Be on the look out for the below new by-laws introduced by the Nairobi City Council. If you plan to ignore them, please ensure you carry with you Ksh. 10,000 whenever you are on the streets of Nairobi

1. Pedestrians crossing the roads in Nairobi when traffic light is red – fine is Kshs 10,000/=
2. Motorist moving on when the traffic light is red – Fine is Kshs. 10,000/=
3. Pedestrians crossing the road while talking on their Mobile phones – fine is Kshs 500/=

Please make sure when you board/alight matatus:

1. It is at designated matatu stops OR else you pay a fine of Ksh.10, 000
2. Fasten your seat belts when in the matatus OR else you pay a fine of Ksh. 500

The best description for customer service would be – it is a service offered to customers before, during & after a purchase, and quality control – maintenance of quality of goods & services.

I do not really think Kenyans take these two seriously. Primarily on the third stage of customer service. Once you have purchased an item or are subscribed to a service, you will never get good customer service. I have had this issue with various large “blue chip” companies. If it is not rude customer service, it will be an inefficient customer service that just never gets back to you. And yes all of you know what I am talking about because you have all at some point gone through the same phase of frustration, most probably in the service industry.

I have yet to understand why they fail on customer service, do they not want us to go back to them with our business? Sometime back I walked into a shop to look for something and no one at the shop gave me any attention for almost 15 minutes, this really set me off and I went to the managers office to complain. The manager did nothing about it and asked me to look around for what I was looking for. Now, how would they expect me to ever walk into their business again?

Customer Service really should just be practiced along:-

1. Answer your phone – When someone calls they want to to talk to a real person no some fake recording. Get a decent call forwarding. Or an answering service. Hire staff if you need to and make sure your calls are answered with a smile.
2. Listen to your customers – What is worse than when the person you are complaining to is not really listening to you? Listen to your customer and respond positively.
3. Train your staff to ALWAYS be courteous, helpful & Knowledgeable - Courtesy goes a long way. Get your staff trained on how to handle queries professionally and have them be knowledgeable. Customers do not really like it when they are told ” I do not know, let me get back to you”.
4. Do NOT make promises unless you will keep them – reliability is one of the key elements of customer service, if you say you will have the TV fixed by Friday, have it fixed by Friday. Nothing disappoints a customer more than find out a promise was not fulfilled.
5. Deal with complaints – No one likes complaints, but you are bound to get them at some point. Deal with them, and if you are able to give it an extra bit of attention, you will have a happy customer who will bring their business back to you.

These are just a few of the elements of Customer Service that could have your customers smiling and recommending you to their friends & family.

Many a times you find that a new business has started off really well; great customer service, great products & services or just great restaurant with good food, atmosphere and service. But as time goes things start to fall apart, and quality becomes a thing of the past. Once again all of you out there have definitely at some point or the other experienced this too.

Quality control heavily relies on customer service, this is because if you are listening to your customers and acting upon it, then your products and services are going to meet their expectations. Maintain the quality of your goods and services and continously keep setting the bar for your standards higher and you are always going to have happy customers.

Your views & comments are welcome as always.

Last evening there was a power outage at about 6.00PM, thinking this is probably just within the area, we just lightly ignored it and went on with our own business. When I logged onto twitter from my mobile to catchup with my tweets, I was taken by surprised as how my fellow tweeps from all over the country were complaining about not having any power.

Thinking back on an argument held with some of the tweeps I follow, more specifically @jellyfish78 & @coldtusker in regards to getting nuclear power, question I still put across is, are we capable of handling nuclear power?

It took KPLC a good 4+ Hours to restore power to the country, with nuclear power, you need to be alot faster than that if things started falling apart. I would like @jellyfish78 on this, his support for going nuclear is almost extremist. Not that I do not support him at all, just that I have far to many questions on the ability of running it:-

• Expertise – Who will handle the nuclear power plant?
• Security – How would nuclear material be handled? How would the location be secured?
• Water – Nuclear turbines require alot of water. To give you an idea, take for example At Sellafield, which is no longer producing electricity, a maximum of 18,184.4 m³ a day (over 4 million gallons) and 6,637,306 m³ a year (figures from the Environment Agency) of fresh water from Wast Water is still abstracted to use on site for various processes. Take note FRESH WATER. We cannot provide half of Kenya’s population with fresh water.
• Radioactive waste – Where will the radio active waste be disposed and how will the costs of this be met? Part of the process of radioactive waste “After about 5 years in a cooling pond, the spent fuel is radioactively and thermally cool enough to handle, and it can be moved to dry storage casks or reprocessed.”

At the moment the government has stated they cannot even get a new switchboard for the national grid that would cost around 3billion kenya shillings ($40million), so how will they even maintain nuclear?

By the way I have not even been able to access http://www.kplc.co.ke/ for further info on last nights happenings.

Please share your views and comments.

We sat in traffic for nearly 5 hours both coming and going and that is simply ridiculous. Traffic flow simply does not happen. At one point 3 traffic policemen were standing together chit chatting as the traffic bottle necked at the roundabout.

Once known as East Africa’s green “City in the Sun”, Nairobi is so choked with traffic that Kenya’s architects suggest moving to a new capital and angry business leaders say the booming economy is under threat. [source:Reuters]

Nairobi that was designed almost 50 years ago was done so for about 500,000 people, today contained within the same area the population is at roughly 4.5 million and the expansion of roads is simply not good enough. A recent survey conducted said traffic jams cost motorists 50 million shillings ($670,000) a day through increased fuel consumption, mechanical damage and pollution.

Alot needs to be done to reduce traffic or atleast improve its flow, expansion of road lanes is not good enough because at some point these lanes will be filled up with more cars. The following are what I feel needs to be done as a start:

• Traffic lights should be repaired and configured properly.
• Traffic police be trained to be professional and efficient. The Traffic police should only control traffic when the traffic lights are not working. The should strictly not interfere with the traffic lights.
• Roundabouts are so last century and should be removed. These roundabouts make it really difficult for the traffic to flow in a proper manner.
• A proper public transport system should be put in place (e.g. smart bus) one that will be run effectively, professionally and safely permanently, not just for a few months. Once this has been put in place, matatu licensing should be put in place so that it is hard for just anyone to bring on matatu’s on the road as public transport. According to me, if this alone is done, traffic will start flowing smoothly. Matatu’s, weaving wildly from lane to lane, account for 80 percent of public transport and are a major cause of congestion.
• Like many other countries, trucks and other heavy load vehicles should be restricted to be on the roads from 6:00AM to 8:00PM. Heavy load vehicles are slow moving vehicles and completely reduce the flow of traffic during peak hours.
• An increase in parking fees in congested areas will also reduce traffic as less people would drive their vehicles. More people would share one vehicle and split the parking fees within themselves. This should also be brought about once a more reliable and effective public transport system is implemented.
• Review of city growth, the government is not at all looking into the haphazard growth of the city and how people within residential areas sell their properties for commercial development. The government needs to set strict residential and commercial zones and maintain them from time to time.

These are just a few suggestions but there are plenty more, and picking anyone of the above would make a difference.

Please share your comments and suggestion with us.

[Image courtesy Mark Eichmann]