Cheryl Paarwater, Owner and Managing Director, Call Lab BPO

Everybody thinks they’re special — we’d like to think we actually are. We treat our people differently. We don’t see ourselves as a call center; we see ourselves as a business that delivers customer service, and our team is integral to that. We make sure our people don’t feel like numbers, and that they understand they’re the most important part of the operation.

That’s something that changes constantly, and we have to stay ahead of what our customers need. Part of that is listening closely and understanding what the data tells us. We’re focused on being part of our clients’ operations — not just a service provider or vendor, but a partner. That makes us an extension of their business, because the customer is at the center of everything they do. Being part of how they operate, and how they look after their own customers, is what makes what we deliver more tangible and more valuable.

It has to be our people — they’re our secret sauce. Every country has its own nuances, but here we have a particular strength in resilience and problem-solving. South Africa has a complex past, and it has produced a generation that has had to work hard to get where they want to be. That builds resilience and a genuine drive to succeed, and it translates directly into how our people deal with customers — putting themselves in the customer’s shoes, understanding the problem, and empathizing with them. That’s what clients want: for their customers to feel heard and understood. I’m hoping decisions won’t be made purely on cost, because we’re not the cheapest destination — but the quality of service is what sets South African talent apart. The key to success is always the same: listen to your customer.

Every difficult interaction builds new muscle and makes the next one easier, because the training is there. Our team is genuinely supportive of each other: when someone is dealing with a difficult customer, they’ll put the call on mute, vent for a moment with a colleague, then go back and handle it calmly. As an industry, we’ve allowed customers to believe they can say anything, however irate, without remembering there’s a person on the other end. That leaves the person handling the call with no choice but to stay calm — but there’s a line, and when a customer becomes abusive, our people have both the right and the training to end the call respectfully.

That’s a hard one — I’ve had a lot of good advice, so it’s difficult to pick just one. What I’ve learned over the years is that it’s better not to know everything before you start something, or you’d never start at all. There are risks I’ve taken that, in hindsight, I might not have taken if I’d known how risky they were — but I wouldn’t have learned those lessons, or ended up where I am. Sometimes it’s better not to know how wrong something could go.