Founded in 2019, Black Elegance is the brainchild of Simone Jules. She’s a woman on a mission: she has wanted to run a company since she was a child, but she’s also clear that her ambition would not stop there. 

“I wanted my own company so that I could make my mark in the call centre industry, a male-dominated industry, but also wanted to make lasting change to the lives of the young people on the Cape Flats,  an area with so many social ills and where hope is in short supply. My main objective is job creation, training and mentoring youth from an early age; I am also embarking on public motivational speaking at underprivileged schools in the next month,” she says. 

Black Elegance offers full business process outsourcing from its call centre, handling both inbound and outbound calls—all in the name of maximising sales while minimising costs. In addition, clients can also benefit from specialised logistics, travel management and private security services. 

Jules says that as women adopt leadership roles, they will play an increasing role in changing the way the call centre industry works. She says that in order to make progress, she has had to cultivate a steadfast belief in her own capabilities, never allowing herself to feel inferior to her male counterparts. 

“Female business owners have a unique perspective and set of skills, and can act as catalysts for making the industry more diverse and, even more important, growing it,” she firmly believes. 

The call centre business is challenging, to say the least. It is highly responsive to changes in the economic climate and thus requires a leader to be extremely flexible in order to maintain productivity and profitability. Despite these challenges, Black Elegance has gone from strength to strength under Jules’s leadership. 

Jules says that Black Elegance’s partnership with Telkom Business has been instrumental in its ability to ride out the storms and grow. 

“Telkom Business’s unwavering support and suite of service offerings has helped us to streamline our operations and broaden our customer base,” she says. “ Telkom’s culture of innovation seamlessly aligns with the bedrock principles of Black Elegance, fostering a vibrant and enduring collaboration.”

For example, Black Elegance is using Telkom Business’s YEP! portal very successfully. YEP!, the digital evolution of the old Yellow Pages, was created to help South African SMMEs to transition their businesses onto the digital platforms on which business is increasingly transacted. YEP! provides assistance in setting up a website and providing training to help businesses move into the online space.

Telkom Managing Executive: Home and Business Solutions, Makgosi Mabaso, says that Jules is one of the women who are driving a profound transformation in the world. “Women tend to contribute a higher proportion of their earnings to families and communities, so helping them succeed as business leaders makes tremendous sense for society as a whole,” she says. 

YEP! is one way of doing that by creating an ecosystem within which smaller businesses can build out their networks and partnerships, she says. 

“Women like Simone Jules are more than businesspeople: they see the broader role that business has to play in making business (and ultimately society) more inclusive,” Mabaso concludes. “Women’s Month is all about the power of the female view, which is essentially focused on investing in the future, a long-term perspective.”