Developing the Product/ Service

Telecommunications, also known as telecom, is the exchange of information over significant distances by electronic means and refers to all types of voice, data, and video transmission. This is a broad term that includes a wide range of information transmitting technologies such as telephones (wired and wireless), microwave communications, fiber optics, satellites, radio and television broadcasting, the internet and telegraphs.

Telecommunication is one of the few businesses in the South Africa that new competitors could hardly join. It’s because the Telecommunication industry is highly concentrated in terms of the budget by the government, plus the various fees and licenses considered necessary for operation. This kind of business environment creates a duopolistic structure in the telecommunication industry in the country. Also, the current good fiscal standing of the country together with the strong growth of internet usage makes the telecommunication industry in the South Africa an attractive industry to invest even though the products and services that contributes revenue to the industry are either weakening or is slowly declining. Mofrica is one of the big players in the telecommunication industry in the South Africa.

Mofrica has an active and dedicated customer service including social media. It has a twitter account created to respond to the issues and queries of the customers. This support service offered by Mofrica is active and responds quickly. The company has been in existence for a period of twenty-two years in the telecommunication industry, with over twenty million pools of customers. The company also has the largest pool of customers as opposed to its competitors. This has given a competitive edge against the competitors. With the high number of customers, the company is able to achieve higher margins of profit as they enjoy economies of scale to a greater deal. With more income than the competitors, the organization has been able to invest in infrastructure that has boosted connectivity even to the neighboring countries. A stiff competition exists between a rising company in internet service provision and us, although we still boast of a whopping 79 percent share in the market. Recently we have expanded our services to a roaming service in the neighboring nations. The expansion has seen the rise of our total income made in this year by a margin of 8 percent we attribute this to the new pool of customers made through the roaming service. Our mission statement states that we strive to give our customers a world-class standard and aim at becoming their critical partners in their daily lives as they grow to achieve their dreams through reliable telecommunication services

Flowchart:

The Task Environment of a company is the environment which directly affects the company from attaining their business goals. In brief, it is the set of conditions that directly affect the organization from attaining their goals which are derived from suppliers, distributors, customers, stock markets, and competitors. In addition, task environment refers to the forces and institutions outside the organization with which an organization interfaces in the course of conducting its business. These forces and institutions are directly significant to the attainment of the company’s goals because they have direct and immediate impact on decisions and actions of managers. The important components of task environment are: customers and clients, suppliers, and competitors.

As per the above flow chart, order is placed by a customer to front sales executive. That executive bills the amount to customer. Once the payment is received, he/she passes the order to operational staff and deposits the fund to accountant. Here, operational staff prepares and delivers the order and accountant readies the bill. With further documentation, it is forwarded for further processing. All these set of activities are properly monitored and supervised by team leader for effective and efficient delivery.

All above roles are mandatory and interdependent on each other. For an example, payment is collected by sales executive but order is prepared by operational staff. If order is not prepared on time, payment will be returned back to the customer. Further, replenishment of inventory is mandatory for successful delivery of orders. Thus, without positive contributions from each other, service delivery process cannot be completed with a success.

Taking into consideration the dominant market position of Mofrica in the land telephony segment, and the rising trend in IP telephony usage, the Group’s market shares in traditional land telephony decreased for the past few years as a result of entry of alternative operators in that segment. Market share of Mofrica in land telephony is still high at more than 70%, which indicates that the Company provides land telephony services for 500 thousand. In 2015 its market share decreased by 2.3 %.

Analyze at least three possible contact point failures in the service delivery process for your organization. Why do you consider these to be possible contact point failures?

The telecom companies prefer to provide quality services to the target customers along with various consumer-friendly call, SMS and data facility. The human resource department of telecom sector guides the employees and supports employees to provide quality service facilities.

The telecom industry is a constantly evolving industry where human resource managers cannot get sufficient time to provide training. Hence, various staffs remain unskilled and improperly capable. Moreover, the lack of communication in the human resource department is one of the critical obstacles which restricts the sector to grow adequately.

There are some factors to consider in succeeding in the telecommunication industry in the South Africa. The most important factor is the reliability of the products and the service they provide and the level of satisfaction their subscribers enjoy. This is considered are a critical stage for the competitors in the telecommunication industry. Having those factors on the right track will surely lead the company to success.

The knowledge gap includes the failure in the service delivery process wherein there is the gap in the service quality process.

The standards gap is the problem in the perception of the management regarding the expectations of the customers towards the design of the service delivery process.

When the organization has the lack of goals then it can affect the management.

There was a gap of communication between the actual service delivered and what the external communication of the organization promised regarding the service.

Recommendation:

The company must improve on its customer satisfaction and technical expertise in dealing with network reliability issues by having more customer service and technical training to all its employees and hire new employees with good customer service expertise and with necessary skills and knowledge of its work. Also, the management must lower its corporate hierarchy by at least 1 level for better upper management visibility, creating a clear escalation procedures and complaint prioritization and easy and user-friendly survey and feedback forms and procedures that is regularly reviewed by top management and tied to each employee’s key performance indicator. Below are few recommendations for the company.

· Make a high customer service skill as a major factor in hiring new employees

· Hire industry experts on customer service into the company

· Get individual consultants and companies to advise MOFRICA LTD on how to improve its internal business processes to be more focus on customer satisfaction

· Conduct customer service training from internal and external sources

· Empower management to be more involve in dealing with customer complaints and issues.

Developing the service skills of employees will have an opportunity for the MOFRICA LTD in attracting more customers and it will be a good practice for the company for more revenue and income recognition.

References

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