Synovate awarded PMR Golden Arrow Award

The Award, in the category of Medium Business Process Outsourced Call Centres (50 - 200 seats) earned our clients' rating of "Outstanding".

This was PMR's first ever survey into business process outsourced call centres in South Africa.

The Call Centres were rated by appropriate senior personnel (clients) who utilise these call centers in South Africa.

Respondents were asked to rate business process outsourced call centres overall and across 15 attributes, namely:

• Cost effectiveness
• BEE compliance
• Extent to which the call centre meets the client's business objectives
• Quality of management of relationship
• Understanding of your business needs
• Business process management
• Continuous follow up with call centre agent
• Core KPIs being met
• Quality and regularity of reporting key data
• Quality of agent training
• Quality of calls
• Management of complaints / faults / problems
• Commitment to the contract
• Business continuity
• Adding Value

Synovate's achievements continued this month as they hit a record high in the number of telephonic interviews conducted, more than 50 000 interviews in one month! Synovate's call centres have increased in size: from 110 seats in 2002 to 144 seats presently. The Durban Call Centre has become a 64 seater from a small 20 seater, and also boasts the National Field Manager as well as 4 team leaders and a dedicated quality controller.

"At Synovate we pride ourselves in recruiting permanent tele-consultants," says Charlotte Jackson, Director of Operations for Synovate Sub-Saharan Africa. "We believe the key to achieving results is to provide training on a continual basis. Training is an ongoing operation that is undertaken in the Synovate Call Centres to make sure the product knowledge and telephonic techniques of the tele-consultants is always at a hundred percent. Confidence is imperative and instilled in our staff. We encourage our people to be pro-active and provide solutions, and this in turn creates an environment of continued improvement, by always being fair and consistent and by making sure we look for prevention rather than simply a cure. Customer and staff satisfaction form a key element of our strategy in the Call Centres and this together with quality and process improvements, ensures that the tele-consultants are the best in the country!"

For more information, please contact Charlotte Jackson, Director of Operations on:
+27 11 709 7800