New Offshore Markets: Amazon delivers customer service from South Africa

Online retailer Amazon’s customer service center is based in Cape Town and aims to grow to 1400 employees by end of this year. Research firm Ovum recently interviewed senior site leader, Scott Sommers, to find out more about the facility and Amazon’s experience in offshoring its customer service to South Africa. From a customer services perspective, Amazon’s Cape Town facility is a major delivery hub, servicing: All inbound customer service for the US, UK and German retail businesses; Support for Amazon’s Kindle e-reader for end-users in the US, UK and Germany, including basic "how-to" assistance as well as technical troubleshooting; Support for the company’s US digital business, including the MP3 store, Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Cloud Player applications, and the Kindle Fire tablet device. All these services are provided by phone, email or live chat. In addition, Amazon has a team providing support, mainly via email, around online customer product reviews, in five languages – German, French, Spanish, English and Italian. There is also support for authors looking to self-publish books on the Kindle or through Amazon subsidiary Createspace. According to Sommers, Amazon’s service strategy is based on empowering employees by trusting their judgment and giving them the tools necessary to resolve customer issues themselves. As the company’s style of dealing with customers is less rigid than that of many others (for example, there are no scripts for customer service representatives), the natural "easy talking" style of local staff has been an important factor. Sommers links the trust displayed towards staff as one of the reasons for the low rates of absenteeism and attrition that his center has experienced. It’s also, on a very positive note, contributed to a burgeoning management level based on internal promotions. As a retail business experiencing surges in demand at particular times of year, it’s very important to Amazon that the customer care facility can scale up rapidly if necessary. Much of the extra requirement has been met by temporary staff, but Amazon is adding hundreds of extra seats in its Cape Town center to cope with the expected growth in permanent staffing levels, this year. Amazon has also successfully overcome hurdles in terms of processing immigration applications for employees that initially came in from abroad; finding an ISP to work with to set up a broadband network with the necessary bandwidth (speeds of 100 megabits per second); and providing safe, door-to-door transportation for staff working night shifts. [eventpdf]

New Offshore Markets: Amazon delivers customer service from South Africa

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