Telkom hang-ups on hold
There are things we have to get right . . . A long way to go but good progress. Touch wood
WOULD you buy Telkom? Much of that decision would hinge on how its managers planned to rescue a company still stuck with its image of an old-school parastatal.
Brian Armstrong was appointed chief operating officer last April, having run the Telkom Business division. As CEO Sipho Maseko’s wingman, he is the guy investors want answers from.
Armstrong looks after Telkom’s retail and operations. Everything related to its consumer, mobile, business and IT services is his responsibility. He is the man if you want to whine about Telkom. What has he got to say for himself? “There are things we have to get right: a far greater focus on the customer. Many telecommunication companies around the world have emerged from a monopoly situation where you had subscribers — you never had customers. People never had a choice. Now we live in an extremely competitive world — people aren’t obliged to have a fixed line any more; they can get by perfectly with a mobile phone.
“So how do we get better at customer service? How do we improve their experience when they interact with Telkom or our products and services?
“What we were selling two or three years ago is not going to help us survive and prosper two or three years from now.
“Fixed is moving to mobile; traditional voice is moving to data; individual services are moving to converged services. So what we used to earn money from three years ago is very different to where the future will be, and is already happening.
“So we need a very drastic change of our portfolio products and services.
“It’s one thing to say you’ll change a product, but you have to change the delivery organisation to deliver it; you have to change the sales organisation to sell it; you must change the customer service organisation to support it.
“And then there are a few big-ticket items we have to resolve. We have to resolve issues in our mobile business, we’ve got to get to scale; we’ve got to get to a winning position in mobile. We have to address some of the regulatory threats that are coming at us — unbundling and so on. We’re seeing encouraging signals — some new lines of business are starting to pick up very nicely. Our mobile business is starting to gain traction, our mobile broadband is the best in the country by objective measures, our IT business is growing at 100% a year, and fibre services are starting to take off.
“Every year we do a customer survey: very heartening results are coming from that, there has been a big step up in our customer loyalty and satisfaction. Very encouraging signs, but no sense of elation yet that we’re where we need to be. A long way to go but good progress. Touch wood.” Buy or sell Telkom? Er, call me back . . . For a full interview with Armstrong, see Sunday Times Lifestyle on March 9