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Nairobi 15- 31 July 2016 5000 print copies - 625,000 facebook members - Google.com - Issuu.com/CITYCLASSIFIEDS
Complaining customers! A blessing or curse?
A
business's ultimate goal is to always have satisfied customers. Consumers spreading the news about your business is great marketing. The problem arises when the news being
far-reaching platform to speak about businesses, their services, and products. They have the potential to tell thousands of friends on social media or business review platforms
because among those consumers singing your praise are complaining consumers who were not impressed by you and want others to know it. Business review platforms are becoming
spread is negative. Complaining customers worry most businesses especially in today's internet driven world where customers have a wide and
about their experience with a business. This potential is a doubleedged sword for any business
popular by the day and not only are they beneficial for consumers,but they are great for businesses. Any business owner will tell Cont. Page 2
Published BI-weekly in Nairobi Kenya by: ROYAL SHOPPERS MEDIA CONTACT Tel: 0724512194, Email; brandskenya@gmail.com,, Available online via issuu.com/cityclassified, Facebook: City classifieds
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Complaining customers are likely to impact change in business Continued from page 1
you how great good customer reviews are.What most of them will not mention are the bad reviews. While businesses strive for a hundred percent customer satisfaction it doesn't always happen. Once in a while, you will have consumers complaining. Worse is that for the complaining customers, there are hundreds more who will not complain. They will simply stop using your services and products. Ruby Newell-Legner in her book, “Understanding Customers�,indicates that 96% of customers do not make complaints and out of those, 91% will not visit your business again. It is,
therefore, important to use those unhappy complaints to get a better understanding of what your business is doing wrong, learn from the experience and recover in ways that will build customer loyalty instead of losing business. A customer's complaint highlights problems with employees or internal processes. It shows you it is time to review your employees, the quality of your services and products, as well as external communication.Once you receive a complaint, analyze it to find out how often the complaint has been made, who is making the complaint and how the complaint
was received. This information helps to determine the way forward and the measures to be taken to rectify the problem. Complaints are an opportunity to build a relationship with your customers. Reaching out to them to find out about their bad experience makes a consumer feel valued. Acknowledge the complaint and apologize. In most cases that's all the customer is looking for. Once you reach out, you can keep them in your contact list. In future, you could suggest to them new offers and deals from your company, further improving your relationship. White House Office of Consumer Affairs statistics shows that it is 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one so you need to keep them happy. The complaints from consumers are also your opportunity to broaden your horizons and find new investment opportunities. When reviewing you, consumers sometimes complain of lack of certain products and services. This is an opportunity to introduce those services and products. It can also be an opportunity to expand in order to provide the services and products. Customer complaints also factor into organizational change, especially with the employees. Bad reviews concerning services from the employees will force you to acknowledge the need to let the poorly reviewed employees go, or move them elsewhere. These negative complaints are your opportunity to exceed your customer's expectations. When fixing the complaint, offer a discount on their next purchase or a first look at new products. While an apology is enough, going above and beyond will impress your consumers even more.According to a study by the White House Office of Consumer Affair, happy customers who get their issue resolved to tell about 4-6 people about their experience. They will feel that you care about them and the next time they are talking about your business, they are conveying a positive message. A mistake is an opportunity to learn and same goes for complaining customers.They give you a chance to evaluate your business and make changes that eventually turn into profit and success.
Business review platforms are becoming popular by the day and not only are they beneficial for consumers,but they are great for businesses. Any business owner will tell you how great good customer reviews are.What most of them will not mention are the bad reviews.
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Fertiliser plant set for opening in August
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ore than 300 locals will benefit from employment when a t h e c o u n t r y w i l l s t a r t fertiliser plant based in Uasin acquiring subsidised fertiliser Gishu County becomes operational. based on soil specification,” he said. “The plant is According to Tsusho Toyota officials, a designed in such a way no company that is constructing the facility mistakes can occur because of funded by the Kenyan government to its computerised systems.” establish the first fertiliser blending plant, more than 40 locals will work as T o y o t a E A C h a i r p e r s o n machine operators. Tsusho East Africa Dennis Awori said the input began putting up the plant worth Sh103 will be soil and crop specific. billion and is expected to produce He said farmers will be 150,000 metric tonnes of fertiliser upon required to conduct soil c o m p l e t i o n , w i t h p r i c e s o f t h e sampling as they acquire commodity expected to significantly fertilisers. “We want to ensure drop. Speaking at the site during an the fertiliser is tailored to a assessment tour of the plant in Ngeria, given region and it will be an end to poor T o y o t a T s u s h o S e n i o r M a n a g i n g yields because the input shall be Director and the Chief regional officer available at favourable costs,” he added. for Pan Africa, Takishi Hattori said they A w o r i o b s e r v e d t h a t b e s i d e s are optimistic of beating the August 1, employment, farmers shall also benefit 2016 deadline. He said the plant is nearly from training and capacity building complete and anticipates to start courtesy of the facility. “Besides closing production of the first batch of 400 bags in on skill gap, we will work towards per day. “We shall be producing ensuring that farmers get service for packages of 50kg, 25kg and 10kg their money,” he noted. Uasin Gishu fertilisers of Baraka brand which will Governor Jackson Mandago who was meet the needs of farmers in the Rift and present during the visit said the Western part besides the rest of the availability of fertiliser will increase country,” he said. Hattori said the crop productivity. “Tea, wheat, maize, facility will produce 150,000 tonnes a cane and flower farmers in the region are year. “Based on our assessment, we are best placed to make use of Baraka confident that the blending plant shall be f e r t i l i s e r i n i m p r o v i n g t h e i r operational in a month's time. Farmers in livelihoods,” he said. He was categorical
that Sh92 million has been set aside for the input subsidy, an increase from Sh47 million earlier budgeted. “Thirty per cent of our farmers have not been using fertilisers due to the high cost of purchase and end up with meager returns. Locals need to raise their farm income,” he said. Mandago noted that the region has sufficient workforce who are well positioned to provide manpower for the plant. Kenya Farmers Association (KFA) Director Kipkorir Menjo challenged farmers to join cooperatives to acquire inputs jointly at subsidised costs. “The delay of farm input will be a thing of the past now that we have the facility at our disposal Farmers should now be focused on using the input for their benefit,” he said.
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KRA to overhaul income tax Tax incentives are among the key issues that will be looked at in the overhaul of income tax that will be done by the end of the 2016/2017 financial year. According to the Kenya Revenue Authority, the current tax incentives have not met their objectives and have seen the Authority lose revenue. KRA Deputy Commissioner Strategy Innovation and Risk Management Maurice Ojee says investors do not see tax exemptions as an important incentive to investing in the country as their key importance is return on investments. “The tax exemptions on the Export Processing Zones have not translated to anything meaningful, we have seen firms who have been given these incentives for a certain period transform their business into other institutions to avoid paying taxes,” he stated. He says the Authority is working on a new structure that could see the existing tax bands widened to reflect the current income trends and cost of living levels. “We also need to harmonise our incentives with the East African Community states. We
are asking ourselves how has these incentives impacted on our economic growth, how have they impacted our revenue,” he stated. KRA will also review tax exemptions on persons with disabilities as well as churches and trusts. “We have seen churches venturing into commercial activities, they need to be on the tax bracket,” he added. He says the current income tax is complicated and confuses the tax payer hence the need to make it clear and easy to comprehend to foster tax compliance. Kenya hopes to collect more revenue in this financial year with a target of Sh1.49 trillion to finance the Sh2.3 trillion budget. This comes even as the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) missed its target for the nine months ending March this year. KRA collected Sh842.5 billion against a target of Sh911.5 billion with the Commissioner General John Njiraini attributing it to slow growth in customs taxes especially during the first six months of the financial year ending December 2015.
Commissioner General John Njiraini
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It’s free WiFi for Kiambu, Says Gov. Kabogo
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esidents of Kiambu County in Kenya will in coming weeks enjoy free, fast and reliable public WiFi connections, following a partnership with Liquid Telecom Kenya. Kiambu County Governor William Kabogo explained that the WiFi hotspots will help county residents get access to the information required for services such as applications for business permits among other services. “The WiFi initiative is driven by the county's mission to better use technology to improve service delivery for all Kiambu County residents,” he said. The high capacity WiFi network will cover a 5km radius from the Central Business Districts of each of the county's four largest towns, with a capacity of 10 Megabytes per second (Mbps). Kabogo said the delivery of free street WiFi zones in Kiambu will enable rapid access to information vital for economic and educational development in the county. Kiambu County ICT Director Douglas Njiraini said the Kiambu WiFi connection will be rolled out in phases, with the first phase being installations in Thika, Kikuyu, Ruiru and Kiambu towns. “It is not just people in hospitals that will have access to the Internet, but businesses and offices around the point of connections will also benefit. These locations were chosen because they have the highest number of human traffic, highest concentration of businesses and offices, and thus they are expected to have the most impact,” he said. The first of the new WiFi installations will be at Thika bus stop and the Level 5 Hospital; at the Ruiru sub-County Hospital and bus stop; in Kiambu town, near Kiambu Hospital; and in Kikuyu; at the sub-County offices, main stage, market and at Alliance Bus Stop to serve the main Kikuyu Mission Hospital, two universities, one college and
15 schools. The rest of the county's remaining sub-Counties, Limuru, Kabete Lari, Gatundu South, Gatundu North, Githunguri, Kiambaa, and Juja, will be connected in the second phase. “The aim of this project is to promote the use of ICT among the people of Kiambu, encourage innovation, and bring services closer to the people, by improving service delivery through the Digitika Portal,” Njiraini said. The Digitika Portal enables residents to log in and request services from the county as well as make online payments using M-PESA, Airtel Money, Visa or MasterCard.
Bank statistics showing that a 10 percent increase in Internet access results in approximately 1 percent of extra growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year. Internet access has been widely tipped to be the key differentiator in Kenya's economic performance, creating at least 1,000 jobs a month in the business process outsourcing sector since 2013, according to the ICT Authority of Kenya. “Free WiFi is a facility that is gaining traction globally.
The Head of Government Affairs at Liquid Telecom Kenya, William Oungo, said affordable Internet access should be seen as a basic need, necessary for the public to access information, adding that unemployed youths are locked out of accessing the Internet because of lack of disposable income to purchase data bundles. The free hotspots now being set up in Kiambu are using the same technology as has been deployed in Nakuru for the Bilawaya project, initiated by the President's Office and implemented in partnership with Nakuru county and Liquid Telecom Kenya. The Bilawaya project won the 'Best WiFi Deployment to Connect the Unconnected in Rural Environment' award during the World Wi-Fi Day Awards held in Liverpool, in England, last month. Research shows there is a direct correlation between Internet access and economic growth, with World
Kiambu County Governor William Kabogo And it is time for Kenya to be on the same level of technological advancement as other countries in the world. It is for this reason that we at Liquid Telecom Kenya are committed to ensuring every Kenyan has access to the Internet as we aim to provide free WiFi across all towns in the country,” said Oungo.
A TASTE OF LUXURIOUS LIVING
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How to realise domestic savings
T
he truth is that the cost of living has gone up, and chances are it will continue to grow higher in years or even months to come. To avoid a huge financial burden on our shoulders, we can do more to save in order to manage the rising costs of living and live within our means. Here are some things you can do to save money and utility costs around the house, one step at a time. Write a shopping list – And stick to it. Never go shopping without a list, or without an idea of what you are going to buy. Lists are highly effective and will end up saving you a ton of money. You will buy exactly what you need and avoid unnecessary spending except the occasional treat. Clean out your closet. Go through your closet and get rid of some of the junk in there. You could sell most of the stuff or even donate it. Then find something else more useful to do with the newly found space. This will also take a psychological burden off your mind to have a clean closet and it will put a few coins in your pocket. Prepare your meals at home. Cooking at home is the much cheaper and healthier option in the long run. And cooking is fun!! You do not have to spend money on take out or even
eating out- You could do this once in a while. Also, carrying a packed lunch to work will save you the costly trip to the fast food joint right around the corner. Make a maintenance plan. Instead of waiting for thing to break down around the house, you could do regular check-ups on the appliances and repair them whilst the damage is still minimal, this could go a long way in saving you a whole lot of money. O r g a n i z e ! O r g a n i z e ! Organize and clean out your pantry. Keeping a well-organized pantry means that you won't have to spend money on things you already have, and besides, having a neater pantry means you will have less of a headache while cooking because you know and can see where everything is. Use energy efficient lighting. The good old incandescent bulbs are being phased out and it's time to upgrade to more efficient and energy saving LED and CFL bulbs. These will save you a whole lot on your end of month electricity bill. Or you could switch to solar panels, they are equally as effective and could save you tons on cost. Start your own kitchen vegetable
g a r d e n . This is a great way to bring healthy organic food to your table. You save on time and money– you won't have to run to the grocery store every now and again. As an added advantage, gardening is a great hobby and it very productive in more ways than one.
to clean up around the house. C o l l e c t t h o s e c o i n s ! ! Get a jar to keep any loose change you find lying around the house or inside the couch or in the depths of that old bag. The coins might come in handy because you know where they are and won't waste time looking for them, and they also look neater. You could also trade in the coins for notes at the supermarket.
Reuse and recycle Instead of throwing containers away, you can find effective ways to use them to store other things. For example, if an old towel is worn out, you can cut it into smaller pieces which you can use as a rug or duster
T u r n i t o f f ! ! Whenever you are not using any electrical appliance the house, make sure it is turned off and unplugged from the socket. This will go a long way in reducing the amount you will have to pay for your electric bill at the end of the month. This goes for taps and faucets as well.
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Should Toddlers Share Clothes, Just Like Prince George and Princess Charlotte?
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rincess Charlotte, 1-year-old daughter of Prince William and Kate Middleton, was recently spotted wearing an outfit that looked identical to the one her big brother, Prince George, wore on the 2year-old's first royal tour to Australia back in 2014, according to Viral News: a crimson cardigan over a white top and red-and-white striped shorts. Not only is it great to see these wealthy and yet down-to-earth royals save their baby clothes as hand-me-downs for their next child (royals — they're just like us!), the fact that they were so easily able to make the outfit work for both their son and their daughter is an example of the growing acceptance of gender-neutral clothing that works for both boys and girls.
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Property rights are still wretchedly insecure in Africa title makes it easier to buy, sell and develop land. Buyers can be confident that the seller really has the right to sell what he is selling. Owners can use their property as collateral, perhaps borrowing money to buy fertiliser and better seeds. Legally recognising land ownership has boosted farmers' income and productivity in Latin America and Asia. But not yet in Africa. More than two-thirds of Africa's land is still under customary tenure, with rights to land rooted in communities and typically neither written down nor legally recognised. In 31 of Africa's 54 countries, less than 5% of rural land is privately owned. So giving peasants title to their land seems like an obvious first step towards easing African rural poverty. However, it has proven extremely hard. Rwanda, for example, rolled out a programme over three years, whereby local surveyors worked with land owners and their neighbours to demarcate and register 10.3m parcels of land. By the time the scheme was completed in 2013, 81% of plots had been issued with titles, at relatively low cost; investment and women's access to land have both improved. But even a relatively well-organised place like Rwanda has had problems keeping records up to date when land is sold or inherited. COSMAS MURUNGA was always proud to show off his mudwalled home, set in a clearing on the wooded slopes of Mount Elgon; to explain how his people coexisted with, and cared for, the forest and its wildlife on the border with Uganda. But that home is no more, burnt to the ground by around 50 Kenya Forest Service (KFS) rangers and police, along with 200 other dwellings, on June 20th and 21st. “We lost everything,” he says. Evictions are almost routine for the Ogiek, a group of around 80,000 indigenous hunter-gatherers who have suffered repeated expulsions since being moved by the British colonial government in the 1930s. Yet this one still came as a surprise: the community is in the middle of negotiating a settlement with the local government that should see formal recognition of its right to live, graze livestock and forage on land it has inhabited for centuries. In all rich countries, property rights are secure. Formal, legal
This land is your land? Prove it In Kenya a large-scale titling programme was carried out in colonial times and carried over to independence. The first president, Jomo Kenyatta, and his cronies bought the huge estates of white settlers who left. But the system is costly and ill-run. Most Kenyans cannot afford to update titles, and the government has not maintained the registry. Recognising land rights, whether customary or titled, needs to be done as cheaply and simply as possible, says Ruth Meinzen-Dick of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). “The more you increase the cost, the more likely it is that urban elites and men with more education will be able to register the land in their names, rather than poor people, the less educated and women.” Being able to prove you own your land may be a necessary condition for using it as collateral, but a title deed does not guarantee that anyone will lend you money. As Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two economists, observe in their book “Poor Economics” (2011), banks need a lot more information to judge borrowers' creditworthiness and be sure of repayment. And the administrative costs of offering very small loans to very small farmers, even Cont. Page 11
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Property rights are still wretchedly insecure in Africa Continued from Page 10
those with collateral, are often prohibitive. Africa's rickety infrastructure does not help. Where there are no roads or warehouses to help get crops to market, many of the benefits of formal tenure will go unrealised. And legal property rights offer less protection in countries where big men can flout the law with impunity—a particular problem in Africa. Customary rights have the advantage that they already exist, people understand them and they offer at least some security. “Law and policy should recognise what is working on the ground. So if it is customary rights, so be it,” says Esther Mwangi of the Centre for International Forestry Research. A USAID survey conducted in Ethiopia, Guinea, Liberia and Zambia found that less than a third of
people had experienced land disputes. About the same number thought confiscation of, or encroachment on, their land was likely. That suggests that their property is far less secure than it would be in any rich country, but not as insecure as one might expect, given that less than 10% of households have any documents proving their land ownership in the latter three countries. In recent years land grabs have sometimes made a mockery of customary ownership. In Ethiopia, all land is still officially state-owned. The government has successfully registered customary rights in some regions: about 30% of Ethiopian households now have such documents. But it has also leased to foreign investors large tracts of land in Oromia that have traditionally been used by smallholder farmers for growing crops, grazing livestock and collecting firewood—and brutally suppressed the protests that erupted as a result. In Ghana chiefs have used their right to administer communal land to sell large tracts without their community's permission. Property rights are even less respected in Zimbabwe. Over the past
decade and a half, Robert Mugabe's government has seized most of the country's commercial farms with little or no compensation. Traditional chiefs have also sold communal land to private firms, leaving many peasants destitute. In South Africa the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has generally been trying to weaken individual land rights by declaring more land “communal”. This puts it under the control of chiefs and shores up the ANC's rural support, since people afraid of being evicted tend to vote for whomever they are told to. In several places custom dictates that only men can inherit land. In Uganda stories abound of widows being turfed off their marital land by inlaws. One woman was thrown out of her home a week after her husband died in an accident; she had refused to marry any of his five brothers, and her children were taken away to a sister-in-law. Individual land ownership is often ineffectual for forests and rangelands, which lose their value when parcelled up. There is evidence that recognising the communal rights of indigenous forest communities can mean their lands are conserved better. Around Mount Elgon successive governments have argued that, when evicting the Ogiek, they were protecting the forest and the rugged moorland above it to make way for a national park and forest reserve. Yet where the woodland is under the control of the KFS, whole areas have been razed to rent out to maize farmers. The Ogiek, by contrast, graze their cows in glades and above the tree line, relying on the forest to provide honey and medicine.
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Innovative water storage helps Kenyans thrive in drought
Even after the heavy rains that drenched East Africa in April, Makueni County in eastern Kenya remains dry - and it's not clear when increasingly elusive rainfall will come again. But the women of Kikumbulyu village are not worried. Last November, they built a rock catchment system to harvest rainwater. Now, despite dry weather, the village still has plenty of water.
executive director, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Kibwezi sub-county, where Kikumbulyu village is located, is hilly with huge rocks - not the kind of environment that supports traditional methods of water conservation such as water pans or "sand dams", which use wet sand to hold water. But since 2010, the Africa Sand Dam Foundation (ASDF), a Kenyan nong o v e r n m e n t a l organisation, has worked with villagers in the Makueni area to build rock catchment systems, taking advantage of the local geography to make themselves more water God, this is the other biggest blessing that has come to us," said villager Mary Mwikali Kiminza, a mother of five and a member of the village's Ithine Self Help Group. "My feet are now rested without endless trips to (fetch water), and my children can now concentrate in school because I no longer ask them to follow me to the river," she said.
"Apart from the gift of life from
CASH FROM WATER According to data from the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation, annual rainfall in Makueni County ranges between 150mm during a dry spell and 650mm in years of heavy rainfall. But, even in a good year, Makueni is thirsty compared with regions in western Kenya such as Kitale, which receives an average of 1,260 mm of rainfall annually. The ASDF project aims to help villagers work together to adapt to the area's increasingly dry climate. So far, the organisation has built 10 rock catchment units in as many Makueni villages, feeding rainfall runoff from the rocks to a total of 26 concrete tanks. Each tank can hold up to 190,000 litres of water. To construct a catchment as part of the project, residents must form a community group and provide the labour as well as locally available materials, such as sand and pebbles. The foundation then provides other needed building materials, such as cement and pipes, and experts to help guide the construction.
secure. Rock catchment systems use naturally occurring rock outcrops to divert rainwater to a central collection area. A concrete wall is built to direct the water that trickles down the rock surface into a sand and gravel filter, then down pipes into covered storage tanks. "The main idea is to build resilience to climate extremes among the worst-hit areas, using locally acceptable techniques and making them as sustainable as possible," Matheka Cornelius Kyalo, ASDF's
A rock catchment unit with two tanks costs 2.5 million Kenyan shillings ($25,000) to build, with the money raised Cont. Page 14 Got Any Question OR comment? Email: Honorske@gmail.com
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Kenyans thrive in drought Continued from Page 12 from donor organisations including Kenyan banks. The project also generates an income for the community groups who build the systems. The groups sell 20 litres of water for 10 Kenyan shillings (10 cents), even to their own members. Back in 2014, during a period of heavy rainfall, members of Ithine Self Help Group made Sh. 16,000 ($160) selling harvested water, which they put in a bank. Early this year, after some deliberation, they withdrew the money and bought 10 goats which have since been given to various members for breeding.
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SAND TO BEANS In Songeni village, in Makueni County's Mbooni East constituency, villagers are finding water security with another water harvesting project, this one focusing on sand dams. By constructing barriers made of sand at different points across the area's rivers, villagers can catch and hold the water that rushes down during seasonal flooding. Using the water stored in a sand dam they constructed, members of Songeni's Mukaso Self Help Group are now growing and exporting green beans to European markets. According to chairman Harison Kitaa, the group expects to collect its first cheque in a few weeks' time. "This is a lasting solution to a problem that has rocked us for several years," said Kitaa. "Even without the export market, we cannot go hungry as has been the case in the past.� The Africa Sand Dam Foundation has been working with local groups to construct 256 sand dams across different rivers in Eastern Kenya, with the aim of supporting more than 12,700 households who use the water for domestic and irrigation purposes. According to Kyalo, the foundation's director, the sand dam that the Mukaso Self Help Group uses can hold millions of litres of water. Meanwhile, in Isiolo County, in the arid northeast, and Embu and Kitui counties in the east, more than 80 households are now using home dams to store rainwater runoff, under an initiative supported by ActionAid International Kenya. The simple dams - reservoirs with a polythene lining to stop water percolating into the ground - are easy to build, families say. Under the programme, local people who dig out the reservoirs receive free polythene liners and lessons on dry-land farming and aquaculture. The Bidii Women Group, in semi-arid Isiolo County, now uses the water stored in home dams to produce green beans for export, through a company that sells primarily to markets in Britain, the United States and Asia. Sadia Ibrahims, the women's group leader, said the organisation earns an average of Sh. 50,000 ($500) every two weeks. According to the U.N. World Food Programme, an estimated 1.3 million Kenyans are food insecure and in need of assistance. Water storage projects, their backers say, can help families use the resources available to them to adapt and even thrive in the face of climate change. "Water has been the main problem for people in these dry-land areas," Kyalo said. "But with innovative water harvesting techniques, most of them have become food secure and not dependent on aid any longer."
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