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As Nigeria celebrates its golden jubilee, Bharti Airtel, which recently took
over Zain Africa operations in 15 countries, has expressed its commitment
to continue to empower Nigerians and to support the growth and sustenance
of businesses through the provision of world-class mobile network,
innovative products and services and affordable tariffs. Bharti Airtel brings
into Nigeria a solid international clout and a broad range of experience in
providing integrated telecom, including mobile voice and data services,
fixed line, high speed broadband, IPTV, DTH, turnkey telecom solutions
for enterprises and national and international long distance services to
carriers. In the coming months and years, this expertise in delivering communications
solutions to customers, which has led to the ranking of the
company as the sixth best performing technology company in the world,
is expected to help transform the constantly changing Nigerian telecom
landscape and its soaring customer expectation and demand.
Airtel is poised to bring exciting and quality mobile services to phone
users in Nigeria in the same way it does across India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
It intends to pursue a quality of service improvement regime and
a transmission network expansion programme to give Nigerians a better
cellular experience. Fortunately, the big operator, which now has 183
million customers as at June 2010 across its operations, can draw from
the rich history and achievements of Zain, including its record of beating
other operators to the tape by becoming the first commercial GSM
service in August, 2001, and scoring a series of many ‘firsts’. Zain is the first
to introduce toll-free 24-hour customer care, toll-free line – 111; first to
launch service in all the six geo-political zones in the country; first to introduce
the N500 recharge card; first to introduce monthly free SMS; and
first to introduce monthly airtime bonus.
Airtel’s partnership with communities
Building a strong and long lasting partnership with the communities is in
the heart of Bharti Airtel’s business philosophy. The company perceives
and positions itself as an integral part of society, which must be socially
responsible at all times and in all its dealings, maintaining high ethical
standards and compliance with the rules and regulations in its methods
and practices of doing business. Its concept of social responsibility is not
limited to a concern with welfare schemes, charity work, or the occasional
support for health, education, security/emergency, sports and the arts. It
is the desire of the company to partner with the government in providing
education for less privileged children and as part of its social investment
plan in Nigeria, it intends to partner with the Ministry of Education
to build and maintain schools, where rural children across the country will
be provided free education, free books and free lunch and the teachers
are paid salaries.
Commitment to strong customer service and job creation
Airtel is devoted to raising the company’s amazing customer service status
in Nigeria. Despite the company’s dominance in good customer service
delivery in the industry, Airtel has signalled its intention to up the
ante, through call centre seating capacity expansion, personnel development,
and investment in equipment/solutions. Since 2003 when awards
started in the telecoms sector, the company has consistently walked
home with the Best Customer Care Operator of the Year awards to the
vexation of other operators. In 2003, it was crowned as the Most Customer
Sensitive Network by Handwriting on the Wall of Thisday Newspapers following
the result of a poll conducted on telecommunications consumers
countrywide. During the same year, it received the Best Customer-friendly
Network at the maiden edition of the Telecom Awards.
The following years, it picked up the Best Customer Care Operator
(2005 and 2006) by Telecoms Awards, GSM Company of the Year 2005, by
City People, and the Best Customer Care Mobile Company (2006) by IT
& Telecoms Digest. The unbroken endorsement for the company’s long
good customer care service tradition continued when it again rose above
its peers in the Telecommunications Industry to win the Best Customer
Care Award for 2009 in a ceremony organised by Nigerian Information
Technology and Telecom Awards (NITTA). This came a year after the industry
umpire, the NCC placed its approval seal on Zain’s rich customer care
tradition by awarding it the Telecom Network with the Best Customer
Care Service prize, during a live television show at the fifth anniversary
edition of the popular Telecoms Consumers Parliament in the nation’s
capital city, Abuja.
Enhancing business and promoting individual effectiveness through
innovative products and services
Airtel has a rich blend of products and services, including a loaded bouquet
of Value Added Services designed to support the growth and sustenance
of businesses, and enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of individuals.
Barely a month ago, Airtel in Nigeria provided a foretaste of what
customers will enjoy by introducing a posy of new value offerings as part
of its commitment to design tailor-made solutions that will suit both the
lifestyles and aspirations of telecoms consumers across the country. The
idea was to ensure that an affordable telecoms solution is provided for different
classes of Nigerians, with particular attention to age group, income
level and lifestyle preferences. In line with the concept of the package, the
new offerings included a package for youths called KoolMax; a product
for middle class individuals, ValuMax, which is also an extension of the
recently launched pre-paid tariff plan; and an expansion of StepUP, a premium
lifestyle package targeting High Value Individuals, into two categories:
StepUP Platinum and StepUP Diamond. The four new value offerings:
KoolMax, ValuMax, StepUP Platinum and StepUP Diamond, have afforded
telecoms users across the country with an opportunity to choose specific
mobile solutions that reflect their lifestyles and enable them to communicate
with friends, family members, business partners and associates at
pocket-friendly rates.
Airtel has equally made available in the market many other highly beneficial
services such as Blackberry services for both post-paid and pre-paid
customers. Call Me Back feature which enables pre-paid package users to
communicate even when they run out of credit, voice SMS, Call collect
service and Me2U, the airtime transfer service that makes it possible for
customers to transfer credit to other Zain pre-paid package users.
Other service offerings including Mini Call, Toll Free service, Credit Me
and Friends and family, conference call and Pay4Me (a service that helps
the calling party to make calls at the expense of the called party) have
been well designed to empower the individual phone user. Airtel Football
Community service, a unique Value Added service that provides customers
the opportunity of receiving SMS updates on the English Premier
League for the four biggest clubs Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea
and Liverpool.
The ground-breaking One Network service makes available to
hundreds of millions of people in communities across Africa and the
Middle East, a borderless mobile phone network. The service is the first in
the world and has made cross border business and other activities easy
and convenient.
For further information visit www.ng.airtel.com