The Companies Office of Jamaica (COJ) has established its own call and contact centre to address customer complaints about unanswered calls while improving overall service delivery.

During the Jamaica Observer Business Forum recently anti-money laundering manager at COJ Inger Hainsley-Bennett disclosed that the agency receives upwards of 7,000 calls per month, but the response rate is just half of that. To address this, the COJ has formed a dedicated contact centre unit under its customer service department.

At present, COJ has six persons employed at the contact centre, one of whom is the supervisor for the department; but aims to double the number of agents in the unit.

“By the end of this month we will have six new hires in that department. Not only will they be responding to operational issues, but they will also be guiding customers doing applications online,” Hainsley-Bennett said.

“We have gotten the additional persons approved for our structure and we have been granted additional call centre licences, additional equipment, etc. Aside from that, we will also be using technology,” she added.

The company is actively working through the process of training an artificial intelligence (AI) machine to answer frequently asked questions customers may have.

“We are bringing the extra human resources in to mop up that 50 per cent of calls from people who say they can’t get us. Of course, we are also introducing AI, so the intention is to improve overall efficiency in our customer service department,” she said.

Many organisations typically explore the option of outsourcing its contact centre services as a means of achieving their desired objective while cutting costs. However, Registrar of Companies and Acting Chief Executive Officer Shellie Leon stated that creating an in-house unit was deemed the best way to move forward for the COJ due to data privacy concerns.

“The Data Protection Act is now in effect and so we’ve always been advised that we need to be very careful about who we access to our information,” she said.

COJ is primarily responsibility for the registration of businesses and companies in Jamaica, and as such, handles tonnes of sensitive data on company directors, shareholders and companies’ financial performance.

Passed in 2020, the Data Protection Act provides guidelines on how personal data should be handled in physical or electronic form. Since taking effect on December 1, 2023, organisations across Jamaica have been making changes to how they manage personal data, including the collection, storage, utilisation, disclosure and disposal.

Leon says the COJ has been making steady progress in meeting the requirements under the Act.

In providing an update on the process, Leon said the agency has submitted an application as a data controller and conducted a gap analysis to assess its compliance with the Act. This analysis identified areas needing improvement, and COJ is now establishing a committee to address these gaps and ensure full operationalisation of data protection standards.

“We are conducting small audits to ensure compliance and embarking on a change management campaign to institutionalise data protection practices,” Leon explained. “We deal in information and data, so we need to get to a place where we live and breathe these standards.”

The COJ will soon go to tender for a local change management consultant. The consultant will be tasked with equipping employees to embrace not only change related to the Data Protection Act, but company-wide changes being made to create a leaner, more efficient government agency.