It has been confirmed by S A Tourism that it is using an Australian call centre to update the National Tourism Product Database.
In a call to William Price, Global Head of e-Marketing at S A Tourism, he spoke openly and honestly about the problems the tourism marketing company had in finding a South African company that could accurately verify the contact details of tourism products in South Africa. S A Tourism wants to add the details of all tourism products onto its new website, which it is launching at Indaba in May.
It then appointed Yodel, a call centre company started by South Africans in Australia and New Zealand, who are now setting up a branch office in South Africa. The call centre company is more efficient and less expensive in offering its service than the South African call centres it had used previously, Price says.
Price had e-mailed “tourism product partners” last month, to state that “South African Tourism and Google have partnered to do a complete clean-up of the National Tourism Product Database.” The letter did warn one to not “be alarmed by the Aussie accent when you get the phone call.”
Since the letter was sent, product owners have received numerous calls from persons with heavy American and other accents (none from Australia though), claiming to be from South African Tourism in Randburg. As they struggle badly with some brand names ‘ e.g. ‘Whale Cottage Franschhoek” it is immediately clear that they are not from this country. Every caller that was asked in which country the call centre was based, put down the phone without answering. The most recent caller was honest enough to say that it is based in the Philippines!
Price also explained in the call made to him (two e-mails were sent to and a telephonic message left for him, without any response) yesterday that his organisation is looking to assist small product owners who do not have a website. In conjunction with Google, such product owners will be given a free website and domain for three months, and S A Tourism has set aside a budget of R 500 000 for this.
Vodacom is also looking to offer new product owners connectivity services.
It will be interesting to see what level of success the call centre will have, as the initial reaction one has to someone claiming to call from “S A Tourism in Randburg” with a heavy non-South African accent is one of disbelief. Even harder is being able to understand the strongly-accented call centre staff, something one normally has a problem with if the calls come from local call centres!
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