James Odomel
2 December 2008
interview
Kampala — WARID Telecom won two international awards from the just concluded AfricaCom Awards 2008 held in Cape Town, South Africa.
James Odomel talked to the chief commercial officer, Tushar Maheshwari.
Briefly tell us about the awards you won?
We won the Best Customer Service Provider of the Year Award, which recognised our strategy launched in 2008 that significantly increased customer satisfaction and improved relations between us.
Contenders for this award were required to show innovative use of technology to improve customer relations and develop the services provided.
It also needed us to demonstrate how the initiative helped the company differentiate from its competitors to improve its business.
This could be endorsed with customers-testimonies.
We also scooped the New Entrant of the Year Award.
The judges were looking for an operator who developed a unique business model to offer new a service in their region.
Judges looked at the company's network deployment strategy, effective branding and marketing campaigns for the launch of its services.
We showed outstanding results following our launch in terms of customer up-take, revenues and growth prospects.
What does this mean to you?
This is a true reflection of the faith the Ugandan consumers have put in us.
We owe these awards to them because they made it possible for us to compete among Africa's best and walk away with these prestigious honours.
You been have involved in a lot of promotions since you opened shop. Do you have anything to show as a result?
Yes. We launched the "Bang KB for Free" followed by "Megabonus" and now we have the "Incoming Call Bonus".
All these were a first in this market and we have had phenomenal success from them as is evident from Warid getting past the one million mark in just eight months and getting these two awards.
Apart from that, customers have appreciated our efforts and competition is following us.
What services do you offer that are different from those of the other operators?
We had the Music Zone Product Note, this is a VAS IVR music portal.
This allows subscribers to listen to a variety of music on their phones by dialing the short code 172.
The service is charged at sh399 per call.
The user can also press option nine to listen to songs that they previously added to their personal play list.
The other is the Game Zone Product Note.
This is an IVR based number game where customers can win a cash jackpot by entering a five digit number.
Customers can play the game in English, Luganda or Luo. The first option chosen will become the default option for subsequent trials.
The short code for Game Zone is 174 and the tariff is sh499 per minute.
We also have the Holy Quran IVR service, which allows users to listen to the Holy Quran on the Interactive Voice Reponse System (IVR), especially during the Holy month of Ramadhan.
Subscribers can listen to all the "Surahs" from the Holy Quran.
The service is charged at sh299 per call.
Tell us about the subscriber base and what you are targeting, say in two years
We have over 1.2 million subscribers and hope to be a major player with an aggressive market share in two years.
What innovations and strategies are you introducing?
All our new services, promotions and service are innovative. Innovation is our key strength. We believe in doing things differently. Right from the time we started business we have launched many innovations: number on demand/Warid on wheels? Clear signal campaign and the cars we ran to support this.
We have a number of services, which are not offered by competitors or were launched after us like music on demand, Game Zone and talking SMS.
We also plan to start voice chat service soon.
Music dedication/Talking SMS. We will soon be launching Voice Chat service.
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