Call centre up and running for voter registration

In partnership with Grintek Telecom, Cida Digital, Emmanuels Call Centre Staffing Solutions and Intelleca Voice & Mobile, the 80 seat contact centre, which is set to provide around two hundred job opportunities, is a public service call centre and will serve the requirements of the voting public during the municipal elections, seven days a week.

Emmanuels recruited personal while Digital Mall and Cida Digital, a division of Cida City Campus, put 200 staff members through a rigorous six-day training programme to ensure candidates were trained in IEC-specific processes, procedures and system applications.

Digital Mall has geared up the call centre according to the IEC's overall media plans to support all advertising initiatives and also set up a 20 seat call centre to support the IEC's knock-and-drop campaigns which the organisation ran earlier in the year, in order to educate the public living in rural areas on the Municipal Elections.

Yaron Assabi, CEO Of Digital Mall, says: "Digital Mall conducted extensive research into the call centre requirements of the IEC and found that, during the National Elections, over a million calls were answered with peak periods that created a strain on the existing call centre resources.

"A solution was required that would reduce the load at peak periods while improving efficiency to callers by ensuring their queries would be handled promptly and efficiently without having to employ more people. As a result, the IEC opted to invest in a state-of-the-art 120 port VoiceXML/Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform.

"Voters now have the option of receiving voters roll confirmation or pertinent information from the VoiceXML/IVR platform without human intervention, or may speak to a call centre agent, depending on the nature of the enquiry."

Sibongiseni Dlamini, of the IEC, says: "This call centre will assist the IEC to achieve and maintain a professional, cost-effective level of service that not only meets with, but also exceeds the expectations of the public it serves."