We are delighted to be able to report that we have grown to 25.2 million customers in total this year, which represents an increase of 7.8% from the previous year. Our broad customer base encompasses the full spectrum of individuals and organisations across Kenya.
We classify our customers into two main categories: consumer and enterprise. Consumer customers are individual purchasers of goods and services while enterprise clientele are business of all sizes, ranging from small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) to large corporate firms.
While the overall profile of our customers have not changed substantively during the year, the way we classify and serve them has. In response to the new company strategy, we have tried to understand our customers and their different, specific needs better. The main way we have sought to do this is by segmenting our broad customer base more distinctly.
Consumer customers have been segmented into four major segments, with 16 sub-segments. The four major segments are: Discerning Professionals; Hustlers; Youth; and the Masses.
Enterprise customers are now split into four major groups: Large Enterprises; Public Enterprises; Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SMEs); and Small Offices-Home Offices (SOHO).
Consumers
Of our total customer base, 96% are consumer customers. Consumer customers grew by 1.9 million during the year and we now enjoy 65.6 % of the total Kenyan market in the consumer space. We attribute this 8.2% growth in consumer customers during the year to the launch of the ‘dandia’ campaign, which resulted in a high acquisition of new customers.
Despite the overall growth in consumer customers, our share of the consumer market fell by 3.8% to 63.3% during the period under review. This drop is attributable to a change in the way we define and count our customer base, from ‘active within the last 120 days’ to ‘active within the last 90 days’. We changed our definition to match industry standards.
Enterprise customers
We currently have a presence in 84,000 enterprise customers, which represents an increase of 16,075 from the previous year. Most of this growth is attributable to our significant acquisitions in the SOHO segment.
While the SOHO segment has seen great growth, our corporate customers still account for the vast majority of enterprise business revenue. Our focus remains on nurturing long-term relationships and up/cross-selling in this market segment. We are pleased to report that we achieved our target for the year and now enjoy 54% market share in terms of revenue in the enterprise space.
Monitoring our performance
We use the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to monitor customer satisfaction. NPS assesses the likelihood that a customer would recommend Safaricom to other businesses or friends, based on their overall experience. NPS is measured separately for consumer and enterprise customers.
Our ongoing NPS target is to be the number one integrated service provider by a margin of 5% for consumer customers and 10% for enterprise customers. This margin is relative to our competitors. The following table presents a breakdown of our NPS scores.
As the table illustrates, we achieved a consumer NPS competitor margin of 10% and an enterprise NPS competitor margin of 19%, both of which are commendable results and suggest that our new strategy is already paying dividends.
How did we deliver value to them during the year?
Consumers
The new strategy has plugged the customer back into the business in a meaningful way. Central to this has been our commitment to daily calls between the CEO, Technology Directors and the Customer Care teams to discuss and resolve the most pressing customer issues and we are already reaping the benefits of this approach. As a result of initiatives conceived during these conversations, we have seen calls to our contact centre drop from highs of around 600,000 to around 400,000 per day during the year.
This 30% reduction in calls has been achieved through a variety of initiatives, including empowering our frontline staff to achieve First Call Resolution (FCR) by giving them the tools and authority to deal with more customer issues without escalating these; ensuring better coordination with technical teams to support system stability and quick turnaround times in cases of failure; and our regionalisation programme, which has regional teams monitoring and resolving local issues, increasing our focus and shortening turnaround times. Other notable initiatives from the year include:
The Hakikisha service
This service provides M-PESA users with peace of mind by asking them to verify the receiving party before sending funds. This service has reduced payment reversals — the single biggest reason for a calls to the contact centre – by 15% since its introduction. The service still has some flaws, however, since it does not work on all devices and some customers get confused because the default cancel key on the phone screen doesn’t actually stop the transaction.
Expanding customer self-service channels
The capacity of our Social Media online query service was expanded during the year to handle more queries and more licences were added for more agents to be able to work concurrently, which has dropped average response times to social media queries from 1.5 hours to under 30 minutes. Our USSD self-service was also enhanced to enable customers to obtain PUK, account and products and services information. We did not launch the social media selfservice app as intended during the year, but plan to do so during FY17.
Improving customer care with dedicated desks
We opened 54 ‘care desks’ at dealer premises across the country, offering on-site expertise and customer care services.
My Safaricom App
To further improve customer service, we launched the easy-to-use My Safaricom App. The application empowers users with self-care features that allow subscribers to resolve most of their issues on their own. The App also features the following services: airtime top ups; M-PESA statement requests; options to view, redeem and transfer Bonga points; data and SMS bundle purchasing; talk to a customer care agent through Live Chat or Facebook; and the management of SMS services.
Enterprise customers
A few of the specific ways in which we have delivered value to our enterprise customers during the year include:
Partner Engagement Programme (PEP)
Launched in FY14, our Partner Engagement Programme (PEP) is an intensive training initiative designed to ensure that every partner interaction with customers is of the very highest standards of professionalism. It is a comprehensive programme that consists of four subject areas or pillars and we successfully trained 550 partners and staff on these four pillars during the year.
Project Delight
Our ‘Project Delight’ initiative recognises that our customers are more than transactions and reminds us that, no matter how successful and big we become, we must remain focused on the individual relationships that are at the heart of our success. Through the project, we organise a series of networking and social events for enterprise customers throughout the year and, fundamentally, it reminds us that we are a group of people achieving things together. We successfully executed several campaigns and events this year, including VIP experiences at the Safaricom 7s and Safaricom Jazz Festival, celebrating Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, hosting guests at the Rhino Charge 2015 event and through participating in various Safaricom@15 initiatives.
Legendary Experience Awards
Our first Legendary Experience Awards were held in November 2015. All of our Service Deployment and Support partners were invited to the event and various categories of award were presented to top performers.
