- Slashes Salary By 67%
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There is a big shake-up at MTN Call Centres and Customer Care units across the country as things are no longer at ease. The telecommunications provider which has taken nothing off the table in order to cut cost in the last few months has caused a ruckus in its call centres and customer care centre as it is slashing salaries by about 67 percent. Apparently, this has not gone down well with the workers who have been hit by the news. We learnt that the issue has even gone beyond the call centre and customer care workers themselves as the outsourcing partners have severed links with MTN as a result of the development. Like Pontius Pilate, they have washed their hands off the contract as they cannot stomach the steep cut in salary for their workers.
In the last few years MTN has been running its call centre and most customer care centres through partners. This mode of business was first introduced by a former Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mr Sifiso Dabengwa almost a decade ago. As a result of the uproar about the move in the country at that time, it was not implemented until a few years later. Mr Dabengwa who is a shareholder in the MTN Group specifically took over MTN Nigeria at that point in time, in order to streamline the business and cut cost. He also renamed the customer care centres which were known as MTN Friendship Centres at that time. They were later known as MTN connect stores. In the last few years MTN has been employing its call centre and customers care staff through these outsourcing partners under an arrangement. When MTN decided few months ago to slash salaries, the partners entered a long drawn negotiation with the network. At the end, a deal could not be reached and MTN moved ahead with its decision to slash salaries. Hence, the outsourcing partners opted out of the contract. Meanwhile, when the partners told MTN that it is a bad deal to slash salaries that steeply, MTN told them that the network may go to China to sign a Call Centre contract. What this means is that when a customer calls the Call Centre to complain or make enquiries, the call is routed to a location in China from where they will be answered.
The cost of labour in China and India is at rock bottom and a lot of businesses are taking their call centres to China and India to significantly cut the cost of doing business in their locality. Since there is no legislation in the country stopping MTN Nigeria from doing this, the company might have as well gone ahead with its threat. Recall that Airtel Nigeria also uses outsourcing partners for its call centre operations. Few years ago, this resulted in a long drawn-out crisis which embarrassed the company. The owners of Airtel Nigeria depend heavily on the outsourcing model of business. Airtel also outsources some other departments of the company to partners. However, the company has so far resisted the temptation of outsourcing its jobs directly offshore like MTN Nigeria is planning to do. If MTN goes ahead to outsource Call Centre jobs to China, it will become the biggest establishment in the country to do this. This might end up becoming a precedent for other telecommunications companies in the country. Since the global economic meltdown which dealt a blow on the telecommunication companies and reduced their profit margin considerably. Some telecommunications companies in Nigeria have slashed the salaries of workers. Those that mostly bear the brunt of salaries cuts are those in call centres and customer care units.
Part of the reason these companies slashed salaries of their call centre and customer care workers also has something to do with the cut-throat competition in the telecommunications industry. For example, in order to reduce call centre response time, a lot of them doubled and even tripled the number of their call centre workers. Hence, the workers had to bear the brunt of the development as salaries were slashed to accommodate more workers. The operators devised this method for maximum advantage with the overhead cost roughly remaining the same. We hear that the decision by MTN to slash salaries of call centre and customer care workers in Nigeria by 67% came from South Africa where the company is headquartered. The South Africans also decided that if there is no fair deal in Nigeria, they are outsourcing the jobs to China. However, while it is possible to outsource call centres to China, it is physically impossible to outsource costumer care units to the Asian country or India for that matter. The company is still contemplating about what decision to take about its customer care units after its partners pulled out.
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