Telecel scoops awards

Zimbabwe Institute of Management 2010 Customer Service Excellence Award and the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair Most Innovative ICT Display Award.
Towards the end of last year it was awarded the 2010 Frost & Sullivan Southern African Development Community Mobile Telecommunications Market Penetration Leadership Award.

The Customer Service Excellence Award was presented to Telecel Zimbabwe managing director Aimable Mpore at an awards function held by the Zimbabwe Institute of Management on April 29.
The Most Innovative ICT Display Award was presented to Telecel at the Trade Fair in Bulawayo at the beginning of May.

The Frost & Sullivan Sadc Mobile Telecommunications Market Penetration Leadership Award was presented to Mr Mpore at a ceremony at Hilton Sandton Hotel in Johannesburg, South Africa, on November 25.
The awards follow Telecel’s unparalleled success in making mobile phones and mobile phone lines affordable for ordinary Zimbabweans and quadrupling the number of its subscribers from about 260 000 in June 2009 to more than a million by the end of March last year.

The Frost & Sullivan award was made in recognition of the rapid growth in the number of Telecel subscribers and Telecel’s market penetration, an achievement no other network within the Sadc region was able to achieve.

The Zimbabwe Institute of Management award was made in recognition of Telecel’s excellent customer service, while the ZITF award reflected the innovativeness of the Telecel stand at this year’s trade fair.
While most Zimbabweans are aware that Telecel had become Zimbabwe’s fastest growing mobile phone network and that Telecel last year made mobile telecommunications affordable for virtually everyone by slashing the cost of SIM cards to almost nothing and offering low-cost handsets as part of a starter pack, few will be aware of the impressive measures it put in place to deliver excellent customer service.

A Customer Satisfaction Survey is carried out every year. Every month Telecel interviews some of its subscribers to find out how they feel about its service. Feedback from these interviews is captured, collated, analysed, submitted to Telecel’s management for review and widely circulated to enable departments to see what they can do to improve customers’ experience.

As part of their training Telecel customer care staff spend periods attached to various departments, so they know how the company operates and can, as a result, respond appropriately to any customer concerns or complaints.

In addition to its Call Centre, which operates every day from 8 am to midnight, Telecel has a walk-in Customer Service Department at its Graniteside headquarters in Harare.
There is a computerised system for ensuring that all complaints are recorded and resolved.

The originality of Telecel’s stand and displays at the trade fair earned it the ZITF award for Most Innovative ICT Display.
In many ways, the award for originality reflects the innovativeness Telecel has displayed over the past 18 months as it took the lead in making mobile phones and phone lines affordable and became one of the major players in the mobile phone sector.

Within a short period it altered the perception that mobile phones were for the relatively well off. Once it had slashed the price of its SIM card and mobile phone handsets, almost everyone soon became the owner of a mobile phone.

It displayed innovativeness too in its various promotions, which reduced costs still further, and in its bold decision to make international calls to 23 international destinations cost the same as a local call.
One of its most recent innovations was the launching of its Skwama mobile banking platform that makes it possible for banks to offer their customers a mobile phone banking service.

The competitiveness that Telecel has brought to the market has had beneficial results for all mobile phone users, resulting in easier communications for everyone.
It is perhaps hardly surprising, therefore, that Telecel is finding itself a winner of awards, awards for market penetration, for customer care and for innovation.

Having just recently made data services available for all its customers with 3G compatible handsets, as it enters the final stage of its 3G pilot project and prepares to launch a full commercial data service, Telecel continues to have a major impact on the local telecommunications sector and on the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans, for whom communication is becoming easier all the time.