Yes! There are more than 10 million Vodacom Tanzania (Vodacom Tz) subscribers, amongst whom more than 50 000 interact with the company every day. Having served these customers, Vodacom Tz would like to know how satisfied they were with the service they just received, in real time.
To achieve this, they are using "Tharollo," a software developed by the National University of Lesotho (NUL) graduates through their company called Enigma Incorporated (Enigma).
Soon after the interactions, the software (Tharollo) makes a follow up with these numerous customers, speaking in their many languages, “Hi there, how was your experience?”
“Doing this work for Vodacom Tz was one of the most interesting projects we have done,” said the NUL trained Saleem Ismail, the company’s founder and Managing Director.
But it was not easy. “To appreciate the complexity of the work we had to deliver, look it at this way,” Saleem continued. “We had to develop a software that was able to work with at least 6 other software that the company already uses to interact with its customers. It had to understand and communicate with all these software!”
“Enigma has an army of mostly NUL trained software gurus, from project managers to software engineers who are always ready to deliver like nothing on earth”, Saleem Said.
It was not by chance that Enigma is now working with huge international behemoths like Vodacom Tz. From humble beginnings, Enigma has grown in leaps and bounds until it caught the attention of big organisations, local and international. “Our growth strategy goes like this,” Saleem said. “Whenever we get a project, we give it our all. This makes it easy for our client to recommend us to others.”
Tharollo started in Vodacom Lesotho as customer feedback management system, its success in Lesotho attracted interest of Vodacom Tanzania.
That pretty much sums up how they ended up landing a contract with Vodacom Tanzania and other international players.
So what is the basis of this interaction?
Vodacom Tz wanted to solve a problem. It has a massive customer base, a whopping more than 10 million subscribers! To put it in perspective, it is 5 times the whole population of Lesotho! Among the 10 million plus, around 50, 000 of them interact with the company each day through call centres, retail outlets, website, mobile app, social media and all other so-called touch-points.
Now, Vodacom Tz is smart.
It knows that each one of those customers is important. So it wants to know how they feel about the company. Yes, how a customer feels about you is a matter of life and death in business. So they wanted someone to help them track their customer relationship, customer satisfaction and customer perception through global Net Promoter Score (NPS) standards.
Constantly getting customer feedback does not only give you an idea of what your customers think, it also gives you an idea of how your employees are performing, which specific employees are particularly good (or not so good) and which specific products and services are doing well (or not so well).
It is a minefield of information that is invaluable.
Little did they know that they would go as far as the tiny Mountain Kingdom to pick a giant that would deliver. They located Enigma in Lesotho and never looked back.
They would not be disappointed.
Imagine this. Each of the touchpoints through which a customer interacts with the company are tried and tested systems, developed by seasoned companies from Portugal, India, USA and South Africa, among others. And here was a challenge according to Saleem, “we had to develop a software that would be able to communicate, understand and be understood by all these different software.”
What does that mean?
Let’s suppose you are phoning Vodacom Tz about a certain problem you have with their service. Not too long after you have made a call, you automatically receive a follow-up survey from Tharollo, mostly in the language you used to call and the relevant issue you were concerned about, “Hi there, how were you treated? Were you satisfied with the service received?” and so on.
The same thing happens whether you contact the company through other channels such as call-centre, retail outlets, website, social media, etc.
Think about this. Most companies interview their customers once a year (at which time they had already forgotten their experiences). Vodacom Tz, through Enigma, interviews them all the time and gets fresh feedback, which is immediately analysed, for decision-making.
Enigma delivered it all, “we formed formidable teams on Enigma and Vodacom Tz sides, technically and at management level ,” Saleem said. “Then we executed.”
In the end, Vodacom Tz is more than happy with the outcome of the project. How do we know? It is engaging Enigma in more developments. In Enigma, it has found a true partner.
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