Creating loyalty from treating customers with royalty

A collective responsibility

Customer Care is such a significant lubricant in the delivery of services in both the private and public sectors. The government of Rwanda through the Rwanda Development Board has crafted deliberate efforts to eliminate poor customer service and make every stakeholder win from a smooth and efficient customer care system. Some  major players in the implementation of these efforts to have their insight of the strategies are imparted among the general population and how they are paying off.

Yves K Ngenzi, Manager Customer Care Unit, RDB

The level of customer satisfaction today stands at 70%, based on research carried out from the public and private institutions. This is a registered growth compared to 60% satisfaction in 2010 and the target is to have 80% satisfaction by 2017. The 2010 survey was carried out by the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR) and OTF while that of 2013 is being carried out by RUMA.

The findings indicate that on the whole, satisfaction in the public institutions is higher compared to the private sector, with the Directorate of Immigration and Emigration being the overall best in customer care handling. The Rwanda Development Board (RDB) critically looks at and measure five major components of Customer Care; Communication, Problem solving, Timeliness, Professionalism and Ease of Doing Business. The Customer Care Project was started in 2009 with two programmes; Awareness campaign dubbed Gira Ubupfura/Na Yombi and the second is training.

The awareness programme had an overall objective of defining and refining the expectations of the service providers and receivers. In the process of getting service providers in the loop, RDB looked at sector by sector, identifying the root causes of the inefficiency, interviewed the clients, the employees/staff, the services consumers and professionals in that particular industry. It was after identifying the causes that interventions were designed. The designed interventions include; developing service standards, training of trainers in customer care, managerial interventions and marketing and communication of the information to the general public. Service standards were developed in the priority sectors of;

i) Banking

ii) Hospitality

iii) Transport

iv) Health

v) Local and central governments and

vi) Telecommunications

Training then ensued in 2009, with a particular emphasis on what service providers should avail and what the consumers’ expectations should be. Consumers, in this case, have a big role to play in the rejection of a bad service, so their expectations were as well catered for and well defined. Since the inception of the training programme in 2009, a total of 18,200 service providers have been trained in collaboration with RIAM and WDA. Some of the causes of poor customer service include; poor communication skills, especially because he language skills haven’t been fully polished, sluggish completion of asks, poor problem solving and an insufficiency in technical and soft skills. It was therefore recommended that raining in communication be carried out, minimum standards in language skills for new employees be established and induction courses be made a salient part of the employment processes so that employees are introduced to a better understanding of their technical work and have a good mastery of the environment in which they do operate.

The Ministry of Education was tasked to develop a curriculum and incorporate customer care modules to be delivered to the learners in both primary and secondary sections of education. The said modules have been developed and their teaching has already started. The Ministry of Labour and Public Service (MIFOTRA) has developed, dispatched and implemented Citizens’ Charters which, simply put, are agreements between the public service providers and the consumers with the expectations from both ends clearly defined in terms of time-frames, quality and efficiency with which the services are provided. The implementation of the Citizens’ Charters today stands at 80% and expected to be fully implemented  by the end of 2013.

On a national level, the government has nominated a Customer Care National Task Force under the Office of the Prime Minister, with a mandate of monitoring and carrying out inspections to establish whether the recommended standards are observed. In this Customer Care Project, the RDB has put in the employ a number of communication conduits so as to reach as many people as possible; radio and television talk-shows,  the print media and road-shows that have covered the whole country. Through this mass media campaign, over 2.5 million people have been reached.

In the next two years, RDB will embark on behaviour change campaigns. The pre-awareness and awareness campaigns have been successful, now it’s time to monitor the implementation and how service providers put into practice what they have been introduced to. The anticipation is to have all people demand for efficient services and the providers doing so naturally and effortlessly meeting every expectation. They have been given the tools, so we shall continue with the monitoring right from the sector levels where the trainers of trainers have got base.

Rica Rwigamba, Head RDB Tourism and Conservation

Customer care in Rwanda still presents some challenges, but on the whole has greatly improved compared to yesteryears. It is important to have a vibrant breed of service providers that respect the values of good customer service to keep pace with the growing folio of investments in the hospitality industry and the whole spectrum of services.There is, for example an estimated growth of accommodation rooms at 700 per year. With each room apportioned 2.5 persons, there is a need of more than 1000 well trained personnel in the accommodation sub-component of the hospitality industry per year.

We are optimistic that such levels and more will be attained, given the growing interest and attitude change among the youth who have so far embraced the opportunities and developing careers in the tourism industry. The government of Rwanda has been very instrumental in supporting the youth to acquire skills from such institutions as Utalii College in Kenya, and others in South Africa, in addition to the home-based colleges such as the Rwanda Tourism University College, AKILA Institute, Remera School of Hospitality under the auspices of the Workforce Development Authority, the Heaven Restaurant (which has a training wing in hospitality and culinary sciences)  among others, which all polish the skills of these young and other practicing Rwandese in the industry.

The management of Serena Kigali Hotel has come up with a Serena Initiative, which will work towards expending skills among the industry players through attachment, coaching and mentoring. A platform, the Tourism Skills Council, where the RDB-Tourism and Conservation Department will, on a regular basis, interact with key practitioners in the industry to share experiences and deliberate on best practices and monitoring mechanism, has, too, been created. To ensure a good feedback mechanism, suggestion boxes have been placed in key hotels and institutions to have comments, recommendations and complaints on a regular basis and work on those areas that require improvement. RDB will also soon open a hotline for complaints.

The Customer Care Task Force in the Prime Minister’s Office, reinforces RDB in the inspection of standards on a regular basis. As Rwanda continues to excel in a number of governance lattices; zero tolerance o corruption, grassroots service delivery, Doing Business, among others, we believe we can as well work towards, and already treading in the direction of, building a very vibrant breed of professional service providers that respects and sure to reap from the tenets of good customer care.