Safaricom (NSE: SCOM) has opened its Ksh 900 million call centre in Eldoret town to ensure that the bar on customer experience is continuously raised.
The new hub has also created job opportunities for over 800 people.
“Today, we celebrate yet another milestone in line with our strategic business objective of putting the customer first. We want to ensure that, as we continue growing and investing in technology and in our network, we do not lose sight of our customers and their needs”, said Sylvia Mulinge, Chief Customer Officer Safaricom
The Call Centre will further enhance Safaricom’s efficiency in handling the over 150,000 calls received daily and help resolve customer queries much faster.
To create job opportunities for the youth, Safaricom will be recruiting 300 interns from various local universities in Uasin Gishu County giving them an opportunity to learn and gain experience.
“Our plan is to offer three months paid internships for students from various campuses within the county. This will not only help us to build partnerships with the learning institutions but will also enable us offer the youth work experience and mentorship,” said Ms. Mulinge.
Eldoret town currently has two fully operational Safaricom retail shops which offer a wide range of services and products. Rift valley has over 21 customer service desks and 9 retail shops spread across the region.
“We welcome Safaricom’s move to set up a Call Centre in Uasin Gishu. Eldoret is a cosmopolitan town and is also one of the fastest growing towns in Kenya making it an attractive destination for businesses. We thank Safaricom for partnering with us to transform the lives of our people”, said Jackson Mandago, Governor, Uasin Gishu County as he officially launched the Call Centre,.
In an effort to reduce the number of calls to their Call Centres , Safaricom has in the recent past increased awareness of their available self-care solutions. This has resulted in 24 million daily uses of the USSD solution and over 700,000 smartphone customers using the mySafaricomapp daily.
The telco also launched Safaricom Jitambulishe which is a Voice Biometrics identification system. Jitambulishe allows customers to use their voices for authentication before accessing assisted services such as resetting their M-PESA PIN and PUK requests.
Last year Safaricom introduced Zuri, an artificial intelligence (AI) Chatbot assistant available on Telegram and Facebook Messenger. Zuri enables over 17 million Safaricom mobile data users to perform a wide range of tasks like manage subscription services including viewing subscriptions and unsubscribing from chargeable SMS services. Other queries that Zuri can handle include M-PESA reversals, buying bundles, airtime top up and checking M-PESA and airtime balances.
