SOUTH AFRICA CALL CENTER SOLUTIONS:

Exceptional Service, Affordable Prices

Ever considered South Africa as a call center destination? Most companies haven’t, and that’s part of why South Africa is still such an affordable and accessible destination for call centers. South Africa’s highly skilled workforce offers quality and accessibility alongside scalability and affordable prices—a combination that’s tough to find in many other parts of the world. Our Global Response team in South Africa is experienced and ready to bring you the best service for all of your outsourcing needs.

Why choose a South Africa call center?

Whether you need large or small outsourcing operations, our South African call center team at Global Response is here to get you results. Like our other outsourcing locations, our South African team offers the exceptional service and high-touch engagement that Global Response is known for. But there’s more that makes working with South Africa special:

Cultural alignment.

South Africa is quite Westernized, making it strongly aligned with US & UK cultures. Our agents’ accents are very neutral, especially compared to other affordable outsourcing destinations, so your customers won’t have any trouble understanding or being understood by our agents, both culturally and linguistically.

Cost-effective solutions.

South African call centers can be as much as 25% cheaper than common nearshoring locations, while still offering accessibility and collaboration. For example, our South African call center is located in Johannesburg, which offers more cost-effective labor options compared to other cities like Cape Town or Durban (typically $1-$2 cheaper per hour).

Highly skilled labor.

South Africa is also home to a highly skilled and large workforce. Much of this is due to the fact that Cape Town is home to some of the continent’s top universities, drawing young talent to the area and developing it for the workforce. This also results in flexible and ample outsourcing options in South Africa, as many agents have backgrounds in other fields, such as law, bookkeeping, and so on.

Effective customer service and engagement.

South African culture is known for being extremely respectful and empathetic, allowing you to more easily create a call center culture that prioritizes and serves customer needs. For industries that can really benefit from a compassionate human touch—think healthcare, insurance, legal and e-commerce, among others—a South African call center offers a culture and environment that allows the customer to feel cared for and understood.

About Global Response’s South African Call Center Offshoring

Our South African call center is designed to create effective, effortless collaboration, solutions and stability, to provide you with the outsourcing you need, at the quality you deserve. Whether you’re looking for a full-service contact center, an overflow center for busy seasons, or BPO outsourcing for another business process, our South Africa center can help support your goals.

We have headquartered our call center in Johannesburg, a dynamic location that offers increased affordability and accessibility. Johannesburg offers direct flights to and from the US and the UK, enabling international clients to more easily work with and visit our team and call center. In addition, Johannesburg is also a major business hub and economic powerhouse of South Africa, allowing for increased skilled labor and stability.

Despite being home to a large skilled workforce, Johannesburg struggles with high unemployment rates, which allows our team to hire some of the best talent available and pay them well—even while experiencing low attrition rates and affordable labor. Due to cheaper property prices and less BPO competition, Johannesburg is more cost-effective than other locations in South Africa and can be as much as 25% cheaper than nearshoring locations.

What’s more: South Africa also boasts excellent connectivity and infrastructure, ensuring your call center will stay up and running consistently. Not only is the African AWS server hub located in South Africa—meaning insanely fast speeds and infrastructure for clients using AWS—but it’s also relatively unaffected by major storms, earthquakes and other natural disasters, providing strong year-round stability.

South Africa call center services

Our South African call center offers a variety of services to help you achieve your goals. For example, we offer:

Customer Service / Care

Give your customers unbeatable service for inbound calls, emails, complaints, concerns and more.

Technical Support

Make sure your customer’s technical needs are met consistently, whether it’s troubleshooting or diagnostics, step-by-step walkthroughs to bug fixes.

Multichannel / Omnichannel Support

Today’s customers need to be able to reach you on any channel. Give your customers the flexibility and support they need, with a seamless experience that’ll make a great impression.

Business Process Outsourcing

Transform your company’s productivity, operational costs, and customer satisfaction with support for a variety of business processes. You focus on your core business, we handle the rest.

Quality Assurance

Success isn’t a surprise for our teams—it’s a strategy. We’re here with the QA processes and metrics you need to excel at every customer touchpoint, drive engagement, and improve customer satisfaction.

Sales

Let us generate leads and sales for your brand while delivering a premium customer experience.

Industries we serve

Is outsourcing to South Africa right for your business? Our South African call centers have experience with a wide variety of industries, including:

Retail & Ecommerce

Travel & Hospitality

Healthcare

Banking & Financial

Education

How To Choose The Right South Africa Call Center

Location is a key priority when choosing the right call center. However, location shouldn’t be your only priority. When you’re looking for a call center partner, look out for:

Flexibility and scalability

An ideal call center partner should offer both flexibility for short-term needs and scalability for a long-term partnership. If you need to scale up for a busier season or scale back for slow periods, the right call center should make it easy to do so, allowing you to effectively staff your team without paying for overstaffing.

Technology and infrastructure

Modern technology and strong infrastructure ensure your call center is running efficiently and consistently. South Africa has excellent connectivity and infrastructure, as well as government support to ensure that both stay consistent in the long run.

Demonstrable results

Any call center worth their salt should be able to demonstrate proven results from other clients in a similar industry or position to yours. This could be in the form of case studies, testimonials, past client reviews, a portfolio or other clear examples of results.

Experience and expertise

Similarly, you want to find a call center that has adequate experience both within CX and customer service generally, as well as within your industry. A call center should be able to provide examples of clients within your industry, as well as demonstrated results to show their expertise.

Communication

Often overlooked, ensuring your call center offers great communication practices—both internally, with you as the client, and externally, with your customers—is essential. Without great communication, you can miss out on productivity, efficiency, and effective results.

How do South Africa call centers compare?

	MEXICO	US	PUERTO RICO	INDIA	TUNISIA	SOUTH AFRICA
Market Size	Large labor market makes scaling and flexible solutions easy	Subject to ebbs and flows of US labor market and demands	Smaller labor market due to geographic size can limit scalability and flexibility	Large labor market makes it possible to scale quickly, but with some quality issues	Large labor market makes scaling easy and cost-effective	Large population with diverse and skilled workforce
Infrastructure and technology	Strong infrastructure and technology caters to a US market	Infrastructure and technology is on par for US norms	Infrastructure may be less sophisticated or consistent compared to other nearshoring locations	Infrastructure is often less sophisticated or consistent compared to other outsourcing locations	Cultural focus on technology and innovation supports infrastructure and modern tech	Infrastructure is one of the strongest in Africa, with excellent connectivity and low impact from storms or natural disasters
Cultural or Linguistic Compatibility	Proximity to the US means cultural or linguistic barriers rarely exist	Cultural or linguistic issues are rarely problems	Proximity to the US means cultural or linguistic barriers rarely exist	Cultural and linguistic barriers are common issues, especially in customer-facing roles	Proximity to Europe heightens familiarity with Western cultures and languages	Extremely Westernized culture allows for high cultural and linguistic overlap
Taxes and Business	Tax incentives and exchanges rates in Mexico are favorable for US businesses	US-based outsourcing offers familiar tax and legal systems, but at a premium price	As a US territory, taxes and legal systems don’t offer any unique benefits, and have additional complications since Puerto Rico is not an official state.	No specific tax benefits or legal incentives	No specific tax benefits or legal incentives, though proximity to Europe increases familiarity with Western business models	Creating jobs in Africa can contribute to US-based businesses’ ESG scores
Multilingual Availability	Multilingual agents are very common, typically fluent in Spanish and English	Multilingual or bilingual agents are rarer and more expensive	Multilingual agents are very common, typically fluent in Spanish and English	Many multilingual agents, but may not be fluent in relevant languages	Multilingual agents often speak French and English	Many agents are multilingual, with French and Portuguese being common
Proximity	Geographic proximity makes accessibility, collaboration and communication easy	Nearby call centers invite accessibility and collaboration	Geographic proximity makes accessibility, collaboration and communication easy	Geographic distance creates barriers to accessibility and collaboration	Proximity to Europe makes call centers more accessible for clients	Direct flights from US and Europe make visiting accessible
Cost & Quality	Very cost-effective option with a good balance of affordability and quality	High service quality, but more expensive services	Cost-effective option with a good balance of affordability and quality	Very affordable services, but often with a lower service quality	Very affordable services with a high service quality	Very cost-effective, up to 25% cheaper than nearshore locations

South Africa Call Center FAQs

Where is the best place in South Africa to outsource?

South Africa has three major outsourcing locations: Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Johannesburg is a great choice, as it’s home to the largest workforce, strong infrastructure and an existing business and financial hub. However, Cape Town is another good option, as its many top universities ensure that it continues to attract a young, educated workforce. Durban is a hub for transportation and logistics within South Africa, so it’s a good option for outsourcing within those industries.

What is the biggest advantage of outsourcing to South Africa?

South Africa offers cost-effective outsourcing alongside scalability and quality, a combination that can be difficult to find. More accessible than most offshoring locations, but more affordable than onshore or nearshore locations, South Africa offers a skilled and Westernized market that provides high-quality service, innovation and collaboration at a fraction of the cost.

Are call centers in South Africa or the Philippines better?

While the Philippines are often said to be “the call center capital of the world,” South Africa is growing in popularity for call centers due its highly skilled workforce, stable infrastructure and ample scalability.

Does South Africa have good infrastructure for outsourcing?

South Africa has excellent infrastructure for outsourcing. With excellent connectivity and strong government backing, the infrastructure for call centers is just as strong as nearshore or onshore locations. South Africa is also the African AWS server hub, so companies working off of AWS will have access to the fastest infrastructure and speeds.

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