Call centres are digital dinosaurs

IT’S difficult to feel sympathy for the striking workers at the national emergency 10111 call centre. Their concerns appear very real – a four-year wait for recommended pay hikes apparently agreed to during erstwhile national police commissioner Rhiah Phiyega’s tenure to be implemented – but their modus operandi?

It beggars belief that people can go to work – a job that is predicated on helping others in their time of greatest need – and blithely sit by while phones ring with urgent pleas for assistance going unanswered to prove a point.

Unfortunately, whether they like it or not, that’s how most of us see the strike this week – and in particular their interpretation of their rights.

The other reality they seem heroically unaware of is that many people hold the 10111 service in total contempt – even when it is allegedly working at full capacity. There are many stories of phones that ring unanswered as the innocent face imminent threat to their lives.

In many ways, the 10111 operators are much like the metered taxi industry, dinosaurs waiting to be rendered extinct by a digital disruptor that puts the power back in the hands of those that should have it.

Uber did it for the metered taxi industry, revitalising the concept of public transport, sidelining operators and showing that people are willing to use taxis – if they can control the service they receive.

Ironically, the Namola app could do much the same thing, letting users access the same resources; the SAPS, traffic cops, fire brigade and ambulances efficiently and, most importantly, urgently by using technology to marry supply with demand. The app is in soft launch phase but like the luddites of yore, the 10111 operators might have given its developers the greatest marketing gift yet.