Vodacom render municipality more accessible
Vodacom's One Net Express is expected to render municipal officials more accessible to the public who will now be able to connect with them via their cell phone.
Vodacom demonstrated how ratepayers are to benefit from the municipality’s buy-in of its latest product, One Net Express, at an exclusive corporate event held on Thursday.
Sales manager, Anup Kaihar, called the Newcastle municipality’s automated help line, 072 566 8572, and showed guests how more accessible municipal officials will be to members of the community, even when they are not at the office.
One Net Express features a virtual receptionist that directs the caller to press a certain number to connect with the right department, e.g. the caller would dial ‘1’ for Technical Services, ‘2’ for Community Services, ‘3’ for the Mayor’s office, and ‘4’ for local government.
Once the caller has selected the relevant department, he or she will connect with an official within that department. If the official does not answer within a preset number of rings, the call will be redirected to the next official and so forth, until someone within the department takes the call and addresses the query.
Rudi Matjokana, from Vodacom’s Johannesburg office, added, “In the same way that the municipality can be proud of the fact that it is now paperless, we want to ensure that they can be wireless.”
He continued, “We will empower the municipality to see issues when they happen so that they do not just notice things when it has escalated to a toyi-toyi. It’s all about customer service and making people feel like they are heard and taken care of. It’s also about productivity. Whether you are at home, on the road, or maybe even in a mountain somewhere, the exchange of information should not have to wait until you are able to be back at the office.”
Mr Matjokana went on to discuss the benefits of Vodacom’s Geolocation App, which will benefit companies that need to keep track of staff, vehicles and monitor workflow.
Explaining the benefit of One Net Express in the business environment, Mr Kaihar, pointed out that 60 per cent of people will not leave a voicemail message if they cannot reach a service provider telephonically. “They will happily seek the service elsewhere. This does not mean that the company’s marketing technique is failing. The marketing is probably successful but the company could not capitilise on the opportunity because a person was unavailable to close the deal telephonically. With One Net Express, the call would just be automatically transferred to the next person on the team.”
Mr Kaihar boasted that Vodacom has proved itself to be an industry leader, having been the first in South Africa to launch products such as prepaid services, voicemail to text messages, 3G network, please call me, and most recently, LTE network (4G).
Other Vodacom representatives who gave talks at the event were, Alberts Breed who gave an industry overview, Brad Thomas who presented a case study on hosted services, and Viresh Moonasar who unpacked Vodacom’s VSAT for satellite connectivity.
