DIGICEL announced yesterday that it has hired and trained some 200 agents over the last several months for its Customer Care Call Centre.

An extensive screening and training process — that began during the first quarter at a job fair at the University of the West Indies — has just been completed, the telecoms company said.

It’s part of a wider customer service improvement strategy that has seen the firm also invest about $200 million in an Avaya Contact Centre Solution, a fully integrated customer contact management system that incorporates forecasting, scheduling and quality monitoring with 100 per cent voice recording of agent to customer interaction.

According to Digicel’s newly appointed customer care director, Dwayne Tulloch, the new system has allowed the company to analyse customer query trends and resolve them in a more timely manner.

“We continue to see a significant uptake in our data packages and our data-enabled handsets as more and more customers are becoming tech-smart. And with this trend we find that customers require information on either recommendations on the best data plan that suits their lifestyle, how to download an application to their phones or how they can truly maximise the functions and capabilities of their data devices,” Tulloch said.

“So with all of this, inbound calls to our Customer Care Centre have increased significantly over the past year,” he added.

Digicel said it is also investing in a number of other training initiatives such as a company-wide customer service training programme for all its employees as well as the roll-out out of a ‘Set Up Smart’ programme across its dealer channel which includes training the staff to be able to provide customers with a wholesome customer experience. For example, when a customer purchases a handset, dealer store agents will fully activate the device and transfer all their critical data such as applications, contacts and social network accounts, the company said.