Sunnyvale, California — Yahoo Wednesday said it has teamed up with IBM to deliver world-class customer care services in Spanish, German, French, Italian, Turkish, Polish, Romanian, and Russian — as well as for future Arabic-language versions of its products — will be delivered for Yahoo by IBM from a new center in Cairo.
IBM to help extend improved customer care support in nine languages for Yahoo’s products and services may soon establish a larger following among non-English speakers. The company’s customer care services will be managed by IBM from its service dispatch center in Cairo, Egypt. Initially, IBM will provide support in Arabic, French, German, Italian, and Spanish that may soon grow to encompass the languages of Turkish, Polish, Romanian, and Russian through the recruitment of a significant number of multi-lingual Egyptian service professionals.
Currently, Yahoo proposes to launch Arabic versions of the home page, mail, messenger and search before moving on to local versions of other core properties like news, sports, and finance. Yahoo on Wednesday said the localized customer service effort would also support future Arabic-language versions of future Yahoo products.
“Yahoo has made a strong dedication to growth in the Middle East, and our new support for Arabic-speaking users around the world is a significant milestone toward our goals for the region,” said Jeff Russakow, executive vice president of customer advocacy for Yahoo, in a statement. “It is part of Yahoo’s philosophy to remain close to our customers, and so I am very pleased to be announcing our new world-class customer care center in Cairo.”
IBM Egypt country general manager Amr Talaat described his company’s association by stating: “The services delivered from this center will help Yahoo’s Middle East, North African, and European users benefit from the talent pool and customer care solutions deployed here. It will provide them with best-in-class user experience and customer services that are an industry benchmark.”
“The announcement of Yahoo’s commitment to Egypt is a testament to the powerful combination of competitive advantages that the country is offering the world,” said Dr. Hazem Abdelazim, CEO of the Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA). “Our global offering not only provides reputed multinational companies with a cost-competitive location, but also a location that operates as a multilingual platform for world-class operations.”
Ross Sandler, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, described the deal with IBM to manage customer support is likely part of CEO Carol Bartz’s continuing efforts to reduce costs and consolidate operations. Yahoo did not revealed whether it was shutting any existing customer service operations as a result of outsourcing some of those functions to IBM.
Furthermore, the move comes as Yahoo’s acquisition of Arabic Web portal Maktoob last August, which claims to have more than 18 million users to gain a bigger online presence in the region. During Yahoo’s first-quarter conference call, Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse mentioned that Maktoob had “performed in line with plan” without providing further detail.
During the past few years, IBM has instituted, announced or acquired service delivery centers in a variety of countries including China, Egypt, India, Philippines, and Poland.
This could have a crucial effect on Yahoo’s popularity. Individuals and businesses should be much less reluctant to use something when they know real help is just an email or a phone call away.