By Portia Nkani
BotswanaPost is currently running a pilot project with Ethiopian and Namibian Airlines for inbound and outbound routes for transportation of mails.
This was shared by the Postman, Cornelius Ramatlhakwane this Monday as he launched Customer Service week and the theme ‘exceeding expectations.’ The Post intents to show its commitment and start recognising the value customers bring to the company.
In addition to the two airlines, BotswanaPost will also explore Air Botswana once it has the capacity so it lives up to its promise of efficiency in service delivery. “We have settled for Air Ethiopia and Namibia as they have direct flights to Gaborone, Botswana. Over the last 24 months we experienced traumatic incidences where our customer’s parcels particularly from the United States and China would take up to a month delayed to be delivered. The challenge was our inbound and outbound route in South Africa. We realised that the situation continued to perpertuate into unhelpfulness for our customers and let alone ourselves. As we deliver and in the communication business, we get paid by the Universal Postal Union based on the standards of performance and delivery,” added Ramatlhakwane.
Parcels and mails leaving Botswana and destined for Botswana were delayed due to the industrial strike at the forwarding partner, South Africa Post Office (SAPO). All parcels going through SAPO were not processed as expected. As a contigency plan, BotswanaPost had to use alternative routes, by-passing SAPO for mails going outside the country.
BotswanaPost which has been operating on losses, has improved from P13million loss in 206/17 financial year to P4.1million profit after tax in 2018. Ramatlhakwane said their half year results yet to be released are also looking good.
BotswanaPost which is about to merge with Botswana Couriers is also in the process of putting its products online.
According Ramatlhakwane, ” we are finalising our live connected system with the Department of Road Transport Services through mobile applications and websites. The customer’s will be able to choose where they want their documents to be sent to.
After completion of the merger between two entities, although he did not want to divulge more on the details of the process, Ramatlhwakane said “we will announce delivery standards and will make guarantees against that process on the table.”
In addition, another product of Poso Money product is expected to go live by end of November this year. Currently the product is only run internally amongst the Post employees. This will enable customers to transfer money through their mobile phones from any network provider.
Whatever the standard the Post sets for itself, the intention is to go beyond ultimate and customer’s appreciating what is done for them. “We want to go beyond exceeding delivery, execution and services.”
In other developments, BotswanaPost in the past two years partnered with Sefalana and opened postal kiosks inside the stores/wholesaler. This was to expand the customer’s reach.
