Rwandans should step up efforts towards customer care, a renowned Customer Service leader, John Tschohl, told over 400 people attending a customer care seminar in Kigali, yesterday.

The seminar was organised by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) in conjunction with the Private Sector Federation (PSF) and Service Quality Institute under the theme: "Achieving Excellence through Customer Service.”
It brought together participants from both the public and private sector.

Speaking at the one day seminar, Tschohl highlighted key strategies to be used to grab the market.
"People need to reduce costs, create customer friendly systems, policies and also train their employees about service delivery at least after every four to five months,” Tschohl said.  

The seminar is among the key strategies geared towards improving service delivery in the country, while improving skills which are crucial to improving the performance of institutions.

Earlier, while opening the seminar, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Emmanuel Hategeka, said that customer care service is among the key development issues which the government has prioritised.
He urged the participants to heed the lessons learnt, implement them, noting that if Rwanda can lead in doing business; it can also lead in other domains like good quality service delivery.

"If we can’t compete on price because we are landlocked, then we can compete on quality and put the country as the destination of quality service provider,” Hategeka said.
According to a recent research conducted by the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR), there are still gaps in service delivery in the country.

The service sector contributes 44 percent of the economy and 6 out of the 10 biggest taxpayers are service-based companies.

Hategeka noted that the level of service provision is improving, but had still a long way to go.

The seminar was facilitated by John Tchohl, who is the President of Service Quality Institute, a US based institute with over 30 years experience in customer service.
It was attended by senior government officials and executives from the private and civil society.  

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