Staff Writer 
ECONET Wireless Zimbabwe (Econet) has reached a major milestone, registering 8,2 million customers on its digital self-care platforms, a move that has propelled the company to an 80 percent customer satisfaction index.
According to the company’s recently released 2024 Annual Report, the success is attributed to Econet’s continued investment in digital solutions and artificial intelligence (AI), which have transformed customer service delivery.
“Average response rate to customer queries improved to three minutes from a prior year record of five minutes, with 95 percent of customer issues being resolved on first contact basis.
“Self-care platforms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven Chatbots yielded 58 million digital interactions constituting 84 percent of total customer assists in the period under review,” Econet said.
According to the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe, Econet had 10,6 million active subscribers by the second quarter of 2024, followed by NetOne with 3,87 million and Telecel with 336 821.
The listed telecommunications firm noted that additional self-care use cases were added to the self-help platform to create customer convenience — airtime transfer accounted for over 20,000 weekly transactions.
“The ability to report network challenges on the platform enabled customers to lodge complaints on connectivity service quality thus enabling prompt resolution,” Econet added.
In the period under review, notable milestones were accomplished, including a new Know-Your-Customer (KYC) system for managing new and additional subscriber registrations to steer the decentralisation of SIM card replacements, a major traffic driver for shops constituting 60 percent of the traffic.
“The system broadly assisted in curbing fraudulent SIM card replacement and customer prejudice which were rampant due to the prevailing cyber-crimes and identity theft.
“Additionally, 100 percent regulatory compliance for all new and additional registrations is guaranteed as subscriber identity verification is near- real-time due to integrations done to the Registrar General database,” read part of the annual report.
Despite its strides, the company acknowledged complaints about connectivity challenges, some of which previously took up to 48 hours to resolve.
To address this, Econet deployed a Customer Care Assistant (CCA) tool that tracks connectivity issues and notifies support teams proactively.
The CCA tool tracks and monitors connectivity service quality and sends alarms to the support team enabling closure of network challenges before customers were impacted.
“Empowerment of the front-line team in troubleshooting customer complaints and getting recommendations to instantly resolve connectivity complaints lodged resulted in a sharp decline in escalations to back-office support by over 50 percent weekly,” the company said.
— Own Correspondent
