Customer care strategy to be beefed up – RDB

In a bid to reinforce service delivery around the country, Rwanda Development Board (RDB) is set to revise the customer care campaign strategy rolled out last year. The institution intends to focus on addressing the root causes of poor service delivery in organizations where policy practices and procedures are not clearly aligned with satisfying customer’s needs. “Some parts of the strategy have been addressed. We are now focusing on developing a toolkit for training organizations in researching the quality of service delivery they give,” Amin Gafaranga, the coordinator of country branding and customer care told Business Times on Saturday. The toolkit will also assist institutions in surveying customer satisfaction ,collecting information on satisfaction with service delivery , service charters , service level agreements and strategic planning to become customer centric. Gafaranga noted that RDB last year commissioned research to evaluate progress made so far to be able to give clear advice to government on how to improve the customer care strategy. A key finding by the two organizations commissioned including the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR) and OTF Rwanda revealed that customer care in Rwanda is still a major challenge despite on going efforts. Specifically, according to the IPAR research service is still poor as efforts are mainly focused on treating the symptoms not underlying root causes. “Both public and private sectors are not focused on their number one priority – service delivery,” said Gloria Lwakabamba a research fellow at IPAR last week. Lwakabamba also noted that lack of accountability and ownership amongst employees contributes to poor service delivery. “While the main focus is always on quality of service, research shows the two main drivers of customer satisfaction are, quality of service and value for money. Satisfied customers are more likely to return and more likely to recommend the service to others,” she said. However Gafaranga observed that the customer care strategy is being implemented in phases. Gafaranga noted that the campaign has so far been carried out in various parts of the country with the training of about 5,500 people from both public and private institutions. According to the official, RDB will continue to train and sensitize the public in addition to having the first customer care handbook in Kinyarwanda and English. Ends