Vodafone quality circle team to compete at international expo
27 May, 2005
A Vodafone Fiji Quality Circle team is set to join teams from all over the world to compete at the 2005 International Expo on Innovation and Quality in Singapore next week.
Vodafone Fiji's Nilesh Chandra, the deputy team leader, will lead the 9-member Team Teiri which was one of two quality circles judged the best projects within Vodafone Fiji. The other team, Fort Knox, competed last year at another quality meet in Bangkok.
Team Teiri's project revolved around tackling why some customers were finding it difficult to connect to the Vodafone network during the 7pm-9pm peak period.
The team found out that the difficulty stemmed from a high number of free customer enquiry calls during the peak period.
"The obvious but very expensive solution was an upgrade of the network system capacity," says team leader Manosh Singh, who is not going with the team.
This was unnecessary as the network remained under-used during other periods so the problem was to balance the traffic during the two-hours at night.
The inexpensive and innovative solution that Team Teiri adopted was to push account balance inquires to the SMS medium.
An extensive awareness campaign was launched with customers advised to send a blank text message to destination 131. The service was free of charge and customers received instant replies advising of call costs, current balance and expiry date.
"The results directly led customers being able to get through during this period, an increase in revenue due to the completion of previous 'can't get through' calls and an increased awareness of SMS, leading to an increase in SMS revenue," says Singh.
"Customer satisfaction increased as has customer loyalty towards Vodafone Fiji as customers perceive value in Vodafone's better service," says Singh.
This is the second time Team Teiri is participating in the Singapore expo.
The internal quality circles competition is in line with Vodafone Fiji's goal of adopting international best practices, standards, and methods of operation.
Last year, the company won the President's Award at the Fiji Business Excellence Awards.
27 May, 2005
A Vodafone Fiji Quality Circle team is set to join teams from all over the world to compete at the 2005 International Expo on Innovation and Quality in Singapore next week.
Vodafone Fiji's Nilesh Chandra, the deputy team leader, will lead the 9-member Team Teiri which was one of two quality circles judged the best projects within Vodafone Fiji. The other team, Fort Knox, competed last year at another quality meet in Bangkok.
Team Teiri's project revolved around tackling why some customers were finding it difficult to connect to the Vodafone network during the 7pm-9pm peak period.
The team found out that the difficulty stemmed from a high number of free customer enquiry calls during the peak period.
"The obvious but very expensive solution was an upgrade of the network system capacity," says team leader Manosh Singh, who is not going with the team.
This was unnecessary as the network remained under-used during other periods so the problem was to balance the traffic during the two-hours at night.
The inexpensive and innovative solution that Team Teiri adopted was to push account balance inquires to the SMS medium.
An extensive awareness campaign was launched with customers advised to send a blank text message to destination 131. The service was free of charge and customers received instant replies advising of call costs, current balance and expiry date.
"The results directly led customers being able to get through during this period, an increase in revenue due to the completion of previous 'can't get through' calls and an increased awareness of SMS, leading to an increase in SMS revenue," says Singh.
"Customer satisfaction increased as has customer loyalty towards Vodafone Fiji as customers perceive value in Vodafone's better service," says Singh.
This is the second time Team Teiri is participating in the Singapore expo.
The internal quality circles competition is in line with Vodafone Fiji's goal of adopting international best practices, standards, and methods of operation.
Last year, the company won the President's Award at the Fiji Business Excellence Awards.
