Social media has become an integral part for many companies across the globe to interact with their customers.

Some big corporates have even taken this new wave very seriously, to the extent of creating departments that deal with company communications via social media.

Such a company is Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecommunication company with a customer base of over 19 million subscribers.

The mobile operator has surpassed 500,000 likes on Facebook and it has taken social media so seriously that it has even received global recognition for its efforts.

ITWeb Africa caught up with Nzioka Waita, Safaricom ‘s director of corporate affairs, in a bid to find out the strategies the company employs to ensure it remains responsive to customer enquiries within the shortest time possible, and his thoughts on how other companies can follow suit to satisfy their customer needs online.

ELLY OKUTOYI: Safaricom is known for their prompt response to customer queries on social media. What are the key strategies you have employed to ensure you remain on top of things?

NZIOKA WAITA: Social media has placed Safaricom on the global map as a trendsetter within different aspects of social media. The Q2 2013 Social Baker study places Safaricom 5th on the most socially devoted organisations on Facebook with the lowest response time at 27 minutes compared to KLM at number one with 45 Minutes. Safaricom has constantly featured in the top 10 ranking of the most socially devoted organisations, a testament to our commitment to driving social media excellence by continuously raising the bar in customer service.

Our strategy is to provide a solid alternative customer touch point, in addition to the other multi-channels including call, SMS, e-mail and chat. According to the CCK July 13 report, there are 9.6 million internet subscriptions (in Kenya) thus providing the critical mass that solidifies this channel as a touch point. Our goal is simple, to deliver customer service excellence by giving our customers a ‘wow’ experience with each interaction, while responding within the shortest time possible.

Our sole purpose is customer delight.

ELLY OKUTOYI: How has social media changed the way you interact with your customers?

NZIOKA WAITA: At the heart of Safaricom’s social media strategy, we aim to satisfy the three principles of engagement that includes storability, collaboration and co-creation.

We apply social media within diverse contexts: building brand equity; engagement on our different passion pillars of music, sports, technology, fashion and lifestyle in line with our brand assets and key propositions such as the developer challenge for the technology segment; supporting the delivery of the company’s commercial objectives and providing a solid alternative channel for customer support.

Our strategy, which is constantly evolving therefore, aims to deliver our aspirations within the four key areas that I have highlighted.

In line with that, social media has changed the way we interact with our consumers in more ways than one. We focus on engagement as opposed to disseminating information which is the norm for traditional media. Our engagement with our customers is therefore focused on their passion pillars and need.

ELLY OKUTOYI: Has this use of social media led to a reduction in the number of calls coming into your customer care centre?

NZIOKA WAITA: The number of active internet customers is still a very small fraction of our over 19 million customer base, so we do have a majority still calling the call-centre to get help on various products and services. However, there has been a good number of our customers, specifically the younger generation who now only access customer care through the various online channels including Facebook, Twitter and Safaricom’s online chat service.

ELLY OKUTOYI: That is an interesting trend. So, what are some of the advantages that comes with using social media as compared to the traditional adverts and customer care?

NZIOKA WAITA: A critical element in our engagement on social media is building relationships with our customers on an individual level. The beauty with digital and social media is that it provides us with an opportunity to interact in a personalised manner with our customers. Whether it is in the area of customer care, cross selling or upselling, customer education, brand assets, etc, the constant thread is that we aim to continuously improve on our customer delight.

In addition to the personalised engagement and interactions, social media is also dynamic and gives us an opportunity to continuously tweak our engagement almost immediately. We are able to constantly review results and optimise our executions accordingly.

ELLY OKUTOYI: What are some of the challenges you face while interacting with your customers on social media, and how have you solved them to ensure you continue offering the best service to your customers?

NZIOKA WAITA: One of the challenges is that we don’t own the platforms and thus have limited control in terms of the level of customiSation we can do. At a customer level, we also have the issue of anonymity which sometimes makes it difficult to deal with non-specific issues but, we respond to all customers regardless of what the circumstances maybe.

ELLY OKUTOYI: Safaricom has one of the highest number of likes on Facebook (over 600,000 likes). Has this changed the way you advertise your products to your followers, and what impact would you say it has had on Safaricom as a brand?

NZIOKA WAITA: Over the last three years, we have built a solid base of earned media. This comprises our various digital assets including the Website, Microsites and Social Media which includes Facebook, Twitter, G+, Youtube and Instagram. We therefore leverage our earned media to reduce the costs on paid media. Being our own assets, we also have more analytics available to us and we are able to tweak our campaigns accordingly.

ELLY OKUTOYI: Where do you see Safaricom in terms of usage of social media in the next five years?

NZIOKA WAITA: We will continue to set the pace in this space. There will also be a bigger shift in terms of more focus on social media when compared to other channels available in the market today.

ELLY OKUTOYI: What do you think will be the trend of social media usage by other corporates in the coming years, and do you think it will change the traditional methods of communicating with customers?

NZIOKA WAITA: More corporates will continue to embrace social media and have a sizeable shift both in focus and investment, something that will definitely bring a shift in customer-company communications.

ELLY OKUTOYI: Many startups that produce online content in Kenya intend to sell ads as their main source of business income. Critics would argue saying that this is not the best model for a country like Kenya. Do you think that Kenya has come of age when it comes to using such a model in generating money, and why?

NZIOKA WAITA: There has been a huge growth in mobile internet subscriptions. This means that the ads will have more eyeballs resulting in higher revenues. As the internet users and overall activity grow, the startups will be able to monetise their content.

ELLY OKUTOYI: What advice do you have to such companies, in order for them to capture the attention of large spenders on advertisements?

NZIOKA WAITA: They would need to have a solid value proposition.