Gov’t moves to secure poultry production

January 11, 2018

About 500 poultry farmers are to be trained in the early detection and treatment of various poultry diseases, as the country seeks to reduce mortality in the poultry sector and meet the growing demand for locally produced chicken.

A recent USAID survey revealed that Ghanaians consume more than two million locally-produced chickens annually. This suggests a vibrant market for live birds, amid concerns over the viability and competitiveness of the broiler industry in the country.

Ghanaian consumers are now eating more and more chicken fueled by a rise in incomes. The country’s per capita income increased from GH¢400 reported in the 2008 published Ghana Living Standard Survey Round 5 (GLSS5) to GH¢5,347 as contained in the GLSS6 released in 2014, implying that the average Ghanaian lives on an average gross income of GH¢14.65 a day.

Broiler producers, the survey notes, generated an estimated GH¢53.6 million from the birds sold, which represents 0.7 percent of the total GDP of the agriculture sector in 2015 and 7.9 percent of the GDP of the livestock sub-sector.

However, outbreak of various poultry diseases such as Newcastle disease and bird flu among others, have a significant impact not just on individual households but also adjacent commercial farms.

To this end, the Ghana Poultry Project (GPP), which is funded by the US Department of Agriculture, has collaborated with the Veterinary Services Department (VSD), under the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, to train a number of local community members and equipped them with toolkits. This is to help poultry households address diseases and production challenges.

According to officials of the GPP, it forms part of efforts to ensure the expansion of effective and affordable veterinary services at small holder level, through the use of community members.

It took off with a trainer of trainer workshop for VSD staff across three project regions including the Ashanti, Greater Accra, and Brong Ahafo regions. The 36 trainers went to identify 116 willing community members and trained them on various animal related topics with a focus on poultry production across the three project regions.

The Value Chain Team Leader of GPP, Mr. Kweku Tuoho, said the GPP has a major focus strengthening the capacity of veterinary service providers and poultry input dealers to expand their reach to all commercial poultry producers and smallholder poultry farmers in the project regions.

He explained that this will lead to an improved poultry health and a reduction in poultry mortality, a major setback for poultry producers.

He noted that through the CAWH programme, “GPP will work with VSD to use locally produced poultry production input such as an I-2 vaccine to expand veterinary services and vaccination against the Newcastle disease to all poultry producing households.”

Mr. Kweku Tuoho, GPP (right), handing over the toolkits to Rev. John Manu, Ashanti Regional MoFA Director (right)

Mr. Tuoho who said these at the presentation of the toolkits to the CAHWs, in Kumasi, charged them to take their task very seriously and work with poultry households in an honest and transparent manner.

The Ashanti Regional Director of MoFA, Rev. John Manu, said the project’s effort to train the local people was in the appropriate and commendable and very timely.

He said the Region is endowered with the right environment for commercial poultry production but insisted that the Newcastle and other poultry diseases which can affect the industry needs to be eradicated to the barest minimum if possible.

Rev. Manu underscored the role of the CAWHs in fighting poultry diseases among local birds, which can transmit diseases easily due to the prevalent ‘free-range system’ common in most villages and small towns.

He urged the CAWHs to use the logistical support from the GPP to double their efforts and duties.

Similarly, the Regional Head of the Veterinary Service Department, Dr. E.E. Effah, asked the CAWHs not to make the exercise a one-day work but continue with the vaccination programme as it should to help achieve the objective of the programme.

Are your measuring your business’ Customer Effort Score (CES)?

January 11, 2018

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A few weeks ago – in our December 21^st article (https://thebftonline.com/business/the-net-promoter-score-nps-what-is-it), we have talked about NPS (Net Promoter Score) as the de facto standard for measuring Customer Loyalty.

In 2008, the CCC (Customer Contact Leadership Council) a division of the Corporate Executive Board (CEB is now part of Gartner) created the Customer Effort Score (CES), as a better alternative to NPS. CCC believes their CES metric to be both a better and more predictive method of surveying customers.

CCC made a quite extended study of 75,000+ customers who have had an interaction with customer service via all possible communication / contact channels (e.g. phone, email, chat, etc.), and they performed literally hundreds of structured interviews with customer service leaders worldwide.

FYI, this study of the 75.000+ customers, was based in getting answers to the following 3 questions:

How does customer service affect loyalty?
Which customer service activities increase loyalty and which do not?
Can companies increase loyalty without raising their operating costs?

What is CES?
The idea behind CES is to ask your customer how much effort s/he put into a certain interaction with your company; for example, during a technical support call or during a visit at a Customer Service Department that s/he needs to do in order to resolve a billing problem or simply exchange a merchandise.

CCC/ CEB research showed that “Service organizations create loyal customers primarily by reducing customer effort – i.e. helping them solve their problems quickly and easily – not by delighting them in service interactions”.

According to CCC/ CEB’s findings:

if customers are forced to put forth high effort, they are 96% more likely to be disloyal,
only 9% of customers with low effort are more disloyal.

So, the original CES single question in 2010 was: “How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?”, with an answer- rating scale starting from 1 (very small effort) and going all the way up to 5 (very big effort).

Due to problems with interpretation consistency, universal applicability, and cross-industry benchmarking capabilities, in 2013, CCC/ CEB came out with an improved CES version. CES version 2.0 is based on the statement: “[Name of the organization] made it easy for me to handle my issue”; customers are asked to express their level of agreement / disagreement with this statement on an enhanced seven-step scale from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree).

For course in practice, different businesses use their own variation of the CES- scale (e.g. from 1 to 3 or from 1 to 7 or even to 9) and rephrasing of the question/ statement.

NPS and CES are complementary measures

When comparing the NPS and CES score, research does show that indeed these scores correlate with each other:

customers that indicate they had to make little efforts to fix a problem, also tend to give a high NPS.

However, it might be a great idea to utilize/ use both of these 2 measurements in every single survey, since:

NPS gives you a picture of your customer satisfaction on an overall level, and
CES specifically indicates how you perform in handling customer issues.

The Business Case with CES
Case studies of companies using CES (e.g. British Telecom) have found that “it has helped to:

Demonstrate project success – Decreasing effort scores highlight the effectiveness and success of certain changes.
Influence rep behaviours – As reps understand the importance of effort, they focus more on experience engineering.
Detect process fixes – Identifying specific call types with unusually high effort scores can indicate potential areas for process improvements.”

Studies have also shown that customers who exert “high” effort (4 or 5 on the CES scale) are:

61% less likely to repurchase and
23% less likely to increase spend with an organization – as compared to the average customer.

We suggest that you use existing data regarding the percentage of customers who renew contracts annually or your general customer churn- rate to get an average repurchase rate, and then figure out the expected loss in repurchase from high effort customers specifically

Another equally quite interesting and surprising field- study result is that:

à89% of the interviewed customer service managers bet on “exceeding customers’ expectations” and very disturbing that

à84% of customers felt their recent interactions “did not exceed their expectations.” Simply put: there is little correlation between satisfaction and loyalty.

“With BT in particular, we found that the rate of customer loss or easy scores was found to be significantly less than others and showed a 40% reduction in the propensity to churn. If you’re easier to do business with your much more likely to stay, essentially. We also found that in B2B companies, too. Being easy to do business with prevented customer defections and they’re more likely to stay.”

Finally, according to published studies, CES 2.0 should be 1.8 x better at predicting customer loyalty than Customer satisfaction (CSAT)and 2 x finer than Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Suggested CES Success KPIs

Total # of requested CES feedback
Total # of collected CES feedback
% of collected feedback from total feedback requests
Percentage- distribution of feedback on CES scale (1-7)
…..

CES Criticism
There is plenty of criticism and it’s all about the fact that CES is solely focused on the effort or effortless customer experience during the resolution of an issue. Sure, it is great if you are benchmarking the efficiency of your Customer Service. But, it does not tell you absolutely nothing about the customer who had no problem or who decided not to contact your Customer Service.

Also, you cannot get any type of ‘customer segmentation’ data / information when using CES.

What is the Best Customer Effort Score / Value?

We hear / get this question a lot from our clients. CES is not an absolute ‘value’/ metric like NPS.

Also, everybody has the freedom to implement their own version of CES in their organization, so there is no Universal Benchmarking.

What is important, is that you define the CES zero-line for your own organization and that you start measuring (hopefully) improvement in your Customer Service areas and you manage to correlate that to specific actions taken to for improvement.

In Conclusion
Implementation of Customer Effort Score will definitely help you improve Customer Loyalty, by knowing how much effort your customers must put into resolving their problems.

Basically, you will have your customers pinpointing your attention right to the shortcomings of your service or product.

CCC/ CEB believes that a low effort customer experience is the cornerstone of customer loyalty. Do you believe that too?

Still, keep in mind that in the 75.000+ customers’ study, 89% of the Customer Service Manages felt/ bet on exceeding expectations, while 84% of those 75.000+ customers felt they their expectations were not met!!

Thank you and Good Luck w/ your CES implementation. Remember, it can also be a simple binary question like ‘was it easy for you to resolve your problem today?’ (you don’t have to use ‘verbatim’ that very expression/ sentence)

Kwaku and Spiros

About the authors: Both Kwaku Abedi and Spiros Tsaltas are associated with a unique Customer Loyalty Startup : HireLoyalty (www.HireLoyalty.com)- based in Accra, which is coming out of stealth mode in the next few weeks offering both Consulting and Training in anything relating to Customer Loyalty.

They welcome all your comments/ remarks/ feedback /suggestions at Press [at] HireLoyalty.com. HireLoyalty can be reached at +233 20 741 3060 or +233 26 835 2026

As a NED (Non-Executive Director), Spiros is also associated with HIREghana ( www.HIREgh.com ) and he can be hired via them (+233 50 228 5155)

2018 begins! fake news, fake jobs, fake courts

January 11, 2018

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What a beginning! A republic’s anniversary, an immigration service professing medical expertise while practicing discrimination and a media house DG declaring new courts of prosecution.

Happy New Year. Although January’s beginnings in the world of news in Ghana revealed we are off to a troubling start. The above stories signify deeper issues and require critical analysis.

Ghana’s Immigration Service faced the public’s ire as it abandoned its actual remit and turned itself into a body with medical expertise. We now know the story. 500 jobs. 80,000 applicants. Each applicant paid a voucher fee. GIS’s provided public jobs criteria – i.e. height or educational requirements. Post applicants’ payment to apply, long, long, long lines in Ghana’s unforgiving Harmattan, a missive is released by a GIS ‘official’ that stretch marks and bleached skin exclude you from this service.

Really? I mean, GIS, seriously!

This is beyond problematic. It is discriminatory, it is an outrage, it should be criminal. It is an act of a dangerous kind of leadership that already flourishes in this nation.

GIS is not qualified to make medical decisions. Skin bleaching is a problematic personal decision buoyed by an institution that has turned self-hate and international beauty standards of whiteness into a multi-million dollar profit industry. Ghana’s government has already banned the primary ingredient in the bleaching crèmes; and yet such products are still widely advertised – and certainly more needs to be done. The GIS is not the body engaged to perform this service. Its additional declaration that stretch marks impede effective job performance is beyond ludicrous. Mothers in particular are stretch mark carriers. So, this becomes a gender discrimination issue. I mean, in our history one of Ghana’s revered warriors is Yaa Asantewa – a grandmother, a leader, a woman – whose courage has been celebrated throughout the years. Might she have had stretch marks?

Of course, I am being facetious. But GIS is being ridiculous beyond measure.

What is dangerous is such declarations lack any weight in evidence, expertise and yet they are issued as if they are fact. They are then repeated with other equally ignorant voices added to lend weight to such stupidity.

The added issue? Accepting 80,000 applications for only 500 jobs; where paid application guarantees profit for no work is symptomatic of the worst elements of leadership in Ghana. For me, it is an act of corruption, it is fraud by omission and beyond calls for individuals aggrieved to seek redress in courts, there needs to be institutional amends, accountability and transformation.

Hardly an auspicious beginning!

The outrage is easy. The change is the challenge.

And change is what is required.

From a troubled immigration service’s jobs policies to an equally troubled media house’s leadership call for bogus courts.

Ghana’s Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) is our nation’s public broadcaster. Its current stint in hot water is the result of the new DG’s – Dr. Kwame Akuffo Anoff-Ntow – flawed and foolish decision to announce special new courts where non-payers of tv licences will be prosecuted and punished.

That declaration triggered equal parts outrage and condemnation. It was swiftly followed by a humiliating walk back from GBC’s DG. The latter was the result of the legal world highlighting their utter ignorance of such a major move – and their lack of knowledge of such a move, meant simply it was never an actual move. There is little more damaging than empty threats followed by a public dressing down. GBC’s DG had gone rogue. Seemingly without consultation or practicing the leadership role – for which he had been hired – he made an announcement that turned into a public dressing down.

There are deeper issues that require engagement here.

I strongly believe in our nation having an active public broadcaster. In our media world dominated by private media houses whose bottom line profit impacts content choices – a public broadcaster holds a different mandate. It must serve a nation with content that engages history, context, nation-building. It is subject to different scrutiny because we the public are its shareholders.

It holds a history steeped in politics due to its beginnings and its life under the varying administrations.

GBC was birthed in 1935, and formerly known as the Gold Coast Broadcasting System. Its beginnings were the brainchild of our colonizers. The aim was to bring news, entertainment and music into the homes of millions. It was described then as an essential ‘path to progress’. It was the brainchild of then governor Sir Arnold Hodson.

The GBC – like all media houses – is ultimately a content creator. As the news broke, I spent time watching GBC’s tv content. I was appalled. Watching the news bulletins was like a journey in time travel. The presentation felt like it belonged to the 1970s. This is a direct reflection of leadership’s failure to focus on transforming a historical, weak structure that does not function for the 21^st century – while calling for the public to engage, respect and pay for it.

For me, media is passion, purpose and profession. I believe in its power to do important, transformative work when led with vision, conviction and skill. Public broadcasters matter. GBC – like many media houses – have focused, talented and committed individuals working under challenging circumstances within weak institutions and incompetent or mediocre management and leadership. That combination is disastrous for any media house – but for the public broadcaster it is particularly egregious.

Building strong institutions needs to be a work in progress not a go-to sound bite. And our nation’s public broadcaster is an institution.

TV licenses are a bitter pill for Ghana’s public to swallow. They are bitter because watching the channel prompts the valid question – what is money being spent on? Where does the TV licence money land? GBC’s content should be educational, historical and engaging. It can – and should – reflect the modernity of global media. With a guaranteed income, a stronger structure should exist with forward thinking leadership and visionary management. GBC should not be the media house where great ideas go to die, or where great people eek out a living navigating frustration and inaction.

As Ghana honors the 25^th anniversary of the Republic, discarding the legacy and shackles of our colonizers must be a priority for Ghana’s national broadcaster. Individual vision without institutional restructuring cannot stand. GBC was born in our former colonizer’s time.

Media in Ghana is a modern tool; not just of communication, but of leadership. It carries the power of narrative. It nurtures nation building by the choices it makes regarding content and contribution. GBC is not exempt from hard choices because of its historical beginnings.

We are currently governed by a president who called for an engaged citizenry. Such citizens will not just condemn outrage but actively call for, demand and persist in pursuit of change.

What are we willing to give up, transform, exchange, remove, replace in order to make CHANGE?

In 2018, our word for the year when it comes to media and leadership should be: CHANGE.

About the author

Esther A Armah is an Accra-based international award winning journalist who works across radio and print. She is Director of EAA Media Productions, a Media Communications Lecturer with Webster University, a Content Creator and a Master Class Media Trainer. Every Friday at 9.30am, listen to her weekly show #finePRINTfriday on Class91.3FM. Her website is www.eaarmah.com

Hanging the tourism sector to dry — Low gov’t cash, no FDI in 2017

January 11, 2018

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When the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) presented its third quarter performance for 2017, not a single investment was recorded for tourism.

According to the report, since the turn of 2017, more than 130 projects worth some US$5billion were recorded and yet not a single dollar was recorded in the tourism sector.

The Akufo-Addo-led government rode to power on the back of the creation of jobs for the teeming unemployed youth who were growing frustrated over the lack of job opportunities. Surely, one of the sectors that can easily generate meaningful employment as well as bring in scarce foreign exchange is the tourism sector.

However, over the past few years, it seems the potential and the opportunities in the sector has been lost on successive governments which either paid lip service to the sector or ignored it entirely. When Ken Ofori-Atta presented the Akufo-Addo’s government second budget statement, not much was in there for the tourism sector.

The expediency that is being attached to other sectors and initiatives is missing in the tourism sector. More disappointing is what he recounted as the highlights for the tourism sector in 2017.

Mr. Ofori-Atta said the country participated in eight international fairs including, 51st Internationale Tourismus-Bourse (ITB) Tourism Fair-Berlin, Germany, China’s Outbound travel and tourism market (COTTOM) in Beijing, China and the Akwaaba Travel Fair in Nigeria.

“In 2018, the Ministry will use the international Tourism, Arts and Culture Fairs and fora to pursue robust investment drive. It will also use the Single Portal Window to promote and market tourism,” he added.

All across the country are notable tourism sites which have been neglected with some totally undeveloped and wasting away. Generally, road networks in the hinterlands are nothing to write home about and those leading to some leading tourist sites are worse off.

The road leading to the southern-most part of Ghana, Cape Three Points in the Western Region, is virtually nonexistent and during the rainy season is completely inaccessible. Ironically, that place has an eighty-four-year-old lighthouse and arguably one of the most scenic beaches in West Africa.

Not far-off from Cape Three Points is Princess Town and Butre, all coastal town with finer beaches than any seen in Accra. Yet, these places are a pain to reach and hardly gets any mention in any coordinated marketing campaign. Events organised by indigenes of these areas largely get no support from policy makers, and are left to untrained town folks to manage.

The budget allocation to the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Arts contained in the 2018 Budget is GH¢75.3 million out of which about GH¢18 million is being devoted to capital expenditure. It is interesting to note that the Ministry has 12 departments and agencies.

This budget allocation does not commensurate with the lofty initiatives promised by government.

One of the key promises made was the transformation of the country into a major Meeting, Incentive, Conference, & Exhibition (MICE) centre, as well as on expanding the tourism sector, through investment, innovation, the pursuit of service excellence and meaningful partnerships.

According to the 2016 NPP Manifesto, this will enable tourism to become a major revenue-generating sector that provides safe, memorable and enjoyable experience for tourists. The NPP said, to achieve this, it will aggressively develop tourist sites to bring them to world-class standards, complete with the requisite amenities and facilities.

It said its government will also pursue a deliberate marketing programme to promote our unique historical sites, flora and fauna, waterfalls and other cultural artefacts, and take the staffing of these tourist sites and our hospitality industry as a whole seriously.

Further, to improve professionalism in the sector, an NPP government will partner with the private sector to set up a state-of-the-art hospitality teaching facility, with an operational hotel, classrooms, kitchens, library, and dormitories.

Lastly, then opposition party promised to encourage local communities to take ownership and invest in the sustainability of tourist attractions in their localities. The NPP promised championing a revenue-sharing programme to inject 5% of tourism revenues from fees of well-developed tourist attractions into local community projects.

Well, these are but few of the campaign promises made by the then opposition party to transform the tourism sector. If anything at all, the 2018 budget statement read by Finance Minister does little to set the tone for government to achieve the promises made to the sector.

When Ken Ofori-Atta appeared on the floor of parliament while dazzling with numerous thought out policies and initiatives for other sectors, he could only mention initiatives to promote local dishes among other not too significant initiatives especially looking at the myriad of challenges bedeviling the sector.

Of course, the statement presented on the floor of Parliament was just highlight which all the same makes it sad that the initiative singled out for mention were the highlights for this all-important sector.

It is important Ghana embraces the modern way of managing its tourism sector to bring out the best in it. The NPP manifesto offers some exciting proposals that when fully implemented could set the country on a path of growth.

While participating in tourism fairs and expo is important, it is worth noting that if we don’t put our house in order, such fair will just become avenues for people to get out of the country on sightseeing and sipping on mochas while they populate their social media pages.

Putting our house in order will lead to increase in domestic tourism that will complement the number of international tourists that arrive in the country every year. Tourism deserves government’s full support now.

2018 begins! fake news, fake jobs, fake courts

January 11, 2018

0

What a beginning! A republic’s anniversary, an immigration service professing medical expertise while practicing discrimination and a media house DG declaring new courts of prosecution.

Happy New Year. Although January’s beginnings in the world of news in Ghana revealed we are off to a troubling start. The above stories signify deeper issues and require critical analysis.

Ghana’s Immigration Service faced the public’s ire as it abandoned its actual remit and turned itself into a body with medical expertise. We now know the story. 500 jobs. 80,000 applicants. Each applicant paid a voucher fee. GIS’s provided public jobs criteria – i.e. height or educational requirements. Post applicants’ payment to apply, long, long, long lines in Ghana’s unforgiving Harmattan, a missive is released by a GIS ‘official’ that stretch marks and bleached skin exclude you from this service.

Really? I mean, GIS, seriously!

This is beyond problematic. It is discriminatory, it is an outrage, it should be criminal. It is an act of a dangerous kind of leadership that already flourishes in this nation.

GIS is not qualified to make medical decisions. Skin bleaching is a problematic personal decision buoyed by an institution that has turned self-hate and international beauty standards of whiteness into a multi-million dollar profit industry. Ghana’s government has already banned the primary ingredient in the bleaching crèmes; and yet such products are still widely advertised – and certainly more needs to be done. The GIS is not the body engaged to perform this service. Its additional declaration that stretch marks impede effective job performance is beyond ludicrous. Mothers in particular are stretch mark carriers. So, this becomes a gender discrimination issue. I mean, in our history one of Ghana’s revered warriors is Yaa Asantewa – a grandmother, a leader, a woman – whose courage has been celebrated throughout the years. Might she have had stretch marks?

Of course, I am being facetious. But GIS is being ridiculous beyond measure.

What is dangerous is such declarations lack any weight in evidence, expertise and yet they are issued as if they are fact. They are then repeated with other equally ignorant voices added to lend weight to such stupidity.

The added issue? Accepting 80,000 applications for only 500 jobs; where paid application guarantees profit for no work is symptomatic of the worst elements of leadership in Ghana. For me, it is an act of corruption, it is fraud by omission and beyond calls for individuals aggrieved to seek redress in courts, there needs to be institutional amends, accountability and transformation.

Hardly an auspicious beginning!

The outrage is easy. The change is the challenge.

And change is what is required.

From a troubled immigration service’s jobs policies to an equally troubled media house’s leadership call for bogus courts.

Ghana’s Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) is our nation’s public broadcaster. Its current stint in hot water is the result of the new DG’s – Dr. Kwame Akuffo Anoff-Ntow – flawed and foolish decision to announce special new courts where non-payers of tv licences will be prosecuted and punished.

That declaration triggered equal parts outrage and condemnation. It was swiftly followed by a humiliating walk back from GBC’s DG. The latter was the result of the legal world highlighting their utter ignorance of such a major move – and their lack of knowledge of such a move, meant simply it was never an actual move.

There is little more damaging than empty threats followed by a public dressing down. GBC’s DG had gone rogue. Seemingly without consultation or practicing the leadership role – for which he had been hired – he made an announcement that turned into a public dressing down.