CCI South Africa has opened its new Umlazi contact centre at Umlazi Mega City, marking the first contact centre opened in a township for the company.

Umlazi is the biggest township in KwaZulu-Natal, with nearly half a million residents. Because of the high costs of commuting to Durban’s commercial centre, Umhlanga, residents of the township are under-represented in the BPO industry. At present, 20% of CCI South Africa’s staff hail from Umlazi.

“As a company, we pride ourselves on putting our people at the centre of our business, and this is reflected in our tagline: Human Connections, Business Results,” says Peter Andrew, CEO of CCI South Africa. “We realised that many of our valued employees have a long and costly commute to work in our current offices in Umhlanga, so we started really thinking about how we could ease their burden and facilitate access to employment.

“The obvious solution was to open a contact centre in Umlazi. When the lease for our downtown Durban office ended, it made perfect sense to make a commitment to our employees with a contact centre much closer to their homes, in Umlazi.”

In early 2024, the company intends to open a new centre for its impact sourcing partner, CareerBox Africa, which offers highly driven young people from previously disadvantaged communities the opportunity to enter sustainable employment in CCI’s contact centres after completing a two-week work readiness programme facilitated by CareerBox.

“We have seen incredible demand for training at the CareerBox offices in Umhlanga, and we are delighted that we will be able to offer many more of the motivated and talented young people and women from Umlazi access to the BPO industry through our work readiness programmes,” says Lizelle Strydom, MD of CareerBox Africa.

The BPO industry offers individuals with varied educational backgrounds and qualifications an opportunity to enter the workforce. Anyone can succeed and thrive in an industry where the right attitude, good communication skills and an aptitude for working with people are highly valued. The industry, supported by the South African government, has ambitious goals in place to grow job creation by up to 500 000 cumulative new jobs by 2030. CCI South Africa currently employs 8 000 people and intends to grow to 20 000 positions.