Telkom Kenya has caused a rapture of excitement all over the country since the launch of its new brand on the 6th of June this year. It was first identified as Telkom Orange but many preferred to call it “Orange”. For years, Orange has had an agonizing sale process. It was becoming unsuccessful in the Kenyan telecom market. During its re-launch CEO Aldo Mareuse referred to it as a “sleeping giant” over the past few years, and I think we wouldn’t agree more. The company spent the past 12 months “awakening the giant” and clearly their efforts did not turn out sterile. Telkom’s re-brand did not turn out to be your usual company re-branding and here’s why. Five pillars were focused on to “awaken the giant”.
Culture
Over the years, Telkom Orange had a very discouraging sales process, and being in a market with powerful competitors, this obviously caused low morale in its employees. The company introduced 5 new values; Customer centricity Integrity Innovation Teamwork Empowerment. A new mission, “Best value for simpler lives, efficient business and stronger community” and a new vision “Connecting the people that make Kenya move”.
Sales and Distribution.
They doubled their shops country wide and enhancing their agent validity. In other words they have refurbished their Customer relationship to reflect their new values.
Network
They used billions of Ksh in expanding their network infrastructure and increased their sites by 50% across the country to over 1600 sites and counting, 3G coverage and capacity has doubled all over the country and 4G LTE network has been re-launched in 9 towns in the country within a day.
Innovation
The new money mobile that has replaced orange money is much more flexible and meant to best suit the younger “digital” generation. Customer Centric Products Telkom’s aim is to offer competitive data offerings and true to that, since its re-launch there have been offers that seem too good to be true for anyone who hears them for the first time. Free WhatsApp, from texts, video sharing, calls, the whole package free!! If that’s not everyone’s dream then I don’t know what is. Portable Wi-Fi that is as fast as 70Mb/s, extremely cheap data packages like 300mbs for ksh50, free calls within the network and free sms across all networks and as cheap as Ksh1.80 rate to calls across networks. Telkom Kenya is the third telecom service in Kenya, after Safaricom and Airtel but it seems it does not plan to stay in third place much longer. “Telkom Kenya does not offer a service or a product, it offers an experience. Its goal is to contribute to the socio-economic growth of Kenya”.
