Equity launches high-tech contact centre in Kampala

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | As one of the strategies to further improve customer experience and deliver services to its customers conveniently, Equity bank has launched a high-tech contact centre. The new Contact Centre will allow the Bank to deliver improved support conveniently to the nearly 1.6 million customers 24/7.

Customers will be able to interact with highly trained customer relationship officers using state-of-the-art technology to document, categorise and resolve their issues.

The contact center has a capacity to accommodate 70 customer relationship officers and shall handle all customer queries, and complaints in the 5 languages widely spoken across Uganda. The languages are English, Luganda, Runyakitara, Luo, and Swahili which were carefully selected to match the Bank’s branch footprint.

The implementation of the new Contact Centre follows Equity’s strategic objective to become a massive retail bank that is highly digitized. In recent years, the bank has grown its customer base from 800,000 in 2019 to nearly 1.6 million customers currently making it the fastest growing financial institution in the country. The new contact centre fits well into the bank’s digital agenda by providing the capabilities to serve customers conveniently online through voice and social media channels.

“We have grown in leaps and bounds and are now working to revolutionise our customer’s experience by creating a culture of obsession with customer service starting with onboarding through to when our customers interact with us. We are building a culture of superior service to address all customer experience pain points, ensure system accessibility, availability, and stability, through digitized operations,’ said the Managing Director Samuel Kirubi.

‘We have built standardized processes and procedures to create synergies that have similar experience for customers and staff, as well as deliver a true Equity brand experience driven by the ONE EQUITY principle,’ Kirubi added

Customers who have previously been affected by the long queues in branches can now reach the bank through the contact centre virtually or via phone call instead of visiting branches.

“At Equity, it is important that exceptional service accompanies our product offering. We have therefore intentionally made significant investments in technology specially designed with the customer in mind. However, technology alone is not enough to meet the needs of our customers. We have combined it with a team of highly trained professionals who have extensive knowledge and are committed to exceptional service aligned to best practices within the banking industry,” Kirubi added.

The contact centre shall complement other business transformation initiatives the bank is focusing on, to enhance its digital banking capabilities and product offering.

In addition to handling customer complaints and queries, the new Contact Centre shall also support Equiduuka agents and merchants.

“We salute Equity Bank for launching this initiative that we believe will be an important step in extending the boundaries of banking and bridging the financial inclusion gap by connecting customers to key financial service,” said Wilbrod Owor, Executive Director of Uganda Bankers Association who attended the customer care centre launch.