How can we expand the customer service sector and encourage large IT companies to come to Egypt?

Egypt has the population and a basic skillset; but we need to improve on practical skills.  Students come from university with a set of skills that don’t necessarily match the workforce requirements. At Xceed we have launched a new initiative called Xceed Academy, to improve the skills of our employees and to move them to other areas of the company.

For instance, if we have an agent who is currently only working with local clients, then we can add the necessary language skills, so that they not only have to work with local clients but could also work with international clients. In terms of IT, I think the necessary skills are available since you don’t need the same proficiency in language that you would in customer service.  We also need to work on improving our global image so that large IT companies can really start to see Egypt’s potential.

How can the private sector help to improve the image of Egypt in the world?

The private sector can help to improve the image of Egypt by participating more in different events or conferences, and instead of just being reactive and waiting for customers to come to us, we should go to them. Furthermore, we should open more representative offices in our target markets, and directly talk to the clients and invite them to visit and see Egypt. Everybody needs to show the bright side of Egypt.

After getting your offices in Casablanca, what other investments are you looking for in terms of expanding the company?

At the moment, we haven’t yet received the approval to expand our company, however, we would like to have a sales office in Europe and another in the Gulf. We also need an operation in Eastern Europe or in Spain. In the last few years, Spain has become favourable as a labour market and it has a better skillset than that of Eastern Europe. Also our largest market is the U.S., so we need to expand there. It might not be our next step because it is one of the toughest and riskiest countries to enter, but it should be on the map later on.

What are some of your accomplishments and how have you given back to the community?

I am very proud of what we are doing here internally within Xceed.  We have made two very bold decisions; one of them was to expand to Quena, which is about an hour from Luxor in Upper Egypt. Xceed is the second largest company in Quena, after the government. It is a shame that there aren’t more employers there, because the population of Quena isn’t any less qualified than they are here in Cairo.  Xceed had the full support of Telecom Egypt when we decided to go to Quena; they helped us to expand to Quena by providing the location, infrastructure and the support that we needed.

The second decision we made was to work with people with disabilities so that we could give back to the community.  Our target was to have 150 employees with visual impairment working with us.  We managed to reach 105, which I think is a huge achievement. Now we are looking at branching out and not just working with the visually impaired but with people who might have other disabilities as well.  I think that we are one of the companies with the largest number of disabled people working with us in Egypt.

This is one way of changing the country for the better.  It is the responsibility of everybody to make changes, not just the responsibility of the government.

Why is Egypt the place to be and why is it a place that we can believe in?

In Arabic we say that you don’t have to tell stories. Let’s face facts and numbers.  Look at the number of cases in which foreigners have had problems and relate it to the number of people who have visited Egypt.  You will find that as a percentage Egypt has had minimal problems in comparison with other developed countries.  If you were to visit Sharm El Sheikh or any other touristic cities, I can safely say that without reading any statistics that you are 100 times safer at night, than you would be in New York.

Unfortunately politics remains a major problem and sometimes politics can influence the media. I would ask people not just to look at general issues but also to look at the facts.  Problems can happen anywhere; a plane going down or a terrorist attack can happen anywhere in the world.  People react to things based on their perception and the media can distort this.  If we are talking solely about business, now is the right time to invest in Egypt.