Mobile service provider Airtel has partnered with a global supplier of business communications Avaya to enhance Airtel’s customer capabilities across its operations.
The five-year contract will see Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions provide contact centre technology and managed services designed to increase the performance, reduce the costs and accelerate the transformation of Airtel’s communications environment.
Speaking during the contract signing at Hotel Intercontinental, CEO Anglophone at Bharti Airtel Jayant Khosla said that evolving customer needs are the driving force to the partnership, adding that they want to move in tandem with developing technology to serve the customer better.
“At Bharti Airtel, we constantly innovate and partner with the best to offer our customers a world-class service experience at every touch point. Our partnership with Avaya is in line with the rapid evolution into the data world, and will provide superior customer service experience and extends from traditional voice based to video and social media interactions.
Besides, it will enhance our service capabilities, and help us deliver superior customer experiences across our operations,” said Khosla.
Avaya will provide a tailored contact centre outsourcing environment that includes completely customized application support, billing, reporting and Service Level Agreements with remediation. In addition, Avaya will be transforming Airtel’s environment to the latest contact centre technology, which will allow Airtel to provide a consistent, high-quality customer experience across all its markets.
Vice President of Emerging Regions at Avaya Nidal Abou-Ltaif said that Kenya serves as an East African hub of technology and therefore a need to partner with Airtel will see them get most out of their communications investments for the benefit of current and future customers.
“Kenya has a rich telecommunication infrastructure which makes is an epicentre for our operation s. We want Airtel customers to enjoy better services through the partnership,” said Nidal.
Gracing the occasion, Minister for Information and Communications Samuel Poghisio urged more companies to partner so that they can add value to one another hence improve their services to the customers. “Value is added when two companies partner for one is able to uplift one another for efficiency in service delivery,” said the Kacheliba lawmaker, adding that the government is ready to improve the infrastructure of the unreachable areas to take technology to the grassroots.
Airtel, which by February 2012 had 246 million customers across its operations, plans to be in a position to serve 28,000 customers in need of customer services at a go, by 2015.
