Merchants, South Africa’s longest standing and largest contact centre partner, has again won multiple awards at the 2015 BPeSA Annual Contact Centre and BPO Awards. The awards, which serve as a platform to recognise and celebrate outstanding contributions, achievements and best practice in the industry were announced at a gala event on Saturday at Grand West Casino in Cape Town.
Covering both individual and industry categories, the BPeSA awards provides a credible platform where talent and innovation are showcased. Merchants were represented by finalists across both individual and industry categories.
Ashveer Govind, team leader at Merchants, was named the Best Customer Service Agent of the Year. This award is given to an agent who continuously exceeds their target and is performing above average compared to the rest of the agents in the company. When Govind joined the customer service industry fresh out of matric, he did not foresee that it would turn into a career. Now, six years down the line, he is the team leader in one of with the Merchants contact centres and continues to drive excellent customer service, enabling the contact centre to expand its customer base and leaving the person on the other end of the phone with a smile.
Mithum Singh, GM for Operational Support at Merchants, received the Best Support Workforce Planning Professional award. This award is given to the workforce planning professional who provides outstanding support to the contact centre and/or business processing centre. Singh fulfils the roles of manager, expert and advisor around workforce management at Merchants. His focus is on identifying innovative solutions to practical operational problems and managing these solutions through to final implementation.
Merchants won the Skills Development Award for its Western Cape operations, testimony to the great work the company has done through its internal skills development initiatives. “As an organisation we believe that we have an opportunity to be architects of change. Merchants definitely recognises that we have a broader responsibility to strengthen the society of which we are part.
“By investing in and uplifting the communities we engage with, we build the abilities of those communities by equipping individuals with the knowledge and skills to increase their opportunities and quality of life,” says Jennifer Algie, People Director at Merchants.
“Merchants is also committed to afford all its employees an opportunity to develop within their current roles, creating the potential for a varied, engaging and sustainable career for themselves and their families. We do what we do because it allows us to contribute towards and efficient and highly skilled workforce that is made of exceptional people, who will, in turn, invest in others.”
