MTN Denies Mass Sack Of Call Center Operators

Reports of the purported sack of thousands of customer care representatives at MTN Nigeria’s call centers have been described as incorrect by the company.

The customer care representatives reportedly lost their jobs following the transfer of MTN Nigeria’s Call Center Management to ISON BPO from CNSSL Contact Centre Limited on September 30.

It was learnt that the affected staff were those handling High Value Customers (Top-20) in premium segment for the telecoms firm in Lagos, Ilorin, Kaduna and Kano call centers.

Responding to the reports, MTN Executive, Amina Oyagbola, said; “The reports are incorrect. The second phase of a change-in-vendor process took place last week, offering interested workers the opportunity to join the new call centres owned and operated by the vendor; ISON BPO”.



“MTN signed an outsourcing contract with ISON BPO Limited in 2015 following a competitive bid process. Indeed MTN’s call centre operations were outsourced to independent third party agencies since 2008, as part of continued efforts to improve the efficiency and quality of customer service delivery in MTN. This is in line with global best practice for organisations in our industry”, Mrs. Oyagbola explained.

Speaking in the same vein, ISON Group CEO, Pravin Kumar said: “We have been managing MTN’s call centres since last year when the first phase of the transition was carried out, with the second phase taking place at this time.

“We were pleased to have emerged as the new partner to deliver cost-effective solutions, adopting state-of-the-art technology that supports world-class customer service.

“The drive for efficient customer service delivery without compromising on quality within prevailing economic realities comes with structural adjustments and we work to balance this with the need to ensure the sustainability of our operations”.

“We have continued to engage with those who are interested in taking up the opportunity to work with ISON under agreed terms”, Kumar said.