•	ICG has built a reputation in the South African market as a leading independent facilitator of BPS and outsourcing partnerships; connecting and overseeing on behalf of our Principal, the establishment and on-going management of service delivery.
•	ICG has over many years, developed long standing relationships in the service industry and is committed to growing and enhancing the reputation of South African service providers.
•	ICG prides itself on providing a personal service, with a strong results orientated work ethic.
•	ICG is committed to achieving the results and outcomes agreed by stakeholders for the project assigned by sourcing the most competent service providers, at optimal cost in the quickest time.
•	A variety of commercial models exist through which the services of ICG can be acquired.

Remember

•	You own and manage your business, we don’t.
•	You make the decisions around your business, we don’t.

We’re just here to help you manage your ABC’s

Organizations have in the past often polarized their service delivery between the use of onshore centres for delivery of high customer experience and complex processes and low cost offshore centres for simple transaction processing and customer service cost deflection.

However, the world has changed. While organizations still have a strong need to reduce their customer service costs, they are typically looking to do this through increased use of electronic channels and by improving customer journeys rather than at the expense of the customer experience. Indeed, the most common need expressed by organizations in the area of customer service at the present time is the desire to reduce their customer service costs while maintaining their customer experience and levels of customer satisfaction. This is typically accompanied by a longer-term vision to continue improving their customer experience and customer satisfaction while retaining this lower cost point of operation.

The balance in customer service is shifting. In for example, a call centre operation, this is the result of two factors:

Firstly, the move to electronic self-service for simple queries is in itself shifting the focus of customer service delivered by agents to the more complex end of the customer service spectrum.

Secondly, there is an increased focus on using customer service to drive sales and revenue protection through techniques such as welcome calls, health checks, and proactive customer interventions.

This is changing the skills required of agents, with a much greater requirement for agents to be able to build empathy with customers. Accordingly, the increasing requirement from offshore customer service locations is to be able to offer “onshore-equivalent” customer service or even “onshore-exceeding” customer service at a lower cost of service.

In this scenario, South Africa is worthy of consideration for “BPS” delivery whether via a captive or offshoring approach, since it offers an alternative to onshore services for delivery of high levels of customer experience and empathy and the ability to handle relatively complex processes.

South Africa has a strong capability in supporting revenue generation and revenue protection within International contact centre services. Reasons why organizations have chosen South Africa in preference to other offshore locations for International contact centre services include:

•	High level of cultural affinity between South Africa, the UK, Europe and Australia
•	The ability of South African agents to have a greater level of dialogue with, and develop greater empathy with, customers than agents in other offshore locations
•	The ability of South African agents to handle complex calls and to negotiate and do deals, for example, in support of collections.

These latter two factors, combined with the ability of South African agents often to outperform existing onshore centres in terms of the customer experience, are critical to revenue-generation. South African delivery has traditionally been used in support of collections because of these skills and more recently the industry has developed greater capability in areas such welcome calls, health checks, and other soft-sales approaches.

To complement this, South African delivery has a particular strength in outbound calls in support of these types of activity with approximately 27% of the International contact centre activity outbound-based.