Leading telecoms company Bharti Airtel plans to partner up with international communications firm Avaya in a bid to improve its customer service levels in Kenya.

Airtel has had a tough time trying to grow its market share in the East African region and hopes the partnership could help grow its subscriber base in that country.

"Our partnership with Avaya is in line with the rapid evolution into the data world, and will provide superior customer service experience and extends from traditional voice based to video and social media interactions,” said Jai Menon, director of Global Innovation & IT at Bharti Airtel and group chief information officer at Bharti.

"Additionally ‘Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions’ will enhance our service capabilities, and help us deliver superior customer experiences across our operations,” he said.

Airtel says, under the terms of the agreement, Avaya would provide a tailored contact centre outsourcing environment that includes completely customised application support, billing, reporting and service level agreements with remediation.

In addition, Avaya would transform Airtel’s environment to the latest contact centre technology, allowing it to provide a consistent, high-quality customer experience across all its markets.

Nidal Abou-Ltaif, Avaya vice president, emerging markets, Middle East, Africa and Turkey, said the deal would see Bharti access Avaya’s 6000-seat customer care outfit to serve its customers across 16 countries.

Abou-Ltaif also said the deal would create jobs for Kenyans as the customer care centre targets youth and fresh graduates.

Jayant Khosla, chief executive officer, Anglophone Airtel, said the deal would enable the telecom company to speak to 28 000 customers at the same time thus improve on feedback time.

“Africa is a key market for Avaya, and expanding our presence to one of the major cities on the continent reinforces our commitment to customers as well as partners,” said Abou-Itaif.