone, Dell, Barclays, and Lloyds. Overall, however, companies from the United Kingdom and South Africa collectively won more awards than those from other countries.

The Pastel contact centre came second in the Best Community Spirit category, third in Best Customer Service, and were finalists in the Best Contact Centre and Best Outbound Campaign categories. Two of its team members were also highly commended in the Best Contact Centre Agent and Best Contact Centre Leader categories.

“What makes these awards particularly gratifying is that last year only two South African companies entered, but this year there were twelve,” says Pastel national sales director, Bridget du Toit. “So, just from a South African point of view, the competition was tougher and, while we certainly held our own, South Africa as a whole was recognised for contact centre quality.

“It’s important for us at Pastel to benchmark ourselves against the best in South Africa and the rest of the world, to ensure that we’re always giving our customers the best possible value for their money. It also helps us identify any gaps in our service, giving us practical ways to improve.”

Du Toit says that discussions in London with competitors showed that Pastel’s technical solutions for its contact centre are on par with the rest of the world. “What was different, however, was people management styles and the level of transparency offered to customers.

“Internationally, the trend is for most contact centres to divide their customers into gold, platinum and other categories and provide different levels of service to each. Our approach is different. We believe every customer deserves our best and so we don’t differentiate.

“Having different levels of customer service provides a career path for contact centre agents who, internationally, cover all age groups. Locally, agents tend to be very young and view working in a contact centre as a stepping stone to some other career. So there’s work to be done by all South African contact centres to create a desire among agents for a lifelong career in contact centres.”