South African entertainment company MultiChoice has announced it will soon begin to lay off as many as 2,194 staff in South Africa. The shake-up will affect specifically members of its staff in the customer care work of the company’s walk-in customer centers and customer care call centers.
According to Multichoice, the affected staff members have been engaged as required by South Africa’s labor laws.
The Chief Executive at Multichoice, Calvo Mawela said, “This has not been an easy decision to make but, in a business driven by advancing technologies, we must continue to drive efficiencies yet be agile enough to adapt to evolving customer needs. We must act decisively to align with the change in customer behavior and competition from over-the-top services. If we don’t reposition now, we run the risk of being completely misaligned and we put everyone’s jobs at risk.”
For some time now, Multichoice had complained of double standards as it believes online streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime have not been subjected to the same regulations and taxes like the DStv Satellite subscription is subjected to.
It is also worth noting that Multichoice owns video streaming service in Showmax and as such, the move to retrench over 2,000 customer care personnel mainly related to its DStv business could be seen as a signal that the company is repositioning itself.
Added to this, in the past several weeks the company has introduced live streaming of sports on its Showmax platform, similar to what it offers DStv subscribers.
Mawela also revealed that the company will engage more of technology than humans in its operations.
He said, “The company is also in an environment where it will rely more on technology than people.”
