Safaricom looks to hire 600 customer care specialists

Corporate News

A customer service operator at Safaricom's call centre. Safaricom is to hire more than 600 new customer care specialists to address customer service concerns among its clients. PHOTO | FILE 

By BRIAN NGUGI, @brian_ngugi bnjoroge@ke.nationmedia.com

In Summary

• The mobile giant early this year embarked on a new strategy to increase access to its customers by opening regional headquarters across the country.

Safaricom is set to hire more than 600 new customer care specialists to address customer service concerns among its clients.

Safaricom Chief Executive Officer Bob Collymore said Friday the new hires will be placed in major towns across Kenya in what will see the company its customer care capacity four times. The telco is eyeing to have 250 retail outlets across the country by the end of the year.

Mr Collymore also said plans to set up a second state of the art customer care centre to facilitate the customer service are underway.

“We know that we are not providing our customers with the best experience when it comes to customer care…we trust that the move will go some way towards fixing some of the capacity issues we have,” Mr Collymore said at the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) held in Nairobi.

The firm receives over 400,000 calls every day from its clients, said Mr Collymore.

The mobile giant early this year embarked on a new strategy to increase access to its customers by opening regional headquarters across the country.

In the strategic approach the company devolved its operations to dedicate resources directly within the counties, where teams have been tasked with focusing on enhanced service delivery and customer engagement.

Mr Collymore, reiterated the company is keen to close gaps between consumers and the company through building an increasing number of touch points around the country being implemented under the new approach.