Customer relations vital—Old Mutual

Old Mutual Malawi has said strengthening relationships with its clients is key to the well-being of the company.
Old Mutual Clients Relationship Manager, Taonga Manda, said this during Old Mutual Three Anchors Programme on Times Television and Times Radio.
Manda said this is the reason Old Mutual has a dedicated Client Services Department that works with businesses or consumers to help them fulfill their requests, resolve issues and answer questions.
He said client services act as a liaison between an organisation and its customers.
Old Mutual, according to Manda, has a client servicing policy which offers a set of guidelines in as far as service delivery is concerned.
He said the policy ensures that, when deal ing with customers, all staff respond in a courteous, consistent, timely and fair manner and satisfy all reasonable requests from customers.
“The policy also helps to ensure that customers are provided with the very best of service that can be expected by Old Mutual staff at all levels.
“In addition, the policy ensures that Old Mutual resources are used efficiently and effectively when dealing with customers,” Manda said.
The policy, Manda said, covers issues such as guidelines on how Old Mutual would deal with telephone clients, walk-in clients as well as email clients.
Among others, Manda said the policy stipulates that the phone should not ring more than three times before it is answered, adding that walk-in customers should not go beyond five minutes before being attended to. It also stipulates that emails should be responded to within the same day.
He added that, Old Mutual has a customer service charter which is an agreement between Old Mutual and the client where specific time is agreed to provide service to the particular client.
“Old Mutual as a service provider needs to adhere to these agreed time lines. For instance, If Old Mutual agrees with a client that we will pay claims within 10 working days from the time a claim is received, Old Mutual has to abide by such an agreement,” Manda said.
He noted that the firm has three service centres in Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu where clients could call or go to enquire on any of their products or services.
Manda added that customers could also make inquiries online by logging onto the firm’s website.
“We are also on Twitter where our handle is @ OldMutualMalawi in addition to being on Facebook. We also have an online portal for our corporate customers where they can check their pension fund balances,” Manda said.