Spirits are high at Sanlam and Fusion Outsourcing whose contact centre teams have each collected more than a fistful of awards at this year’s Motown-themed Western Cape Contact Centre Awards banquet held at the CTICC on Saturday. The accolades place them asstrong contenders at the National Awards taking place in November. “The Awards are about honouring the best individuals and companies for their achievements in the South African Business Process Outsourcing & Offshoring (BPO&O) and Contact Centre Industry throughout the year and act as an important benchmark locally and internationally,” says Sipho Zungu, CEO of CallingtheCape. CallingtheCape, who hosted the Cape event along with Diamond sponsor Intelleca and MC Az Abrahams of Heart 104.9 fame, is a Section 21 company promoting the Western Cape as an investment destination for South Africa’s rapidly growing contact centres and BPO&O industry.

According to Awards auditor Leana du Plessis of Deloitte Consulting,the quality and number of entries continues to testify to the value theawards bring to the sector which currently employs over 25,000 people in over 1,300 contact centres. Sanlam, which has come out tops for the fourth year running, and Fusion Outsourcing will go on to compete in the national awards hosted by Business Process enabling South Africa (BPeSA), the national coordinating body in conjunction with ContactinGauteng (CiG). They will be joined by Customer Service Agent of the Year Taygan Charles of Emmanuels, which has again won Best Outsourced HR Service Provider. Shell SA’s newly opened global Customer Service Super Centre in Cape Town, which has won the vendor sub-category for Non-Technical Innovation of the Year, will join the fanfare, competing for the first time at the Nationals. Other Western Cape finalists joining the winners as competitors in the National Awards include 3iSolutions for the category Technical Innovation of the Year and Contact Center Dynamics for Outsourced Trainer of the Year.

A host of prizes were handed over at the banquet – including weekends away, luggage, iPod Shuffles and shopping vouchers to the winners, and a range of other goodies for sporting individuals. Team Leaders from Outsourcing 360 and OTT Outsourcing were the lucky recipients of a Full Circle and Edexcel sponsored International BTEC Team Leader training course each to the value of R25,000 while Moegamad Adams of Teleperformance and Aicha Knaap of Shell won Best Dressed on the night.“Our gratitude goes to all who participated in the Awards – the contestants, their supporters, BPeSA, the judges, our guest speakers, and the eleven Western Cape Award sponsors including Intelleca, Garlands, Merchants, Fusion Outsourcing and Full Circle,” says Zungu.