Punjab Skills Development Fund CEO Jawad Khan pledged that by this time next year he would have trained or would be training 5,000 people with 90 percent service rate. He made this announcement at Service Punch 2017 conference held on Thursday in Lahore. He said that he was taking this initiative in hopes that from now on some corporation or entity will continue to make such a pledge every year and work towards improving the service industry in Pakistan.
Jazz Head of Customer Care and CEM Nauman Fakhar gave an elaborate presentation at the conference on how Jazz, formerly Mobilink, came about providing efficient customer service. He pointed out that Mobilink was the first telco in Pakistan to start a call centre to facilitate its customers. However, after a while, the company realised that call centre was not the most efficient way to deal with customer complaints. He drew an analogy with the users of Whatsapp posing the question that “What do people do when they face problems in using Whatsapp, who do they call?” Answering this he said that the point is not to maintain a problem-solving channel but to ensure proper and consistent service to customers so they don’t need to file complaints in the first place.
He said, “As long as I will remain busy in managing the operations of the company, I will never have time to focus on improving the call centre services. The solution is to relieve me of this responsibility which we did by completely outsourcing our call centre operations.” He also said that the rapidly changing landscape of the technical and communications technology, many services of today will eventually become obsolete and therefore it is imperative to stay one step ahead of the customers. “DNA of Jazz is to question everything we are doing and keep changing it to stay up to date. What we were doing this time last year, we will change it this year.” He also said that what lies at heart of ‘customer obsession’ or providing best customer services is to ensure that consistent services and accurate information are being provided to the customers so they don’t have to face the same problems over and over again. “This way instead of maintaining a complaint centre, we can ensure that there are no complaints in the first place.”
A panel discussion was also held to discuss the need for women’s leadership in customer services. Pepsico’s Lead Culture, Engagement and Diversity, Asia Pacific Amra Mubashir was of the opinion that there is inherent discrimination against women just because of their biological differences to men. She also said that people in the corporate industry have an inherent flaw in their perception that women cannot leave their personal lives home when they go to work which ends up affecting their performance. She also stressed that while considering a corporation’s success only KPIs or performance measures are not enough, and there has to be an inclusion on all levels by both genders for actual progress. Abacus Consulting’s regional Director Fatima Asad was of the opinion that corporate world perceives women as less efficient than men, while in her own experience she has seen that women give more performance value than men. However, she said that it is not a competition between the genders but there is a need to realise that both men and women bring different angles and ideas to the table and customer service can only be made efficient if all sides are considered side by side. Claywork CEO Mahbina Waheed concurred and said that even though women’s participation in the workforce is rising, there is still a major gap that will only be narrowed when women start taking it upon themselves to come out and join the workforce. CEO Daali Foods Mariam Akbar said that it is imperative that women are made financially independent which will become an incentive for them to join the workforce as well.
The conference also included an interactive talk by Founder of ACTIV8 Umer Khan, followed by Transformix.io CEO and Co-founder Jawad Iqbal sharing insights into the customer engagement in the digital age. Two debate sessions included speeches by Oracle Director Sales Saquib Ahmed, FINCA Vice President Branchless Banking Tughral Turab Ali, Rozee.pk CEO Monis Rehman and Yayvo Head Adam Dawood. Abacus Consulting’s Regional Director Johnson Gill and FINCA CEO Mudassar Aqil also shared their thoughts on the service industry and how improvements can be made to provide better services and build a stronger industry. A discussion panel on Film, Media and the Service of Arts had actor and musician Ahmed Ali Butt, actress and TV show host Juggun Kazim, and journalist Munizae Jahangir shared their ideas into how media has become an unavoidable and uncontrollable part of modern lifestyles. They shared the challenges being faced by the media institutions and how increasingly difficult it was becoming to maintain the corporate and social oriented jobs of the media at the same time.
Actor, Writer and Managing Director Lightstorm Communications Adeel Hashmi also appeared on the occasion and talked about the importance of ‘Words.’ He made four words the crux of his speech and urged the “young-in-age” and “young-at-heart” to focus on the importance of staying “curious”, staying “fearless”, “dreaming” big and defining “success” in the right manner. He spoke in Urdu and lamented about the lack of command of Pakistani students on the national language. He received a standing ovation from the attendees of the conference at the end of his speech.
Several lucky draws were also held throughout the conference for Rs 10,000 prize. The annual Service Punch conference concluded with an award ceremony for the top ten best customer service providers, which were dominated by the telcos with Zong, Ufone and Jazz all bagging the awards. The top of these top brands award was given to TCS Pakistan. The participants left the conference after enjoying an energetic and interactive drum circle performance by Quadrum.
