EXPRESS International, a local Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company, has invested a whopping $42 million into developing the talents of its employees, and, by extension, its brand.

This is according to a statement issued by the company, which has boasted of being the provider of some 300 premium jobs locally. The development efforts took the form of in-depth training to achieve industry certification from global standard certifier, Customer Operations Performance Centre (COPC) Incorporated.

The statement from the company explained that a COPC certification is “the most prestigious recognition in the industry for any customer experience operation, with more than 500 companies in 56 countries being certified since 1996.”

The certification process, according to the company, is an independent and objective assessment of an operation’s current performance, measured to the requirements found in the COPC Customer Experience (CX) Standard.

Late last week, Express International formally celebrated and recognised 20 employees of various levels, ranging from supervisor to director, for completing their individual COPC certified professional manager training.

The certification ceremony was held at Herdmanston Lodge and attended by representatives of the Ministry of Labour and the Guyana Office for Investment (Go-Invest). Speaking at the event, the company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Guyanese-born Ken Deocharran, described the training as being a pivotal stepping stone in the journey of building a stronger brand through “people-first leadership and development”.

“He believes that investing in his people is the surest way to continue delivering exceptional performance to clients which will aid growth and create more jobs in Guyana,” the statement read.

Deocharran confirmed that another 20 Express employees are expected to complete the COPC training later this year.

|That will help Express International Inc. [to] stay the course for soon being the first-ever BPO Center in Guyana to receive its organisational level COPC certification,” the company posited.

James Cammareri, the COPC Vice President for North America, was also at the presentation ceremony, where he confirmed that once fully certified, Express International would likely be the first-ever BPO Center in Guyana to receive its organisational level certification.

He further echoed the important step the organisation has taken to start with individual leadership certifications to advance the process of the site’s accreditation, and congratulated the employees.

Currently, Express International is one of the smaller BPO establishments in Guyana, but even so, the company said that it has quickly taken the spot of the preferred employer with more than 70 per cent of its current employees being former call centre talents.

With the emergence of several establishments in recent years, the BPO industry has been recognised to have the potential to create more jobs than any other sector in the country.
Cognisant of this, Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, had previously expressed government’s intention to market the BPO sector aggressively to the international business community.

As a matter of fact, Guyana has already earned the reputation of being the BPO industry’s best kept secret, especially from a time zone perspective.

Guyana’s landmark liberalization of the telecommunications sector also lends to the growth of the BPO industry, as it reduced the cost of bandwidth, while opening the door for healthy competition. BPO companies have since been encouraged by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic government to spread their wings outside of Georgetown, and invest in operations across various other regions.

This has since begun to happen, with centers already popping up in places such as Linden in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) where job creation is being sternly addressed by the Dr. Irfaan Ali-led administration.