In a bid to align the country to world class standards in service delivery, Rwanda Development Board (RDB) this week organised a customer service campaign to encourage private organisations to deliver better services.

The training came as Rwanda marked the International Customer Service Week under the theme: "Everyday Heroes”.

In an interview with The New Times, the Customer Care Division Manager at RDB; Yvès Ngenzi, said that the week was characterised by a door-to-door campaign, mostly in private organisations.

"We have visited private companies to encourage them on customer service. We focused on companies working in transport and hotels as the country is getting ready to host Transform Africa Summit,” he said.

Ngenzi added that the private sector was still lagging behind in customer service despite the progress made over the past five years.

"Research carried out in 2013/2014 within public and private institutions indicates that customer satisfaction stood at 71 per cent, up from 60 per cent in 2010. However, we still have a long way to go to hit the national target of 80 per cent by 2017,” he said

Ngenzi also said that improvement in customer service had drastically increased the annual number of visitors from a mere 4,000 at the beginning of the decade to over 1.2 million last year.

According to Global Competitiveness Index, Rwanda’s customer service in the private sector currently stood at the third position in the region, after Kenya and Uganda, while the public sector won the first position in the region, with the Directorate of Immigration and Emigration being the overall best in customer care. RDB’s concept note stated that poor customer service had been identified as one of the threats impeding the vision 2020 targets. In this regard, RDB has aligned the five pillars of customer service to the national vision 2020.

The pillars include communication, problem solving, timeliness, professionalism and ease of doing business.

The International Customer Service Week is marked annually at the beginning of October to recognise the importance of customer service and honour people who serve customers with the highest care.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw