Ryan Strategic Advisory | Talent at the heart of Cape Town’s BPO value proposition

Peter Ryan chats about the fantastic talent that is available in Cape Town and the opportunities it presents to create great customer experiences.

Video transcript

Hi, I’m Peter Ryan, Principal Analyst at Ryan’s Strategic Advisory, based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. We are a full-service market research agency and consultancy that focuses on the BPO and CX ecosystem around the world.

One of the reasons I want to talk to you today about Cape Town is because of the great amount of talent on the ground for delivering customer experience. Something that always struck me during my various visits to South Africa is how Cape Town stands out in a differentiated fashion. One major reason for this is talent—there’s an abundance of young, educated people constantly looking to forge a career in customer experience.

It’s not just what I would say is a stop-gap, like we see in so many different parts of the world where people think about going into a contact center role before they get a “real job,” so to speak. Rather, in Cape Town, people take these roles on in order to forge a long-term career in which they can thrive and find their own means and ways. This is crucial when we’re trying to differentiate customer service around the world for all sorts of different sectors.

But keep in mind, it’s not just the communication skills—it’s also the linguistics. Cape Town has a reputation among many quarters as an English-only destination. And it’s true, English is very much the predominant language in the contact center space. However, I have been heartened when I’ve gone to Cape Town and witnessed individuals servicing consumers in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, as well as many other European languages. This is so important for international organizations that are seeking a multilingual hub approach in terms of service delivery for consumers that they might find in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, or North America.

And what about the impact Cape Town’s talent pool has had in terms of long-term career development? This is something that I think is very important. Something that we’ve looked at at Ryan’s Strategic Advisory over a number of years has been the fact that in many different locations in the world, CX is not seen as a career; it’s a stopgap between finishing high school or university and finding a so-called “real job.” But that is not the case in Cape Town.

I’ve seen so many individuals who have started on the front lines and are now working in management or executive roles. In terms of Cape Town, CX is seen as a career proposition, a career opportunity. This is so important in terms of driving the best possible CX outcomes. As I said, talent is very much at the heart of Cape Town’s value proposition.

And that word “value” comes to mind. There are very few places around the world where you can find a rapport between quality and value—effectively First World level of quality service at 50 to 60 percent the price that you might pay in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. This is really at the heart of why Cape Town stands out as a destination of choice and why it will continue to be at the heart of Africa’s BPO value proposition.