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Silah launches new manpower solutions for Qatar

Silah to provide trained customer service agents to Qatar

26 June 2012

Doha, Qatar: Silah Gulf (Silah), a multi-award winning business process outsourcing (BPO) and customer experience provider serving the GCC region, has announced the launch of Silah Talent. A specialist manpower outsourcing service, Silah will now provide companies based in Qatar with call centre agents, team leaders and managers for their contact centres.

Using empirical data from the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report (Report), the world's most comprehensive annual report on strategic trends and operational performance metrics for the call centre industry, Silah's CEO validated the critical market need for Silah Talent and the reason Silah's launching this service for Qatar.

Joe Tawfik, CEO at Silah said, "The Report shows that while only 14% of GCC contact centres plan to expand through full outsourcing, 50% of existing call centres expect to grow their operations in the upcoming months. While access to experienced team leaders was cited as the key drivers for a company's success, the numbers also demonstrated that there is a shortage of good customer service agents, not just in Qatar, but around the region. Using Silah Talent, companies will save time and money usually spent in recruiting and training staff in the essential skills required to operate a world-class contact centre operation."

Talking about the current level of maturity in the Qatari market, Tawfik said, "Qatar is currently experiencing phenomenal growth. It's upgrading all of its facilities in preparation for the World Cup 2022. In order to successfully host such a global event, the country cannot afford to fall behind on a critical area like customer service. There is a real need for advanced call centres and trained staff to operate them. Silah aims to help Qatar fill this gap."

"As per the Report, GCC contact centres are expanding and adopting new media channels very rapidly and are on a steep learning curve. Adoption of social media channels is being done in an innovative way, far ahead of global trends, and the region is unwavering in their investment of new technology The effective management of these new media channels to generate a positive customer experiences requires new skill sets from staff and our specialist manpower solution is designed to specifically address this type of issue," added Tawfik.

"Silah's independent research also shows the region is lacking in the basics and is slow in implementing best practice methodologies. While considerable investment has been made in importing new technology, there aren't enough locals trained to operate and utilize the systems. This is another gap Silah Talent will help fill," added Tawfik.

Silah's world-class training and development facility will provide the necessary expertise to Silah Talent candidates. Providing regional job opportunities for trained Qatari call centre agents, Silah Talent will help source employment opportunities for the youth and those returning to the workforce. Customers can now hire Academy graduates and take advantage of Silah's best practice methodologies.

2012 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report: GCC Results
Now in its 13th year, the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report is widely acknowledged to be the most useful and authoritative report of its kind for the contact centre industry. The Report covers the full breadth and depth of contact centre management and provides information about day-to-day challenges faced by contact centres and current trends within the industry.

The Report compares individual contact centre's performance with others of similar size, industry and geography, helping companies identify strengths and weaknesses in key areas of operations management, technology and people.

The relevant findings for the GCC region:

• 60% chose customer demand as a key factor affecting contact centres today
• First Contact Resolution is a major cost and customer satisfaction driver. The Global trend is towards empowering agents to fix problems and less reliance on adherence to a rigid process. The GCC differs from the global sample: 35% don't empower agents at all vs. 30% for the global sample. Only 31% of GCC agents use their own judgement to solve a problem compared to 40% of their global counterparts.
• The GCC is ahead of the Global sample in use of Social Media - 41% v 31% for the Global sample. The big difference lays in the use of SMS: in the Global sample this is just 28% vs. nearly 44% for the GCC.
• The GCC seems clear on the key drivers. Staff availability is a challenge, as there are parts of the region where the only solution for staffing centres seems to be ship staff in from other countries. This clearly gives countries in the region with a strong work ethic and access to a local labour pool a key advantage
• The GCC exhibits a far more positive outlook for contact centre development than the rest of the world, with higher expansion and new centres opening. This might be a factor of the relative immaturity of the sector in the region.
 

The 2012 Report (13th edition) includes 626 contact centres globally of which 133 form the Middle East and Africa region. In order to gather sufficient data for an ideal sample size to formulate accurate trends, the Report surveyed 34 contact centres in the GCC region.

-Ends-

About Silah
Silah is the GCC region's premier provider of contact centre services and consulting. A joint venture formed in 2009 between Bahrain's eGovernment Authority and Merchants, Silah offers consulting, outsourced services and technology solutions for Government and companies in the GCC.

For more information, please contact:
Salwa Ghorayeb
Action Qatar
+974 55231268
salwa.g@actionprgroup.com

Rohan Shanker
Action Bahrain
+973 36356585
rohan.s@actionprgroup.com

© Press Release 2012

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