Safaricom - 2021 Sustainable Business Report

64 SAFARICOM SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS REPORT 2021 / STANDING TOGETHER: GOING BEYOND / OUR MATERIAL TOPICS //// OUR STAKEHOLDERS / KPI SUMMARY ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS As indicated in the table below, the increase in enterprise customers was largely driven by the uptake of mobile financial services and the uptake of digital financial services through merchant tills by SMEs which grew by 71%. FY18 FY19 FY20 FY21 Total number of enterprise customers 169 000 180 164 286 000 401 019 Total market share 67% 68% 70% 71% We categorise our enterprise customers into three main groups: Large Enterprises (LEs) – more than 50 employees; Small-to- Medium Enterprises (SMEs) – between 10 and 50 employees and Small Offices-Home Offices (SOHO) – less than 10 employees. LEs were affected by the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism and hospitality industries, particularly in the first half of the financial year. Economic constraints translated into slow adoption of digital IoT and ICT related services by LEs and high value SMEs. However, this was balanced by the growth in SME/ SoHo customers driven by an uptake in payment solutions. As smaller businesses transitioned from workplace to workspace, the number of active connections also grew. MEASURING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION NPS AND BC SCORES FY18 FY19 FY20 FY21 Consumer NPS 70 61 59 65 Enterprise NPS 26 26 29 31 BC 60 63 70 81 We continue to use the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Brand Consideration (BC) score to monitor customer satisfaction. Our ambition is to be number one in NPS among our competitors. NPS measures the likelihood that a customer would recommend Safaricom to other customers, family or friends, based on their overall experience. BC measures the likelihood that a customer will purchase a particular brand based on their perceptions of that brand. Both NPS and BC are primarily determined using customer surveys. Our consumer NPS improved significantly closing the year at number 2 among our competitors (previously number 3). This is largely attributable to the measures put in place to address customer pain points in accessing our products and services, good network quality and ‘quick/ efficient customer service’. The following categories showed steady improvement: • The understanding and trust on how airtime is used. • Transparency in billing. • ‘Always having a data bundle that is just right for me’. M-PESA continues to be the biggest driver of promotion across the three enterprise customer segments. Despite the positive results outlined above, we came in at number 2 when compared to our competitors. This is largely due to customers’ perceptions that we are expensive, that our billing is unclear and that their data resources are exhausted faster when compared with other networks. With these findings in mind, we are working hard to enhance affordability. Brand consideration improved by 11 points due to our strong and reliable network and the important role this played in keeping the country connected during the COVID-19 crisis. We also noted a slight increase in brand love driven by the support we gave to our customers to cushion them from the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis such as zero rating of transactions below KSh 1 000 on M-PESA. Innovations on mobile financial services also contributed to improved brand perception. Despite the improved brand consideration score, our customers still perceive our products and services as expensive, especially in light of constrained wallet size, leading to a decline in value perception. As part of our Customer Obsession journey, we will strive to enhance affordability and improve on transparency in billing. CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT The main channels through which our customers engage with us are our call centres and self-service options. CALL CENTRE PERFORMANCE Approximately 80% of our call centre staff transitioned to working from home during the pandemic. Despite this transition, we maintained and even improved our call centre performance. This was achieved by changing over 700 virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) machines to laptops in November 2020 to assist in managing disruptions from power outages, thereby enhancing accessibility to customers. BEYOND 20 YEARS In October 2020, we celebrated our 20th anniversary. To mark this important milestone, we celebrated our customers for loyalty shown over the past 20 years and their contribution to our success. We launched a brand refresh campaign dubbed ‘Twende Tukiuke’ , which is a call to go beyond what is thought possible and excel. As part of the celebrations, we awarded one free call of up to 20 minutes within a 30-day period to all our customers. We also launched an offer dubbed 20@20 through which our customers could purchase 20 minutes of call time and 20MBs at KSh 20, while for the next 90 days, customers purchasing personalized Tunukiwa voice offers received free 20 minutes to call across all networks. In addition, customers who had been on the Safaricom network for 20 years as well as those turning 20 in 2020 also received a free 20GB data bundle valid for seven days.