Airtel services stall as customer care workers down their tools

By Macharia Kamau and Fredrick Obura

Mobile operator Airtel Kenya suffered poor customer services provision after employees of Spanco Raps – the firm outsourced by the mobile operator to handle its customer care services  – downed their tools.

The employees Tuesday staged a sit-in at Spanco’s Mombasa Road office, paralysing Airtel’s entire customer care department, and leaving the firm’s subscribers stranded. The employees said they would not resume work until the company and the operator addressed their grievances.

These include improving the working conditions at Spanco Raps and re-looking at the outsourcing move that Airtel made last year.

Speaking on behalf of the 300 employees, Douglas Omuga said Spanco has to improve employees’ salary and restore pension benefits and paid leave before they resume working.

 “The management is going against the contract that includes benefits like pension contribution and paid leave that we do not enjoy... they pay permanent employees gross salary of Sh15, 500 and dictate that we should live within a five kilometre radius from the office,” he said.

“Houses within the five Kilometer radius equals our monthly income,. These are issues we want to be addressed before we get back to work,” he said.

The protest affected Airtel Kenya’s outbound and inbound calls, and made it difficult for both local and international customers to make or receive queries on the network.

The operator outsourced its customer care department to Indian business process outsourcing company Spanco Raps in February last year. The team, which is now employed by Spanco, is however complaining of near impossible working conditions at the outsourcing firm.

Breach of agreement

They are also accusing Airtel of failure to honour an agreement it made with them prior to the transfer employees to Spanco last year.

Airtel transferred its entire customer care team to Spanco – who would become their employer – but under similar terms as when they were under Airtel. Spanco was to pay the employees same salaries as they were paid in Airtel, as well as give them benefits they enjoyed. The terms of their employment would not be reviewed until a two year period elapsed.

Agreements signed between the employees and Airtel had a ‘come back’ clause that gave them a two year window to move back to Airtel should they be dissatisfied with their employment at Spanco.

But the employees now accuse their current employer Spanco of “impossible working conditions” that has resulted in a high employee turnover. The firm is also accused of failing to recruit new officials to replace those that have left.

Thus the team that was made up of about 500 officials in February last year has shrunk to under 300, a team that is said to be overworked resulting in poor quality customer service to Airtel subscribers.

Airtel has also refused to honour its end of the deal to let employees unhappy at Spanco back into the firm, since the new lean model adopted does not have room for customer care.

Two weeks ago, a segment of the employees contracted law firm Rachier and Amollo Advocates to act on their behalf in a suit against Airtel and Spanco. The employees have the move to Spanco as an unlawful dismissal by Airtel and are seeking damages.

Not beneficial

“It is our clients’ contention that their transitioning to Spanco has never benefitted them as you had earlier intimated. They have suffered loss of a number of benefits they were entitled to while under your employment. All these have happened within the window period of two years,” said the letter by Rachier and Amollo to management of Airtel, and copied to Spanco.

 “Despite your assurance before moving our clients to Spanco, that they would be free to return if dissatisfied within two years, their pleas to come have been met with great hostility; your response being that their jobs are no longer available. This amounts to redundancy for which they are entitled to recover severance pay.”

 Numerous queries made by The Standard to Airtel over the issue have gone unanswered. An Airtel official however said there has been a general feeling within Airtel’s management that Spanco has not been delivering to expected levels.

Airtel has been pursuing a lean model to its operations in Kenya and has been outsourcing what it terms as non-core business over the last two years. Outsourced functions include customer care and network management.

The outsourcing model was supposed to see the firm retain a small workforce expected to reduce overheads and increase the efficiency as it eyes profitability.