Royal Dutch Shell, the multinational oil company, has opened a call centre in Cape Town to service customers in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

The company is planning to train Western Cape Afrikaans-speaking call centre agents to speak Flemish and Dutch so that they can communicate with these European customers in their own language. This was one of the main motivators for Shell when choosing where to locate their new call centre.

Furthermore the fact that South Africa is located in a similar time zone to much of Europe is beneficial as Shell will not have to pay extra to compensate staff for working night shift to accommodate time zone differences.

The business process outsourcing (BPO) sector is one of the sectors identified by the SA government as having very good growth and job-creation possibilities.