1.A POWERHOUSE IN OFFSHORING AND NEARSHORING 

The starting-point for any tour of Morocco’s customer management sector is what makes it such an attractive best-shoring location for companies across multiple sectors. 

First is its location, close to Europe and its major capital cities. Just 3-4 hours, or less, away from brands’ headquarters, the proximity and time zone makes it easy for these brands to work with teams in Morocco. 

Secondly, Morocco’s stability and openness to the world offer confidence to investors and businesses, as does state investment in infrastructure, education and health. There’s a clear desire to attract businesses and to make outsourcing a pillar of the national economy, and this is reflected in a range of government policies.  

A great example of this relates to language ability, with the government promoting this across Morocco’s education system in order to make the country an international hub like Barcelona, Lisbon or Dublin. As a result, international companies are attracted here by the availability and the quality of languages, both written and spoken.

Thirdly, brands are attracted by Morocco’s optimum balance of cost, performance and value-generated. 

And finally, the fourth strength, and probably the most important one, is Morocco’s people and the workforce, as we explain below.

2. GROWTH FUELED BY THE TALENT POOL

Morocco has a young and well-educated population who are success-oriented and hungry to develop. This has been a clear factor in the kingdom’s rapid growth over the past decade as an offshore location, offering contractors a quality performance that equals or even exceeds internal inshore operations.

Many people in the workforce in Morocco are graduates from a range of highly-rated universities across the country. As well as mastering many languages, they offer impressive expertise in areas such as IT development, project management, training and management. 

What also differentiates Morocco from many other markets are the ‘soft skills’ in the workforce, and people’s facility for offering excellent customer service. In addition, we see a high degree of adaptability and ambition across the talent pool. Our young professionals demonstrate a great capacity to change fast and to get involved in different activities.

3. THE BEST PLAYERS INVEST IN EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE 

A young and educated workforce, like the one in Morocco, does not want to sit still. The younger generation here has a strong desire to develop and succeed, and they count on their managers to assist them in that. 

This requires a strong focus on employee experience and support; employers must be willing to invest in employees’ career development in order to enhance workforce loyalty. That’s one of the key trends in customer management in Morocco, and Comdata is very active and innovative in this area.

For example, one major development at Comdata in Morocco was the appointment of a Chief Happiness Officer whose role is all about providing a positive employee experience and animating our community. We have also initiated:

• our own corporate radio station and internal social networks
• an internal customer service to facilitate our employee experience, including a phoneline that every employee can use to sort out their administration or even ask for coaching or medical counseling from our healthcare team
• a talent program and other training programs, allowing us to offer our people long-term careers and development.

These initiatives, and others, all contribute to our recognition, year after year, as a Best Place to Work.

4. LEADING PROVIDERS ARE GOING BEYOND THE CONTRACT

Another key market trend in Morocco is that successful BPO providers are looking beyond the contract and acting as a source of transformation for brands in all sectors.

With Morocco positioned as a best-shore destination and competing with low-price competitors in sub-Saharan locations, our contact centers in Morocco must definitely play the role of leader and clearly specify to their clients the path that should be considered. This insight depends on our capacity to understand our customers and to manage our teams so we can positively influence the customer service management.

To achieve this, performance management must go further than ‘keeping things under control’; instead, it must nurture performers with strong principles and high levels of expertise. Successful management teams in Morocco are understanding more than ever that the development of people requires effort at every stage. 

By doing so, providers like Comdata are making themselves highly attractive transformation partners for brands in any sector; Comdata’s team in Morocco also pioneered a new coaching method that led to a 9-point rise in CSAT (customer satisfaction scores) in the space of a month.

5. TWO OTHER KEY TRENDS TO WATCH 

For any brand looking at customer management options in Morocco, there are two more important developments worth following.

The first is Morocco’s enthusiastic embrace of digitalization as a source of competitive advantage. BPO providers like Comdata are using technology to enhance our employee experience in offering productive top-class service and optimizing customer journeys. Digitalization is customized to client needs and offers a clear return on investment.

Secondly, clever brands are looking to take advantage of a global footprint, given that some leading customer management providers in Morocco have become global players and operate from many locations. Brands that choose the right partners in Morocco can benefit from global experience and best-practice sharing, with the country now emerging as a hub of knowledge for different industries such as telecom, retail, transportation, banking and insurance.

6. A STORY OF GROWTH 

Comdata’s own history and presence in Morocco is a good illustration of the rapid development in this dynamic market and its growing role as a key location for brands. 

Our presence here dates back to 2004, where we started with a couple of hundred people. As we complete our second decade, we have 7000 employees working for clients across multiple sectors including telecom, energy and retail, and they include native speakers across a wide range of languages.

Reflecting the growing sophistication of our operations here, clients value our expertise on all business processes, including sales, and our ability to support them end-to-end along the whole value chain and customer journey. We also have CX labs and expertise in launching new and pilot activities and optimization activities.

Through our investment in employee experience, staff turnover is low for the industry and we have a 93% internal promotion rate. External recognition of our employee experience success includes Best Place to Work and ISO labels and awards. 

 7. WHERE THE STORY GOES NEXT 

Looking to the future, we expect to see more of the same in Morocco – more growth, more sophistication and more brands realizing its value as a nearshore powerhouse. In the course of this growth, we will see:

• The continuation of digitalization, given that surveys estimate that more than 60% of customer interactions will be done through chatbot or other solutions based on AI.
• Consumer expectations of seamless service rising further, driving the need for end-to-end operations.
• While automation enables the human to provide added value, high quality in relationships will become an important criterion for brands when choosing between different outsourcing providers.  
• Technology and automation will boost not only productivity but also customer experience, through speech analytics, video and other tools and solutions.

In short, the leading players in Morocco will be fully on board with all the big developments in CX and digital transformation. Like its young workforce, the market is hungry for success and well able to deliver it.

Contact us to find out more

We’d love to talk more with you about the market in Morocco and how we can help your brand flourish there. To find out more, get in touch.