Barclays’ Contact Centre relocates to JHB
Barclays Bank Botswana plans to relocate its contact centre to South Africa as part of their Africa integration strategy to enhance customer service experience. In response to questions from Business Trends Barclays Bank Public and Media Relations Manager, Spencer Moreri said this is part of the Africa Strategy.
“We are consolidating our self-operated Contact Centre operations into our South Africa Shared Services centre as part of our Africa integration strategy. This is part of the Africa strategy which will see Barclays Africa operations relocating their contact centre operations to the regional hub in Johannesburg,” said Moreri.
He said the date for relocation has not yet been set as they are still going through many processes. “We don’t have the time for relocation yet but we are expecting to finish all the processes this year,” he said. Through this Shared Services facility in South Africa, the bank aims to leverage on the state-of-the art technology and infrastructure to enhance the customer service experience.
Moreri said that they remain to be committed to growing Botswana business and offering customers in the market access to cutting edge financial solutions. “We will continue investing in our infrastructure as well as the deployment of innovative products and systems to improve the way we reach and serve our customers in the market,” he said
Among Barclays innovative solutions are the intelligent ATMs (iATMS), remote account opening, paperless banking services and Cash send. Although Moreri could not give details about how many people are currently working at the call centre he said after the relocation all the affected employees will be absorbed into other parts of the business.
“With regards to other questions, regrettably we do not comment on the terms, conditions or circumstances of our employees. Suffice to say that Barclays remains committed to being an employer of choice in the market,” said Moreri.
He said they will continue to focus on developing human capital through training and development initiatives such as the Barclays Africa Leadership Development programme which was launched last year. In 2014 Barclays introduced a three-year strategy that has positioned it as the ‘go-to bank’ that prides itself of being fully local, fully regional and fully international.
Through the strategy the bank was targeting a return on equity (RoE) of 18-20 percent and for the first half of 2015 it stood at 16.4 percent when compared to the previous year. The other part of the strategy is to be on the top three by revenue in the bank’s top markets in Africa and currently Barclays Africa is in the top three in South Africa, Botswana and Ghana and fourth in Kenya and Zambia.
The third part of the strategy is to improve the cost to income ratio. The fourth commitment is for the business outside South Africa to contribute between 20 and 25 percent of overall revenue.
