Telkom working on fixing problems
In SA, additional complexity arises from trying to establish a corporate culture that allows cultural diversity to flourish, especially as cross-border deals are on the increase and there is a pressing need to overcome skills shortages.
Such challenges will continue, making it necessary for organisations to adapt, develop new competencies and invest in innovation. The nature of today’s global marketplace is such that companies are forced to make a choice every single day: do we remain as we are, or do we take the more arduous, more expensive road to become exceptional?
Telkom has decided to become exceptional, and to differentiate ourselves through our service. I can see our detractors shaking their heads. I do not blame them. We, too, see room for improvement.
One of the advantages of having to contend with a multitude of challenges is that it allows for organisations and individuals to learn and grow. Telkom has, on occasion, taken decisions that have resulted in short-term gains. Our new approach is to seek long-term solutions that reflect developments in the broader industry.
Another change is in the area of customer centricity. As soon as I joined Telkom, I began preaching customer centricity as one of my core strategic visions for the company — and I will not stop until Telkom gets it 100% right. It has been a year since I was appointed CEO.
During this time the company has undergone a rigorous process to identify barriers that prohibit us from providing exceptional service, and to design a strategy to improve customer service levels. We embarked on this with a sense of great urgency. One unhappy customer is one too many. Under my tenure with Telkom, customer service will reign supreme. It is that simple.
The nature of the work we have done is such that most of it takes place out of the public eye. Our progress has thus largely gone unnoticed. But I want to assure our customers that we are working on it.
We are acutely aware that a failure to put our customers at the very core of our operations militates against the Telkom promise of customer centricity. We have already taken a number of proactive steps to ensure Telkom remains a provider of choice — even when alternatives become available in the competitive telecommunications industry.
When it comes to customer centricity, everything hinges on our employees. Long-term success is only achievable if your employees are educated and empowered. We are moving towards a point where every employee, customer-facing or not, will approach his or her job with a mindset of “customer benefit at the core of everything I do”. Repeated 28000 times, this chant becomes a very powerful force indeed.
Upgrading and refining our internal processes reflects our determination to minimise the so called silo effect, and allows for free flowing information and coordination of activities and processes. Establishing a customer centricity office to create and maintain momentum around this common goal is indicative of our need to deliver on our promise.
Complementing these initiatives is a drive to ensure synergy between our approach and customer needs. The customer of today has more product and market knowledge than ever before. As a result, customers are becoming more demanding, and rightly so.
Our offerings must reflect this evolution. We are fine-tuning our intelligence gathering, and processing and segmentation abilities to provide our customers with value-adding information and communications technology (ICT) solutions. To offer customers end-to end solutions across the ICT value chain, a process has begun to acquire the entire issued share capital of Business Connexion. This acquisition will also enable us to compete in the convergence space — again, to the benefit of our customers.
Our much publicised capital investment in our network infrastructure is also an investment in our customers, as our Next Generation Network will enable a plethora of new services and applications in the broadband space.
The bottom line is this: we are working in a dedicated, purposeful and aligned manner to turn Telkom into a customer-centred organisation. We believe this is also vital for the shareholders’ interest.
It’s not business as usual at Telkom. We are doing things differently, we are embracing fresh perspectives. It is our customers who will experience the results, and sooner rather than later.
Molotsane is Telkom CEO.
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