Disgruntled KQ Customers hit the FB wave!

November 10, 2011 by 2 Comments

I guess now with so much media at our finger tips, there are many avenues to communicate your customer service concerns, especially if there is no or slow response from a phone conversation. Companies in Nairobi should by now have realised that customers have many options out there, this is what promotes market competition.

I recently travelled to visit my brother in the states. I was pleasantly surprised not by the good service that most outlets give, but by the fact that customers:

  1. Know their rights because they are paying for a service
  2. Take reviews very seriously and give reviews of just about EVERYTHING
  3. Expect great service or a decent explanation with compensation of sorts

Each time we went out anywhere we first had to check out the reviews online. If the review of a restaurant were bad then chances were that the service and food was bad. More people there air their views and without a care they are brutally honest. There is freedom to express your self, something we have not taken to as Kenyans to that level.
Until………………… Facebook Group named BOYCOTT KQ!! BOYCOTT KENYA AIRWAYS!!

I kid you not, search for it on Facebook and read the comments. I’m a member of the group though i personally have nothing against KQ, they seriously need to address their clients’ complaints. This FB group has actually become a BIG deal. The group is run by a disgruntled Nairobian, a friend to thee. I am all for speaking your mind especially when you have been screwed more than once and it has had adverse effects on you in terms of time, money and psychological distress.

KQ soon enough got wind of the group. There are soo many people who have shared their messed up stories of bad experiences with the airline –overbooked, 3 to 11hr delays on local flights, the staff – it should be an eye opener. The group administrator was contacted by KQ legal, and politely asked to remove the group page, but it’s still up and running. It’s on the group wall. I mean how cheeky, getting legal to call to scare off the group.

Kenyans have a right to express disappointment thanks to our constitution. I mean there are always great things about a company and then there is always room for improvement, no company is perfect. KQ has invited the group admin to go for a meeting which is to happen soon. This will perhaps be a way for them to try convince her in person to get the group off FB? Just speculating.

We are finally headed in the right direction demanding better standards of service because we are paying. Imagine if this could be done to all those companies out there that have messed you up. There are options out there and dear KQ by the looks of things you have many many disgruntled disappointed customers, the question is, what are you going to do about it?

Naomi Kinyanjui is an aspiring entrepreneur, a Procurement Specialist by profession with a passion for life, writing and making a difference. Follow her on Procurement Mentality 101 blog where the talk is all about supply chain and procurement and maintaining professionalism in such a controversial field.

Filed Under: Internet Culture Tagged With:

The Problem With Web Design

May 17, 2010 by 2 Comments

Ever wondered why perfectly good web designers sometimes produce *finished* (with the client happy and all) web designs that are total abominations?

It is true that some web designers are just not that good but I am convinced that most web designers know what they are doing. Well, I have some experience with web design and you may be surprised to find out the real reason for crappy and downright shameful websites is not the designer. It is the client.

When a client gets his/her hands dirty and starts directing one change after another on the ‘draft’ design, things almost always go from okay, to bad, to worse, and straight into web design hell.

The Oatmeal has a nice article on how this happens: How A Web Design Goes Straight To Hell.

Dear clients, I know you think you are doing the right thing, protecting your interests, etc etc but you have to realise that you are not a web designer! You hired the guy to do a job now let him do it – he/she probably knows what he/she is doing.

Every web design must have a certain “flow” to it so that, well, so that it looks good. Every time you suggest a change, you ruin this flow and the designer has to somehow try to bring it ‘back’.

If the designer was an engineer designing the turbine of a plane, would you have so many suggestions and “fixes”?

If you decide to hire someone, let that person do his job.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

How To Start An Online Shop

December 2, 2009 by 15 Comments

One of the most common questions we get goes like, “Hey, how do i set up an online shop?” Because we’re all about seeing the Internet come through for people in Kenya, especially financially, I decided to write an article on how to start your own online shop, easy. Enjoy 🙂

Trust me, it is a very daunting task and it involves a hell of a lot. Are you up for all that? I do not know. I do know one thing though, the opportunity to make lots and lots of money is still very much there. In all markets most online stores are, for lack of better words, a complete waste of time.

No joke – there are so many badly designed and structured online shops out there that you’d be surprised. You could choose any market place and still have a very good shot at making a killing. If only you use correct procedure. And guess what? The wealth of tools available for your use is just unbelievable – challenging the Top Dogs in any market is something very do-able.

Where do you start?
As I said earlier, starting an online shop is no easy task. Should you start your own, you are bound to make lots and lots of mistakes. However, I beg you to always work with this in mind: “Customers first, money second“. Got it? Good, you’ll never go wrong. Many, many businesses mess up this simple task.

Before anything else, you need to ask yourself the same questions you’d ask yourself if you were going into business in the offline world. Do you have something to market? Will people buy what you want to sell? Will they pay enough money for you to make a profit?

Next you’ll need to choose a name for your site/shop. Since this will be your identity, it is VERY important. Take time to choose a good and easy-to-remember name. Read more about this, if need be.

Building your website
Unfortunately, if you want the best results there are only two courses of action:

  1. Hire professionals to build you a site. People like us. 🙂
  2. Do it yourself, but only if you have the technical know-how.

That said, here are some things you should keep in mind:

  • How many products do you have? If you have just a few, your site will look bare. (Depending on how it is built)
  • What type of products are you selling? This will affect how you display them – jewellery will be displayed differently from, say, aquariums. :p
  • You must have good quality pictures of your products.
  • Include item descriptions jameni! Of course your customers want to know this.
  • Ensure that your site loads quickly and that it is easy to navigate.
  • As well as making your site the best it can be for customers, make sure it is very easy for you to update it i.e. add new products or change prices.
  • Make the selling process as easy and as fast as possible. You don’t really need to make your customers register at your site, do you? This is an unnecessary step that will cost you sales!

Because I love my readers, I shall suggest a super easy way to build a top-of-the-range online shop. Listen carefully:

  1. Download wordpress
  2. Install wordpress on a server somewhere. How?
  3. Install this wordpress theme. How?
  4. Install this wordpress plugin. How?
  5. You have your very nice online shop!

Other tools you can use: Magento, osCommerce.

Web hosting
One your website is made, it needs to be hosted somewhere. This is so that it is accessible to the whole of the Internet. Learn more.

If you’re going to handle any kind of financial transactions through your website, you need to make sure your web host offers secure servers. This means that they offer SSL encryption. You should find out whether your prospective web host offers SSL encryption as part of its regular package or charges extra for this service.

When your website is your storefront, if your website is down, your store is closed – or worse, effectively nonexistent. So you need a web host that offers at least a 99% uptime guarantee. While asking about a web host’s uptime guarantee, you might also inquire as to its back up systems in case of emergencies.

There are hundreds of good web hosts out there. I recommend that you choose us. 🙂

Marketing your online shop
The key to online retailing is to strive to get as many people visiting your shop as possible. Please, please keep search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind. If need be, hire someone to do your SEO.

There are some helpful articles here and here. Oh and we are also available to help you with SEO.

Dealing with payments
You will need a way to accept payments online, or at the very least accept orders online. Many modern online shop creation systems (like the ones I suggested earlier) do this right out of the box. If you intend to sell to people in Kenya, it would be helpful to be able to receive payments by ZAP and MPESA. Here’s an article we wrote about this topic.

Conclusion
We haven’t covered everything you need to know in this article, but most of it is up there. You can have your shop ready by next week if you follow what the article says.

Good luck 🙂

PS I was thinking of doing a follow-up article on this topic by going step by step through what I did when setting up an existing online shop. Anyone interested?

Image courtesy of Jesse757.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , , ,

That word again…

August 15, 2009 by 2 Comments

Overheard at a bank (the dreadful KCB):

Customer: Could you give me a KCB pen?
KCB employee: I don’t have pens sir.
Customer: But you work here, could you get me one?
KCB employee: I’m sorry that isn’t in my job description..

What the hell is going on here? Not in your job description? Please. it’s called customer care, honey. See, it doesn’t matter what is in your job description – when dealing with a customer your job description is to make him/her happy! Sheesh. If I was the employee’s superior I’d seriously consider firing her. On the spot.

Customer care people, customer care.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Safaricom

July 21, 2009 by Leave a Comment

There’s no doubt that Safaricom is one of the very best companies in Kenya. I’m proud that such an innovative and, simply amazing company is Kenyan! God bless all that is good in Safaricom.

Sometimes they make me wonder, though. Actually, they make me wonder a lot. Their customer care is not the worst but it is worse than most. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the term “Sufferingcom” – there’s even a Facebook group! Not to mention that many of my friends and family have “sworn” that they will vuka to another mobile phone service the minute we get mobile number portability in Kenya. (Mobile number portability allows you to move to Orange, for example, but keep your Safaricom number.) What if you could move to Zain, YU, or Orange and keep your Safaricom number, would you vuka too?

I recently won a prize (imagine that) in the ongoing Safaricom “Activate your drive” competition/promotion. I have never won any prize ever before so I was thrilled! Alas, I no longer am thrilled. Collecting the prize has turned out to be harder than I thought it should be. If I won it, why not just give it to me? It’s gone as far as someone from “marketing” being shockingly rude about this. Considering that the “Activate your drive” promotion is supposed to be marketing Safaricom, I find how Safaricom have handled me quite shocking. I suppose sometimes you get too big to care about the little guy.

Marketing is not just the adverts and other promotional gimmicks. It is how ‘customer care’ answer the phone; it is the way you speak to customers; it is the quality of your products or services; it is being honest and genuine. Marketing isn’t what you do when you want to make a sale. It is an ongoing process that starts even before you create your products.

Safaricom, you disappoint me.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: ,

Customer Service

June 27, 2009 by 2 Comments

I was at a bank today, one of the nice big ones (the mighty KCB, in fact). Guess what? I was in line for a hole hour and, get this, there were only two people ahead of me in the queue! The lady who was serving us kept disappearing into some back room for long stretches of time. God knows why!

So it got me thinking. Why do banks in Kenya always, always have long queues? And why is it that there is always a counter or two with no teller present? I cannot find a logical reason why “management” would let this happen. Can you? Perhaps it is the same flawed logic that opened up the opportunity for, and led to, the rise and rise of Equity bank. Who knows?

This just goes to show yet again that the average customer in Kenya is maltreated. And not just by banks, by everyone – with Safaricom being the chief and most visible culprit!

If you think about it, you will realise that that the maltreatment of the customer is not just a Kenyan affair, it happens everywhere. Often, the mentality is that customer service is some sort of necessary evil. Why else is customer service often an afterthought? Why else would companies, by the truckloads, be signing up to outsource customer support services (think overseas call center)? Jeez, outsource customer service? Really?

Customer service is not a cost center. Customer service is a profit center. Indeed it is the cheapest form of marketing.

Photo by 23am.com

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