Upgrading customer care in Rwanda

For a long time now, there has been poor customer service within most businesses in Kigali. However, the infamous trend seems to be changing, atleast gradually, following a number of initiatives mainly by the Government to improve service delivery in the country over the years.According to the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) Customer Care Unit, the level of customer satisfaction grew from 60% in 2010, to 70% by the end of 2012, according to research carried out in public and private institutions countrywide by the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR). A number of signs point to this growth, like the international recognition the country has received in recent years as far as hospitality and quality service delivery is concerned. For example, the Travel Specialist, an American travel magazine, early this year ranked Rwanda fourth best out of 139 countries world-wide in “Most Hospitable Countries”. Also, the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness report, released early, this year, indicated that Rwanda was best in East and Southern Africa as far as being “welcoming” to international visitors was concerned.Today, if you walked into most restaurants, around Kigali during working hours, you will be sure to be treated with relative urgency and unusual warmth, something that was unheard of a few years ago. “A number of corporations have introduced suggestion boxes, so they can tap their clients’ complaints or ideas, something that wasn’t common before,” observes Faith Kabeza, Manager of GM Consult, a Kigali based consultating firm. A couple of factors could have driven the change in attitude of the service sector players as far as customer care issues go. Below are some of them;There was the launch of the National Task Force on Customer Care and Service Delivery under the Prime Minister’s office in November 2012, which carried out random inspections of institutions to monitor and evaluate performance before making recommendations. This drove sector players to improve their service quality, so as to avoid embarrassment.Also, programmes launched by Rwanda Development Board (RDB) since 2012, aimed at improving the quality of customer services by upgrading skills of the service providers through such initiatives as Na Yombi project. “Already 18,200 people from both the private and public sectors have been trained by RDB in collaboration with the Workforce Development Authority (WDA) and the Rwanda Institute of Administration and Management (RIAM), through Na Yombi since 2009,” says Yves K. Ngenzi, the RDB customer care unit manager. Sandra Idossou, a Kigali based customer care consultant, says, “More banks, for example, have introduced e-payments and automated teller/queue machines, so clients no longer have to spend hours in lines to get a service.” “A number of people have learnt to invest in online customer care service, like websites and emails through which they are able to communicate and get feedback from clients; something that was barely considered important before,” notes Bonita Iyakaremye, a restaurant proprietor in Kimironko. “A number of people before the senstisation, didn’t know receiving good service was their right and this shows that our efforts have been an eye opener,” adds Yves. However so many challenges remain. Idossou observes that most local institutions pay attention only to the front desk customer care, ignoring the other company departments so as to serve the clients better.Ngenzi says that though the majority of sectors like banking, transport, and tourism, and local government offices are experiencing improvement as far as customer care service is concerned, the water utilities sector still lags behind.The other obstacle cited is inadequate communication skills, since very few customer care assistants in the country can communicate fluently in all the three official languages; French, English and Kinyarwanda. So sometimes relating with foreign tourists, for example, becomes difficult.Ngenzi also says that while the hotel industry is booming, no equivalent number of hospitality graduates has been churned out to counter the manpower gap, which could explain why the sector is still filled with unprofessional staff. In addition, Rwandans culturally are not known for being punctual. “We are known to take our time and actually be okay with it. So this perhaps explains why people take long to respond to customers sometimes,” Kabeza remarks further. She also points out that business people still promise what they can’t deliver. For example, most times, 60% of what is listed on the menu in local restaurants is actually never available, and this demoralises clients. Idossou concludes that for the service sector to ever be a national model, the awareness campaign should extended to the grassroots. The freshly unveiled Second Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS2) has a target of over 80% as far as customer satisfaction is concerned in the next five years. Together we can achieve it.

Insight

Upgrading customer care in Rwanda