AN OPEN LETTER TO SAFARICOM!

Safaricom Limited is the leading provider of converged communication solutions in Kenya- This is the bio you will find in their Twitter account (@SafaricomLtd). Well, this is true; it’s the leading company in Kenya’s telecommunication industry. This started a decade ago when it introduced ‘per second billing’ over its competitor then KenCell (now Airtel) which was offering ‘per minute billing' call services. Over a long period of time, the company has rapidly grown and developed having acquired the largest percentage of subscribers in the country. This has been enhanced by offering quality mobile communication services to Kenyans. Another key contributor to its success is its innovations it has always come up with including The Safaricom Foundation and MPesa. For a long time, I’ve used services of all the mobile networks in Kenya and I finally decided to stick with Safaricom, why? It has quality services comparing to the others. This is a fact. As much as it might not be perfect, it is a quality network- give credit where it deserves. This is the apparent reason why it has many subscribers but what is the subscribers’ attitude towards Safaricom? I’m a fan of social media and for a long time I’ve seen customers complaining and terming Safaricom as ‘the bitter option’, ‘thieves’ or ‘wezi’ in Swahili. This is simply because it charges slightly costly for its services over the other competitors- to maintain their services. For a long time, many people have said that people stick with Safaricom because of MPesa but this is not true- they (including me) stick with it because it is the only mobile network which offers quality services- no any other network with matched services. This is what makes people stay with it despite knowing it is ‘the bitter option’.

Having discovered its strengths, Safaricom has noticed its dominance in Kenya and in this regard, it has gone ahead to ‘take advantage’ of the loyal customer in one way or the other. First was the scraping of anything to do with ‘unlimited’ including unlimited Internet, unlimited SMS and so on- so that the consumer can use the renewable bundles. Well, as much as there might be other reasons for this including ‘this is business’, then to my understanding, this is a way of taking advantage of the consumer. The most recent was the introduction of the new daily internet bundles with free SMSs. Previously, the bundles were 5MB-5/-, 10MB-8/-, 25MB/- and now 5MB-5/- with 5 free SMSs, 10MB-10/- with ten free SMSs, 20MB-20/- with twenty free SMSs. If you noticed, the 20bob bundle has been reduced by 5MB and 10MB bundle price hiked by 2bob and thus ‘forcing’ the customer to get the ‘free’ SMSs once they purchase the bundle as a compensation or ‘blackmail’. This has been criticized by many people and yes I agree, there is no one time all the people will agree with one thing or fail to see a negative. However, Safaricom should not always ‘make decisions’ that will affect and ‘hurt’ the customer. It should put some efforts to at least do a survey to note what the customer really likes so as to offer close to perfect matches of services/offers. I just had to highlight the above example to get known of what I’m talking about. Kindly, Safaricom, try to change in the way you deliver services and offers, just be ‘considerate’ to the customers pockets in a ‘friendly’ manner. In the meantime, the other service providers should try up and down to offer quality services so that there is ‘fair’ competition in the telecommunications industry.