Nashua Mobile is being "restructured from top to bottom" under newly appointed CEO Mark Taylor.
He has returned to the cellular services provider after a four-year tenure with one of its main partners, Vodacom.
Taylor says he feels Nashua Mobile has "lost its way over the last couple of years". His re-entry as head of the service provider, he says, is to set a five-year strategy that will ultimately see the company (which operates within JSE-listed Reunert group) being the go-to partner of choice for SA's networks.
Since his reinstatement as CEO at the beginning of the month, Taylor has divided the company up into two distinct channels - consumer and enterprise - that will operate under respective focused teams. Each section, he says, will have its own set of heads, and each head its own strategy.
"The entire business is being rejigged. In the past, Nashua Mobile consisted of one big sales team with no specific focus. We will now have a consumer product team and an enterprise product team, for example. There may be different management skills and different targets and objectives at play - but underlying it all must be consistent customer service."
IT overhaul
In terms of consumers, in order to move forward and offer the kinds of services customers expect, digital self-service must be looked at and improved. He says Nashua Mobile - and the industry at large - has failed to build digital services from a customer perspective.
"We have all spent so much time selling, selling, selling - but the services customers want aren't there. It's not brain surgery. If you look at the banks' Web sites and the services they offer - why can't we? Why must you go into a store when the services you require are all available now in the digital space?"
As the market becomes increasingly saturated and customers' expectations rise - "we had better meet those expectations, otherwise we are not going to be here".
Nashua Mobile, says Taylor, will bring its physical store presence and its "online store" together so that they complement each other. "We want our franchise owners to feel part of this service too, so that they drive and support it."
He says the next step is to do the same for corporates and SMEs. "Our operations teams' aim is to take care of customer and business from the back-end and bring it to the front -end."
Taylor says there are a number of further developments on the horizon for Nashua Mobile, including a retail agreement with Look & Listen that will see the retailer sell its products and services. He hints at a range of new handsets and better tariffs using the least-cost routing model that he says is "mistakenly" viewed as redundant.
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