Telkom/Orange!

I have no love for these guys. If you snoop around in the privately owned companies frontier, you may have heard of KenCall, Kenya's first and largest call center.

When KenCall came, they invested heavily in things that were supposed to be provided by the Government, including an independent Satellite communication system because there was no reliable voice connectivity to their target market (the US and UK). And by the way, there still isnt.

Understandably, due to their heavy investments, KenCall had to leverage this by charging slightly more than what you would find in India, etc. Their pricing was something like 6% more than India. Insignificant, but still high.

One of the worst mistakes KenCall did, in my opinion, was to take on Orange/Telkom as a client. By the time this was happening, KenCall had lucrative and stable clients from the US and UK paying good (not excellent) but good rates.

To take on Orange, which promised heaven on earth for KenCall, and was indeed willing to pay KenCall's asking price for call center services, KenCall had to lay off some of its existing clients in order to accomodate the space requirement for them. By this time, I think KenCall was not ready to expand just yet, and so cost/benefit analysis prevailed.

Soon as this was done, three months into the deal, KenCall started feeling the heat. Bills were not being paid. Three/four months would go and no payments made. and every month, bills would grow, because increase in volume as Orange continued to push for more customers. A year or so down the lane, and KenCall couldnt take it any more. They even re-negotiated the pricing to make it easier for Orange to afford, if they were having cash flow issues.

Soon, the cash flow problem at Orange would be transferred to KenCall. It was until the CEO of KenCall depleted his own account paying for employees that the late salary payments, the negative blogging about outsourcing in Kenya and massive retrenchments started. They almost brought a budding company, and indeed, a whole industry to its knees.

regretably, the insensitive businessmen they are, decided to renegotiate deals with other proxy call centers that were emerging. KenCall's outfit was based on the highest level of quality. The frenchies decided this was not their priority and so, sought a cheaper low quality supplier of call center services. Interestingly, there is no such thing as lower quality in customer service, and as they are realizing now, they frontier in data (modem sales, wimax, etc is now dead. and they are so shortsighted to realize that they plucked the only reason customers were buying their services and staying with them out of the equation.

KenCall is, as I am made to understand, now recovering from this episode that lasted almost two years. They still have Orange (got to love the tolerance levels of the CEO) but on a much smaller scale than they started. Telkom has moved its businesses to some call center where its staff are learning on the job. Meanwhile, KenCall is back in the initial target market frontier it started with. All the best.

These guys destroyed peoples lives in the most significant way. and they could care less. According to a study I refer to, KenCall lost close to 900 employees directly due to bad business with a dont give a shit client. and sadly, customer care at Orange Telkom is headed by several Kenyans. They failed to advise senior management and infact, pro-actively pushed for the decisions because they got some cuts in the deals with the other call centers. Its payback time! Rot all the way. now we dont really care. Just like you never did.

THE ABOVE STATEMENT IS MADE IN BAD TASTE AND HAS NO TRUTH IN IT

He who laughs last laughs best.It seems the French guys know what they are doing check this out.


http://allafrica.com/stories/201009060874.html

Gosh it cnt b that bad ! I get gud speeds downloading torrents all night long . Are u sure u have good network reception. That might b ur undoing. Funny enough u are the only 1 complaining .hehee!

i also use it my guy it works well 4 me.

4 kulah raha en all others who are uninitiated . As far as network bandwidth and isps are concernd the fewer the people on the network the faster ur speeds - all other factors held constant. So its a boon 4 me if Orange 3G has 100,000 subscribers !!

Okay 4 clarity sake they have a cdma rev b network.They'll soon get a 3 g lincense (although i was of the opinion that they shld hav jumpd to 4 g and save themselves some 3g upgrade mulah ) Y wld they b testing 3g and heavily, lobbyd the gova to reduce 3g fee if they dnt intend to get it.
I am comfortable w/ Orange .

@Ric Dees, Eric Nesbitt? Methot it was Nick Nesbitt, a black American well-connected in he corridors of power.
And I have no mercies for telkom, wacha waaumie for being complacent during their monopoly days.
Someone tell KPLC one day they will pay for all those days their inefficiency made us endure Mpango Wa Candle.

This Orange 3G+ thing has lately started to misbehave even in places where it worked perfectly before. Something is definitely wrong. There are days when there is no connection or you can grow a beard waiting for a page to load and other days buying bandwidth is a nightmare. Looks like there won't be any Champagne tossing for the French at Orange.

I see some people are like because of this 3G issue...

3G can be either on GSM (like SCOM) or CDMA (Telkom - Actually its only 3G is its CDMA - EVDO).

Older CDMA is 2.5G (and the equivalent for GSM 2.5G is EDGE....2G is GPRS) all those refer to data speeds.