Helping reduce unemployment 1 community at a time: askOsca.com and DEDAT

askOsca started out as a coaching platform in 2012 but never really made headway in the market.

The acronym, askOsca, stands for ask the Online, Sales, Coaching, Application. It was created to support call centre agents online when there is no support around or to further develop their skills in the call centre industry.

The idea behind the business was always to help call centre agents realise that they could make a career in this industry, just as their CEO did, over 20 years ago.

When that didn’t take off, I turned it into a BPO, the industry where I gained most of my experience, so that was the industry I could therefore give the most back to call centre agents who aspired to achieve more than what they were currently achieving.

In 24 June, 2013, we took our first calls at 16 Bree Street, Cape Town, with 4 agents and myself, calling into the USA market, on behalf of a client, who was in the B2B Marketing Industry.

Ever since that day, we grew from strength to strength, not without its challenges, but we persevered.

After a year in the CBD, commercial rent was expensive. My wife and I decided to move the business to our community, Grassy Park. We turned our 4 bedroom home, in 4th Avenue Grassy Park, into an Open Plan Call Centre.

We started 3 more divisions, askOscaTalent, askOscaAcademy and askOscaSocialMediaMarketing.

In our Academy we trained inexperienced, unemployed and non-matriculants in our community, to become good call centre agents with the plan to employ them in either our call centre or find them jobs via askOscaTalent, at other call centres in Cape Town.

Over the years, our client base has been spread over 90% international clients and 10% local clients. Today, we do work for 100% International clientele in the B2B Marketing Industry only, on behalf of 100s of blue chip tech companies via B2B Advertising agencies in the UK, Germany and America.

We grew from 4 agents to 105 across two properties in Grassy Park. Our plan was to take the BPO to the community, saving them time and money in their travels to other big BPOs in either the CBD or Claremont or other bigger commercial cities.

This meant that our call centre agent, spent more time with their families and their disposable salary on a market related call centre entry level salary, was higher than that of a call centre agent in the CBD.

We have two sites, one in 4th Avenue and one in 3rd Avenue Grassy Park, each with a capacity to host 60 call centre agents, as well as a training facility for a classroom size of 20 people.

Costs are always on the increase and a steady cash flow is always a concern when running your own business, so in 2021, when I heard about DEDAT and the EPWP, I jumped at the chance to help grow the employment rate in Grassy Park and surrounding areas. I believe that if we want to help reduce the unemployment rate in SA, we have to start by taking it one community at a time.

The stipend helped me steady my cash flow, create more opportunities for my staff and create more jobs for youth in my community.

We’ve since taken on 100 learners, of which 20 are permanent today and 36 are still in the business, in the process of completing their NQF Level 3 contact centre qualification

Of the 20 who are permanent, 10 are in either Leadership or Business Support roles after being promoted. Their average tenure is 2-3 years.

Those who have left, have either left because I did not have any further opportunities for them but have since joined other BPOs and are making a success of themselves.

This programme has helped our youth, since 2021, become employable, forever, in the Contact Centre Industry.