City dwellers not so fond of Telkom
For a company of this magnitude the results are surprising to say the least. From the report it seems as if the people in rural areas are more tolerant towards Telkom and from their votes Telkom came in fifth.
Lulu Letlape, group executive for corporate communication at Telkom, reported to the Business Times that urbanites have a lot of brands to choose from and that Telkom had recently received “a lot of negative media coverage which has affected the manner in which people view the company.”
Telkom has also invested heavily in community programmes which are focused on rural areas and according to Letlape Telkom tend “to be seen as a member of the community.”
Letlape stated that there was room to improve their image in the cities and recently said that Telkom was ‘in the process of communicating with customers, but was not willing to comment on their participation in public forums’ (MyADSL, September 16, 2005 http://www.mybroadband.co.za/nephp//?m=show&id=723)
“If we mount a more aggressive brand-awareness campaign in urban areas, there is likely to be a significant improvement.”
“At present clients see us through the media. They do not see us through our own efforts, except for product-related advertising,” said Letlape.
Rudolph Muller, founder of MyADSL a broadband news and information website, disagrees noting that many of the members of the forum and the general public are unhappy with Telkom because of their poor services.
“There is no question that bad media have affected Telkom’s ratings in the Top Brands survey but from various discussions with the forum members and general members of the South African public it seems that Telkom is simply not delivering on their promises.”
“Issues like slow ADSL installation times, poor customer relations and specifically a lack of transparency regarding pricing issues are driving consumer discontent.”
“Telkom needs to do far more than beef-up their brand-awareness campaign, they actually need to improve their services and their offerings,” stated Muller.
Whilst it seems that Telkom’s social investment programme in the rural areas is paying off, urban dwellers are not as convinced.
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