Are you ready to uncover the secrets behind the rising popularity of African outsourcing?
This week, we venture into a riveting conversation with Martin Roe, Group CEO of CCI Global, who brings 30 years of industry experience to the table. Martin shines a light on the unique advantages Africa has to offer in the customer service industry, honing in on the cultural ethos of Ubuntu and the resilience of the African population. We also discuss the cost benefits provided by African outsourcing that extend beyond mere labour arbitrage.
Are you hesitant about shifting operations to Africa as a first-time outsourcer? Martin addresses your concerns head-on. We delve into why Africa has become the go-to destination for Contact Centres in the UK, and increasingly, in the US.
We also uncover how a possible recession could impact this market, and reveal the sectors Martin believes are best suited to African markets. Plus, you can get some valuable insights into what to expect when considering South Africa and Kenya for your outsourcing needs.
This episode is more than a discussion, it's a journey through the lens of African outsourcing!
Are you ready to uncover the secrets behind the rising popularity of African outsourcing?
This week, we venture into a riveting conversation with Martin Roe, Group CEO of CCI Global, who brings 30 years of industry experience to the table. Martin shines a light on the unique advantages Africa has to offer in the customer service industry, honing in on the cultural ethos of Ubuntu and the resilience of the African population. We also discuss the cost benefits provided by African outsourcing that extend beyond mere labour arbitrage.
Are you hesitant about shifting operations to Africa as a first-time outsourcer? Martin addresses your concerns head-on. We delve into why Africa has become the go-to destination for Contact Centres in the UK, and increasingly, in the US.
We also uncover how a possible recession could impact this market, and reveal the sectors Martin believes are best suited to African markets. Plus, you can get some valuable insights into what to expect when considering South Africa and Kenya for your outsourcing needs.
This episode is more than a discussion, it's a journey through the lens of African outsourcing!
Welcome to CX Diaries. Cx Diaries from the Customer Experience Foundation is our podcast where we talk to the people at the sharp end of CX and Contact Centres, the movers and the shakers, the innovators, the disruptors and the people delivering in the real world who share their personal stories of their journey through our industry. This week, I'm delighted to be joined by Martin Rowe. Martin is a CEO of CIO Global, a leading CXBPO in Africa. He has had over 20 years experience in the outsourcing industry, both in senior and commercial roles across the UK, us, india, egypt and Africa, gaining a deep understanding of the industry from both the commercial and client perspective. Prior to his time as CEO, martin served as Managing Director CCI's recruitment arm Careerbox, playing an integral role in the organization's establishment as a preeminent recruitment, impact, sourcing and skills development organization focusing on young, underprivileged people across Africa. And as CEO, martin has overseen CCI strategy development to become the largest outsourcing provider in sub-Saharan Africa. Martin, welcome Pleasure to have you with us. That's quite an extensive background.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure to be here, Keith. I wish it was only 20 years in the industry. It's actually 30 years in the industry.
Speaker 1:All right, okay, so talk to us a little bit about CCI, how you're contributing to the BPO space, but for listeners that don't know much about you, Okay, so CCI is a full service CXO business, been around since 2006,.
Speaker 2:started in Durban in South Africa in 2006 servicing the UK market, so a pioneer in the South African space way back when. Subsequently, we've grown quite a bit. We're now in about eight sites, yeah, eight sites in South Africa in Durban, joberg and Cape Town. We're in three sites in Kenya, in Nairobi, and then a site each in Ethiopia, in Rwanda and in Ghana. So, as you say, it makes us the largest CXO business in Africa. So our operations are in Africa, but our clients and their customers are in English speaking countries. So the UK, of course, but also Australia and the US. So, yeah, I guess we're the pioneers in African outsourcing.
Speaker 1:Okay, so obviously African outsourcing is very big at the moment. So, as an Africa-focused CX provider, what would you say are some of the reasons why South Africa in particular, or Africa more generally, might be better positioned to support both buyer demands from the UK brands?
Speaker 2:There ain't no word. It's the people. So it's the availability and accessibility of highly educated people who can talk to English-speaking consumers with high degrees of empathy. So what Africa is is not a high volume, low value transactional geography where you would outsource because it's low labor cost and arbitrage, although that's a benefit that you get anyway. People in Africa can talk to consumers in the UK about complex and emotional things. So if you think about things that are complicated and emotional, and often both complicated and emotional at the same time, africans, we believe, can do that better than other markets and, dare I say, even onshore, given how difficult it is to hire people. And by complicated and emotional I mean driving outcomes such as sales conversion or net promoter score or customer retention those things that are really really important to British companies but require high degrees of EQ. And we think Africa more broadly, particularly the countries that we're in, have got huge numbers of people that can do that kind of activity better than perhaps even onshore and certainly better than other offshore geographies.
Speaker 1:And what do you feel makes the African population particularly strong and that EQ, that critical thinking skill set?
Speaker 2:I think that there's a general culture, there's a thing called Ubuntu in Africa, and specifically in South Africa, which is about a togetherness, which is about a family feeling, and there's lots of African proverbs that are sort of globally famous about going together to go far and so on. And I think, deep at a cultural level, africans are much more emotionally connected people and that manifests itself in a contact center environment, not just being nice to consumers but actually caring about the outcome, which is absolutely vital. So I think that's part of it. I think naturally, because of the kind of unfortunate circumstances of many African countries, there's had very, very high degrees of resilience. So these people are tough and therefore working in a contact center is tough, so they can maintain that exceptional emotional outgoing nature at the same time with high levels of resilience.
Speaker 2:And then, underpinning that is, in most of the countries in Anglophone Africa, were were specialists, people are highly educated and they're highly educated in an English or a British style curriculum often and therefore they kind of speak English, write English in a way that's proper. And then I guess the final thing about Africans is they just get it at a cultural level. So the get sarcasm and irony and they understand at a cultural level the way consumers behave in mature markets like the US and the UK and once many people in their minds, I would think, about Africa as being undeveloped. That's not the case. It's developing for sure. What they have, consumer markets. They buy insurance and they buy products and services exactly the same way that consumers do in the developed world. So all of those things combined are a perfect recipe for being able to deliver those outcomes net promoter score and so on.
Speaker 1:So let's address the issue of cost. It was a comment that I picked up recently in our community was well, if it wasn't any cheaper, nobody would go to South Africa. And it is all about cost. And another organisation that we're close to need to take out an awful lot of cost in their business and decided to go to South Africa. What would you say to that?
Speaker 2:I think cost savings absolutely important and is delivered in African markets. So that's kind of a given. We don't believe and we don't see people's primary decision making being driven just by cost. Cost always important, always important, and arguably at the moment it's more important that it's been for some years, but it's not more important than the delivery of outcomes, right? So nobody's going to outsource integral and important parts of their business Retention, for example, just because it's cheap. That's not the people.
Speaker 2:That people don't do that and our view is is that is the African value proposition, that complex and emotional work type which actually has real intrinsic value to companies. Because, let's face it, high volume, low volume, transactional activity has already been automated and if it hasn't, generative AI will be automating it pretty down soon. So cost is important, but we don't believe it's the primary factor for people choosing South Africa first of all. But that said, the cost advantages are very substantial indeed and you know, for those familiar with the Philippines, for example, it's priced in parity with the Philippines, so it is also low cost but also very high volume.
Speaker 1:Yeah, also, esg has become a major area of interest and almost a demand and a hygiene requirement for many businesses. How are you at CCI addressing that and supporting that?
Speaker 2:So 10 years ago we started an organization that you mentioned at the beginning called CareerBox. Careerbox is a nonprofit company within the CCI group and we formed it 10 years ago to test the hypothesis, which was are people that are chronically on an underemployed in South Africa are unemployable? Because unemployment rates in South Africa are horrific 50%, 60% for certain cohorts in society. So are those people unemployable or is it something else?
Speaker 2:And what we recognized 10 years ago is is not only are they not unemployed, employable, but they have, if you help them, got the potential to be the highest performing BPO and managers on an ongoing basis in the world. So CareerBox is our nonprofit impact sourcing engine that sits at the heart of CCI, and almost everybody that works for us today joined us through an impact sourcing model. And what impact sourcing is is purposefully and deliberately hiring from disadvantaged groups. It's not charity, because those people in our examples have been super high performing people and have been the rocket fuel that have that have fueled our growth, but purposefully hiring those people. And for us today, 75% of our total employee base, including leadership, were hired via that mechanism 10 years ago. So for us, esg isn't a tick box exercise.
Speaker 2:We recognize that it's become increasingly important for some organizations, but for us it's at the very core of what we do. We are an impact sourcing organization where most people came via that model and my view, as I'm getting on a bit after 30 years, is one of the people that we hire by CareerBox will eventually become the senior. That's the kind of vision that we have. All we have to do is give them the tools and the skills and enable them to grow. So for us it's really important. Outside of CCI, almost all of the markets we're in are de facto developing countries and therefore have high levels and chronic levels of unemployment. Therefore, high levels of previously disadvantaged, large numbers of previously disadvantaged people. So Africa is, if you're interested in impact sourcing in ESG, is the first place you should be looking.
Speaker 1:Okay, that sounds absolutely fantastic, Thank you. You also mentioned there you're expanding into other areas of the geographies outside of just South Africa, particularly Kenya, ethiopia, rwanda, and what's your view on those becoming the next big CX delivery spaces?
Speaker 2:So we're certain that the next big thing is East Africa and at the heart of that is Kenya. We've got 4,000 people in Kenya today. We started in Kenya in 2016, beginning of 2017, and even with the COVID issue that came a couple of years ago, we're at 4,000 FTEs and we'll double that over the next 24 months, something like that. So there are all of the characteristics and attributes that South Africa has that also can have in Kenya. I think there's a debate to be had, but my view is it's equal to or better than that you can get in South Africa. So there are levels of education at slightly higher. As an example, almost 100% of our employees in Kenya are university graduates from accredited universities and quite a lot of those graduates are in science, technology, engineering and math.
Speaker 2:So we think that East Africa is definitely the next big thing, and I think that Nairobi stopped Kenya first and then some of these other countries next. So we're in Rwanda. We're servicing bilingual French and English in Rwanda. Very highly educated workforce again 100% graduates and there's a very similar situation in Ethiopia. Almost no attrition in these countries, sort of 1% per month attrition in Kenya, which is, in our mind, developed, less than 1% a month attrition in these other markets and very bright people who can hit the ground running and on that, ghana. So we think that the West African market is beginning to open up, but that's probably two years away from getting to any critical scale. And over time other countries in Africa are becoming more and more interesting as they, as they recognize, I suppose, that the capability to create large numbers of jobs for young people quite quickly. But to answer your question directly, kenya is next and then the rest of East Africa soon after that.
Speaker 1:Okay, what, thinking more globally and with the UK brands as well? What trends are you seeing overall in the customer experience and contact space? Now we've got growth trends or we've got the kind of trends what are you seeing? What's your sense of the month of space?
Speaker 2:So we think that for sure, transactional high volume activities are disappearing rapidly, and that's not just the kind of recent generative chat GPT conversation, that's kind of bigger picture and that's happening in all of our markets US, uk and in Australia. And that's exposing what I said earlier in the call that the things that are left and then therefore just necessarily more complicated and emotional because they can't be automated. So I think that's number one and that's driving organizations to want to focus their energies more on those interactions to drive outcomes, whatever those outcomes are. And what we believe, and certainly our customers believe is, is that because interactions with customers are becoming less frequent, they really have to count. Yeah, so yes, you need labor arbitrage and cost saving, but it has to be fantastic at the same time. So I think that's kind of one trend that we're definitely seeing. We're seeing another trend, which is a hangover from COVID, which is about risk and that's geographic risk. So many organizations and this is probably more true for the US than the UK, but companies have had an over indexation in one country over another and that's provided a high degree of risk. So people want to sort of de concentrate their portfolio across other markets.
Speaker 2:You mentioned it earlier that ESG, or impact sourcing, is definitely important. I think if you just spoke to me five years ago I would speak. One in 10 interactions with a prospective customer would include a conversation about it. And now all of them include a conversation and for some of them it's the most important decision that they make when they're when they're buying. I think that's an important trend, for sure. I think that first time, outsourcing so companies that have never outsourced or offshore before going from an in house badged employed workforce straight from that to offshore so we're seeing that a lot. We're seeing that a heck of a lot. We're seeing that in the UK and we see them in the UK with complicated customers in insurance, financial services, those sorts of markets, and again that plays into the conversation around. You know people can do complicated and emotional Africa at a lot of costs and costs. Cost is always important.
Speaker 1:As you touched on there, we're seeing a big increase in first time outsourcers. How are they responding to Africa as a destination? I think really well.
Speaker 2:I think from somebody selling services if they've never outsourced or offshore before, it's an easier conversation than people that have got addicted to or used to traditional outsourcing and offshore markets, so that on the one hand, it's easier for us, but on the other hand, they take more convincing because, you know, the reason is that the reasons that the first time outsourcing is because the struggling to be able to continue to deliver services on shore is very difficult to hire people, it's very difficult to retain people, so that's driving people off.
Speaker 2:Your people are not lowering the standards, so their expectation is is that they won't at least the same level of service that their customers would have had when they were on shore, if not better. I think that it's very interesting and we're seeing the same thing happening in the US. So we're seeing many, many, many first time and what they don't want to do is go into saturated markets. They don't want to know that there's a reason they didn't have offshore before, which is the options to offshore were unattractive, right. So now that they're looking at offshore and because they believe that the options are more attractive, yeah, and it's just a little hesitancy about shifting operations to Africa.
Speaker 1:Are you still picking any of that?
Speaker 2:No. So 10 years ago it was extremely difficult. There were very few outsources and there were very few case studies. I think now, certainly from a UK perspective, it is the go to offshore destination for contact centers. I think that next year, end of this year, will be the go to destination for US buyers as well. So so we're not having the education process we used to have, which is you know, this is Africa, this is South Africa, this is the history and the language and it's not a jungle kind of conversation. We're not having that. But for the first time outsources they're typically very, very thoughtful. They'll take a long, long time and do lots and lots of work in assessing the markets. They'll see lots and lots of people that go to lots of different countries. They'll speak to lots of our customers to understand what their experiences have been. So the first time ones are very, very thoughtful, and rightly so.
Speaker 1:And thinking more broadly with the economics. What impact do you see potential recessions having on the market space?
Speaker 2:So 30 years in the industry have taught me that it doesn't make any difference whether you're on an upcycle or a downcycle when you're in outsourcing, because we've got a proposition for that right. So in boom times people are trying to build out capacity so they can handle the sales volume and so on. In a downturn people are looking to reduce their costs. So we're seeing the recessionary environment will certainly be the threat of recession in developed economies as driving more volume in our direction. I think to our earlier conversation first time outsourcers to some extent are being driven to us because they just simply can't afford to do what they used to do, and also people that are very sophisticated by outsourced services are also looking to diversify their portfolio, sometimes because of costs. So we think that the recessionary environment is probably going to grow the industry and certainly going to grow the industry in Africa.
Speaker 1:Thinking back to Africa, are there any particular sectors that you think you and Africa are a better place to handle?
Speaker 2:I think not necessarily sectors, but I do think they work within an individual sector. The more complex the stuff that requires a white glove service where it's really important what the outcome is. So we're working, as an example, we're working with super premium retailers. Average order values are in the many thousands of pounds. We're working with travel companies. We work with a cruise liner, as an example, where the average order value is $35,000, average order value. So I think those things that are more premium, a more premium could be.
Speaker 2:If you're a pay TV business and you're being attacked by Netflix, the most important thing you have is retention. So those kind of areas. We've been very successful in retail in general, insurance, financial services, a little bit of banking in Telco, in pay TV, and we've been really, really successful in travel post COVID. We've gone from almost zero post COVID to about 30% of our businesses is travel and that's airlines and again it plays into if you need to contact the airline, it's really bad. So that requires somebody that's got that high EQ to be able to manage and deal with that.
Speaker 1:And where does it go wrong? What are the key learnings that clients listening might want to pick up? Where does it go wrong?
Speaker 2:The key learnings are that South Africa in particular is really hot right now and I think there are a number of market entrants into the market in South Africa who are probably going to misstep because you have to be in tune with the local culture. So if you're a big American outsourcer and you've got 50,000 people in the Philippines, don't think that you can bring your management philosophy and your processes to South Africa or to Kenya and it will work because it won't work. So that's the key from our perspective that each country, each local, even each city, in fact, has got a slightly different culture, and I think if you're looking to work with an outsourcer in Africa, understand that they understand that the market they're operating in. I think you should also look for authenticity in ESG or impact sourcing.
Speaker 2:There's lots of organizations that are somewhat cynical and are checking the box, whereas you need to look for some more depth. But the key is you need to speak to customers, people that are using the services. I'm bound to say the things that I say. Don't ask me. Ask my customers, either with permission or without, because then you'll get it. You know what's at all, so that will be my recommendation and thank you more personally now.
Speaker 1:How did you get started being in the industry?
Speaker 2:So I was a graduate trainee 30 years ago, working for a company called Gus Home Shopping, which you may or may not remember, keith, it was a big company and it doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 2:And it was a big retail company that had gigantic retail peaks but a big core center that remained empty for half the year. So what they did in the gosh in the 90s they decided to set up this thing called outsourcing. And I was a young graduate trainee and I was just just available. So I got involved in outsourcing at the very, very beginning and then I was hooked, so variously operational, mostly commercial roles, quite a few sales roles, and then I then was an outsourcer, thinking that clients made terrible decisions. So I decided to become a client for a while to understand why they made terrible decisions. So I went to work for Vodafone for seven years. I was the head of outsourcing at Vodafone for a while and then I realized that clients don't make terrible decisions, Outsources do. So I learned it from both sides. So I've very, I've oscillated between client and vendor side, but I've been on the vendor side now and in Africa for 10 years.
Speaker 1:You would have worked with and for a lot of big people over your career. What, or who, have been the biggest influences on your life in Korea?
Speaker 2:So I worked for a guy called Dave Rumble, who I think you'll know who taught me almost everything that I know. I worked for him at Vodafone. I learned a heck of a lot, so I think Dave was probably the one that I would single out as being having the biggest influence on my career overall.
Speaker 1:Amazing. So, as you know, we always like to ask our guests to reflect and help those come up through the industry today so you could go back to being 25 again. What advice would you give to young self?
Speaker 2:When I was 25, I had no idea that I was going to have a really successful career working in contact centers, and if I could have told myself then that be less stressed about it. It's going to be OK. And this industry is going because, if you think about it, Kee 25 years ago and it's the same happening today call centers were all going to be over next week as everything was going to be automated and so on. So if I had gone back to it, don't worry, it's going to continue to grow. You're going to be successful and you're going to have a huge career that's going to take you all over the world, meeting interesting people and being able to do interesting things and actually having a positive influence on people's lives, so that when you get old, like I am, you'll go back on your career and be quite proud of it Incredible.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic to hear and great advice. So how do you unwind and escape from it all? Tell us a few things. We wouldn't know about you from looking at your LinkedIn profile.
Speaker 2:So travel, even though I travel 27 weeks a year on business, the other 20 odd weeks I like to travel and get around. It's a big world. I'd like to see more of it. I've got two teenage children, so they're going to be pretty busy. Yeah, so that travel and the kids is what I do outside of contact centres.
Speaker 1:Amazing, martin. It's been fascinating having you with us today. Thank you for sharing such great insights. I hope our listeners found it as insightful as I have. You can find out lots more about the customer experience foundation at cxfoorg and we hope you can join us next time on CXDallaries. Thanks,