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About Us
Better Experiences
“People matter” is a bigger thought than “Our People and Customers First”. What we believe dictates our behavior, so if you believe that people matter, you will put your people and customers first. People Matter is what we believe as an organisation. It’s
not a marketing campaign.
Remember, people don’t buy WHAT you do. They buy WHY you do it. So out in the market place, we will talk about what we do so that people know if they need us and understand how to categories us in the workplace. But they will partner with us because of our beliefs.
A belief creates relevance and meaning. It inspires the products, services, marketing and culture the company has. When the company has the same belief as people, they immediately identify and align with its brand. It becomes possible for the company to connect with and inspire people.
A simpler belief “people matter” is something we aspire to live by, it helps us hold ourselves accountable for our actions in business AND in our personal lives. It’s why we come to work everyday. We believe people matter, and so we will naturally put our people and customers first. But people matter is a bigger idea. It includes people outside of our organisation. It includes our client and their customers. It includes the communities we work and live in… and serve. We believe People Matter. That is our purpose. That is our reason to believe.
People Matter
Our success is built on our people and we’re proud that we’ve helped change the lives of thousands of people through job creation and sustainable career growth. We recruit people with a passion for great service and a drive to succeed.
Our facilities are innovative and set the world standard for clever design, to ensure our people are comfortable and happy. We care about our people and we understand that customer care environments can be stressful, which is why we have break rooms, noise cancelling initiatives and in-depth training and mentoring to grow our people to be the best in the business.
We’ve grown our customer service capabilities from simple inbound voice to multi-channel customer journeys that include outbound calling to drive sales, and technical client service through our service desk. Our BPO (business process outsourcing) is the smart way to ensure technology helps put certain tasks on autopilot while our people focus on their talent and energy on ensuring the client has the right experiences so that you can focus on your core offering.
A promise of excellence
We listen. To understand your needs, and to deliver on our high-quality service standards, we treat your business as if it was our own. Customer listening, communication and quality management come standard with every engagement you have with our team, and we provide workforce management, quality and management information to help you make better business decisions.
History And Milestones
Merchants was born in 1981 in the United Kingdom and was the first private UK telemarketing company. We were the first to publish The Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report in 1997. We are the pioneers in the Contact Centre industry and our experience lies in designing, building and operating Contact Centres around the world on behalf of blue-chip clients. We’ve broadened our geographic reach and expertise by acquiring Millennium 1 Solutions in Canada.
Watch our timeline video to understand us better.
Our Business Partners
We are wholly owned by Dimension Data – a global systems integrator (SI) and Managed Services Solutions provider, and NTT – one of the largest telecommunications service providers in the world.
Dimension Data
In Middle East and Africa, Dimension Data is a $1,3 billion African born systems integrator and managed services provider that designs, manages, and optimises today’s evolving technology environments to enable its clients to leverage data in a digital age.
Founded in 1983, and headquartered in Johannesburg, we are a proud member of the NTT Group, one of the world’s leading information communication technology (ICT) companies, comprising a group of global technology companies.
Employing over 15 000 employees across 15 countries on three continents, we invest heavily in innovation to bring together the world’s best technologies, from consulting, technical and support services to a fully managed service, to our global client base.
From 1 July 2019, Dimension Data’s global business is now fully integrated with NTT Communications, NTT Security and 25 other companies to form a new global operating company, branded NTT. In Middle East and Africa, Dimension Data remains an independently branded affiliate of the NTT Group and retains the Dimension Data brand.
NTT
NTT Ltd. is a leading global technology services company bringing together 28 brands including NTTCommunications, Dimension Data and NTT Security. We partner with organizations around the world to shape and achieve outcomes through intelligent technology solutions. For us, intelligent means data driven, connected, digital, and secure. As a global ICT provider, we employ more than 40,000 people in a diverse and dynamic workplace that spans 57 countries, trading in 73 countries and delivering services in over 200 countries. Together we enable the connected future.
Visit us at our new website www.hello.global.ntt.
Meet our leadership team
Zain aims to build valuable partnerships with our clients and provide opportunities for our people. This purpose allows us to develop our talent pool and grow our South African business. Within the contact centre environment, the aim is to develop bespoke approaches for businesses across various industries, improving on existing processes to retain their customer and client relationships in a sustainable manner.
Tebo joined Merchants more than 10 years ago where she has gained extensive experience in the finance function. She provides strategic leadership for the finance function and the organisation in addition to the management of financial and capital resources. Tebo oversees financial reporting, budget and financial planning, commercial and forex management, policy and process development, client and vendor contracting and systems implementation. She is a passionate leader who’s committed to people and business success, while stretching her thinking beyond her current capability.
Gerald’s experience within large-scale global and locally based captive and BPO operations across diverse industry sectors allows him to identify and execute opportunities for refinement in operational performance, optimise delivery and ensure a high rate of return for our clients and at the same time; enhanced service experiences for customers who interacts with the multitude of interaction points across these enterprises.
Originally from a financial services background, Chris has been a valuable and integral part of the Finance Team at Merchants, for the past 7 years. He has a B.com from the University of Pretoria. His focus spanned across leadership, finance, commercial, systems and reporting. Chris has been instrumental in his commercial insight and planning on various accounts in his tenure. He has an ability to stretch his thinking beyond his current capability and with his commercial and financial understanding, combined with his holistic thinking, enjoys improving and challenge current ways of work.
Sean joined Merchants in 2018 following 9 years of career highlights in M&A transactions, corporate finance, audit & enterprise risk roles within the NTT and Dimension Data Global Business. He is an integral part of the Merchants leadership specifically developing key commercial initiatives to enable business development, strategic engagements with clients and drive sustainable partnerships within the BPO sector. His passion is to continuously drive value creation across Merchants’ commercial landscape through establishing transformative solutions for our valued clients and co-creating relevant outcome based, impact sourcing strategies. Sean’s purposeful leadership aims to creating growth opportunity for Merchants stakeholders and our partners, with a further ambition to drive job creation and youth development to create thought leaders within Merchants and for the people of South Africa.
His significant experience managing large operations to deliver award winning customer service spans across 20 years including leading Australia’s second largest ISP to deliver operations that provided industry leading and best practice customer experience. Mat’s experience in outsourcing to regions including Asia Pacific, India, Americas and South Africa in addition to his experience consulting on the impacts of digital solutions on operations and customer experience helps provide Merchants clients with a clear direction on the ultimate solution for their business.
In 1999 he joined as Programme Manager, was appointed as Group CIO in 2007, where he was instrumental in establishing the framework behind what we now know as ‘Simplify to Accelerate’. In 2011 Laurent joined the MEA region as CIO and drove IT service synergies across all Dimension Data brands within South Africa. He then spearheaded the turnaround of the Advanced Infrastructure business (formerly Plessey) as CEO, before returning to his current role of CIO for MEA. Laurent epitomises the Merchants culture of service leadership and reflects our passion for our people.
Sydwell champions and drives the achievement of the transformation journey for Merchants by providing guidance and direction to key stakeholders on the implementation of initiatives that focus on improving the B-BBEE scorecard, including Corporate Social Investment, Employment Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
As the Human Resources Director, Nadia is responsible for ensuring all People Matters are in line with policy, process and our core values. Nadia has been with Merchants for 13 years and is a Trusted Advisor and Strategic Partner in developing value-adding HR programs centered on strengthening our Company Culture, Employee Engagement, Employee Wellness and Benefits, Talent Management, Retention, Succession Planning and Career Progression. She strives to find the balance between the business objectives and meeting the needs and aspirations of “our people”. Her goal is to improve both performance and efficiencies across the HR value chain, thereby positively contributing to the long-term success and sustainability of the business. To support and set up the People Team so they are able to focus on delivery to the customer.