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| Omo-Ettu, President, ATCON |
President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr. Titi Omo-Ettu has canvassed the re-introduction of students’ tariffs in the nation’s telecommunications industry.
Speaking at a one-day Industry Consumer Advisory Forum
(ICAF) organized by the Consumer Bureau of the Nigerian Communications
Commission (NCC) in Lagos, Mr. Omo-Ettu said that students must have a
different tariff plans across board.
According to him, it’s lamentable that students in the
nation’s higher institutions are paying the same tariffs like their guardians,
which in other words are being paid by the same parents or guardians.
He noted that this was in existence in the early days of
Nigeria’s independence until when the Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL)
became incapacitated.
Dwelling on “Providing Customer Centric Services – The Role
of Service Providers” Omo-Ettu also noted that there are some challenges facing
the operators including what he described as harsh and unfair operating
environment.
As said by him, Customer Centric Situation must be based on
good research and market study, with deliberate attention given to customers’
inadequacies, mostly people with disability, even as there must be
discriminatory tariff not occasioned by promos but by requirements of
consumers.
He outlined causes’ analysis of operation in Nigeria to
include improved network access, which emphasis on marketing; poor call
completion rate, which he attributed to poor emphasis on engineering
maintenance.
Improved network expansion, ATCON boss said, has emphasis on
marketing, while the inelegant customer relations were blamed on social malady.
For Omo-Ettu, what make the customer the issue is that he or
she is the real source of revenue for service providers, especially when
service is relevant to his or her needs.
Additionally, he said, a change in behaviour could be
critical, warning that careless experimentations with customers could lead to a
switch off, thus lost revenue.
Just as response to changes either way could be for when
quality of service (QoS) improves or dips, maintaining that customers could
influence other customers, especially in cases of notable customer care
relations.
Omo-Ettu pointed out that customer-centric services
phenomenon dictates that a strategy of orientation of service providers towards
the needs of customers rather than the normal drivers of profit at all cost
serves as a guarantee for long term profit.
These, he said, at times sounds like gospel but usually a
lip service matter on the part of the operators, stressing that signs of its
absence manifest only when customers have to be wooed with promos, which in
some cases are outright deceit.
He maintained that ATCON’s expectations from industry
players in return to respective all laws of the land, all interventions of the
industry regulator, all labour laws and respect for industry relations with
employees, customers and consumers.
These, he said, are embedded in ATCON’s mandate which is to
work in collaboration with government, the regulator, other industry players
and consumers to protect investments in the Nigerian telecommunications
industry.
Remmy Nweke
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