Safaricom PLC is a leading mobile network tech operator in Kenya. The company was founded in 1997 and it was a fully owned subsidiary of Telkom Kenya at the beginning. They provide a comprehensive range of highly integrated solutions in the telecommunication field. The solutions include voice and data bundles, SMS, Internet, and financial services. As from 2017 Annual Report, the company’s shareholding structure looks like this;
Vodafone — 40%
The government of Kenya — 35%
Free float (held by local and international retail and institutional investors) — 25%
Safaricom has a customer base of about 28 million people, which is about 62% of all Kenyan population. The company has also created more than 5000 job opportunities for both Kenyans and foreigners. Through their M-Pesa branch, the company serves more than 19 million individuals per month.
Turning away from the business perspective, Safaricom has been highly involved in the development of the community — social impact. Chapa Dimba Na Safaricom, M-Tiba, Eneza, Be Your Own Boss, and M-Pesa Foundation, just to mention a handful, are some of the initiatives and programmes that Safaricom has put in place to impact the society.
Now that you know a little bit more about Safaricom, why do you think Safaricom is successful in almost everything that they do?
Let’s break it down together
Embracing technology and innovation.
Safaricom, with no doubt, is one of the tech-savvy companies in Kenya. Early back in the mid-2000s, the company did not show any signs of developing platforms such as Songa and Eneza. Both platforms are purely technical. Safaricom is fusing telecommunication with a high level of technology to move its mission forward, something that has been a hindrance to many companies not only in Kenya but to the world as a whole. Safaricom’s diversified products openly show the intense innovation that is going on within the company. The company keeps on surprising the users with new features, products, or services on almost a monthly basis. It is hard to predict the next feature or a product from Safaricom.
Great customer service
Safaricom has been greatly hailed for their generous and understanding customer care services. Any time a customer experiences a problem, he/she can make a call to Safaricom and the problem will not take long before being tackled by Safaricom’s technical or non-technical team (it depends with the nature of the problem). Another important thing; Safaricom’s customer care toll is easy to master that almost every Safaricom user always knows the number.
Good marketing strategies
How many times have you seen Safaricom ads on television? Listened to Safaricom’s ad on the radio? Or seen a Safaricom banner in the streets? Many times, right? Safaricom is spending a lot of money on advertisement and that’s how they’re always keeping themselves relevant. They’ve known the power of digital marketing — they advertise on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram among other relevant social media platforms. More importantly, their advertisements always target a specific group of people — if they’re advertising about Blaze, they’ll use a language of the youth, and if they’re advertising about M-Pesa, they tend to focus on parents (“the mature”). Looking at the direction at which the world has taken in terms of digitality, it’ll be hard to beat Safaricom at what they’re doing because their marketing strategy is remarkable.
The Government Intervention
As you probably have seen above, the government of Kenya owns 35 per cent of the company. This is an extra strength for the company as no outside forces can easily break in to fight the company.
The above three points are some of the reasons why Safaricom is highly succeeding.
