Safaricom has unveiled its second largest call centre in Eldoret town, an investment the firm says is set to create about 800 employment opportunities for the locals.
The firm says it will also offer internship opportunities to 300 college students studying within Uasin Gishu County as it eyes to tap talent from local universities as it ramps up its customer care division in the wake of growing products offering.
The new call centre, located along Uganda road opposite Rupa Mall, increases Safaricom’s needed capacity to handle and resolve queries posed through the over 150,000 calls made to the telco by customers daily. Eldoret town is currently home to two fully operational Safaricom retail shops.
“Today, we celebrate yet another milestone in line with our strategic business objective of putting the customer first. We want to ensure that, as we continue growing and investing in technology and in our network, we do not lose sight of our customers and their needs”, said Safaricom chief customer officer Sylvia Mulinge.
“Our plan is to offer three months paid internships for students from various campuses within the county. This will not only help us to build partnerships with the learning institutions but will also enable us offer the youth work experience and mentorship,” said Ms Mulinge.
Despite investments in new technology and USSD solutions, a huge percentage of the over 30 million Safaricom customers still prefer making calls to call centers to have their issues resolved. To date about there are about 24 million daily uses of the USSD solution and over 700,000 smartphone have downloaded the mySafaricomapp daily app.
Last year, Safaricom introduced an artificial intelligence (AI) Chatbot assistant, Zuri, available on Telegram and Facebook Messenger. Zuri enables the telcos mobile data users to perform a wide range of tasks like manage subscription services including viewing subscriptions and unsubscribing from chargeable SMS services.