MTN Reassures Nigerians of Enhanced Customer Service

15th December, 2010 - 3:12 PM

Nigeria¿s leading telecommunications company, MTN has reassured Nigerians of its commitment to enhancing customer service experience on its network through the expansion of the Jos Customer Assistance centre. This is in line with the plans communicated by the company in 2009 to enhance the breadth and depth of its customer service towards increasing its capacity to respond promptly to over 35 million MTN customers.

Nigeria’s leading telecommunications company, MTN has reassured Nigerians of its commitment to enhancing customer service experience on its network through the expansion of the Jos Customer Assistance centre. This is in line with the plans communicated by the company in 2009 to enhance the breadth and depth of its customer service towards increasing its capacity to respond promptly to over 35 million MTN customers.
“Our ultimate goal is to ensure a significant reduction in the waiting time for a customer to speak with a customer representative and get his issues resolved,” said Akin Braithwaite, Customer Relations Executive, MTN. The customer assistance centre, more popularly known as call centre, took off on a temporary site at Rayfield, Jos in July, operating four shifts of customer care representatives in a day. It complements existing customer support infrastructure that is currently the biggest in the industry. The 650-man customer assistance centre, installed with cutting-edge technology is being run in partnership with CNSSL Contact Centre, a Call Centre outsource company based in Nigeria and managed by Nigerians.
Gbenga Adebayo, the Chief Executive Officer of CNSSL Nigeria, a telecoms support services company and Founder of CNSSL Contact centre spoke with excitement about the expansion of the Jos call centre. He said: " The permanent site and expanded call centre should be ready by November and will employ an additional 1, 500 Nigerians. They will receive world-class customer service training provided by experts from MTN". The ultimate recruitment plan for the centre according to him is a staff strength of about 2,200 by the end of the first quarter of 2011.

The Jos call centre also demonstrates MTN's overarching strategy to contribute to socio-economic development in Nigeria. According to Wale Goodluck, Corporate Services Executive, MTN: "It is a strategy deliberately designed to both improve the quality of customer support available to our esteemed customers and also add value to the local communities by creating employment opportunities for Nigerians."
The recent upheavals in Jos further underscore MTN’s commitment to impacting Nigerian society through its operations and services. While businesses and individuals were known to leave the city, MTN made a strategic decision to go into Jos metropolis and create jobs and opportunities for its residents. Currently, 70% of staff at the Jos call centre are from Plateau state with the remaining 30% made up of youths from all over Nigeria.

Goodluck said: "This is another way MTN is empowering Nigerians with direct employment of young graduates. It is also a pride to the organisation that it has continued to deploy onshore outsourcing of its call centres across the country to professional indigenous companies in Nigeria.
“With this centre coming into service, the pressure on our existing customer support infrastructure in the network has been eased. This is because though this centre is located in Jos, it is a national centre and as such customer representatives working there receive calls from our customers all over Nigeria. In essence, our customers across the country now have better access to customer service support,” said Braithwaite.
In order to cater for customers who do not speak English, the centre offers a bilingual service backed by a number of specially recruited staff who are versed in the local Plateau languages and major Nigerian languages in addition to English. It would be recalled that MTN excited the industry last year with the introduction of multi-language options on its customer care lines. The languages introduced included Ibo, Hausa, Yoruba and five modern European languages, in addition to English and Pidgin. The intelligent system saves a customer’s language preference during the first call, such that when the customer calls next, his call is automatically routed to a customer representative who understands his language of preference.
MTN also last August implemented an Internet Protocol based technology which has given it the capability to process over 500 million calls per annum. The infrastructure also allows the company to deliver customer service through multiple channels (Voice, SMS, Web and video) and supports multiple locations of online customer assistance centres.