Kaya FM pushes for BlackBerry

Commercial radio station, Kaya FM, has increased its responsiveness to the needs of its customers by adopting a mobile messaging system utilising BlackBerry smart phones and the BlackBerry solution offered by Research In Motion (RIM).

Kaya FM is a major South African radio station serving the greater Johannesburg area and the surrounding Gauteng province. The broadcaster wanted to improve customer service through better communication after it became apparent that its salespeople were struggling to get back to customers fast enough.

Says Russell Pope, commercial manager at Kaya FM: ‚To keep up with email, salespeople had to come into the office frequently or use a 3G card with their laptops to check email. Neither solution was very efficient: trips to the office reduced the time they could devote to sales calls and 3G coverage wasn’t always available in areas where the salespeople operated.‚

When Kaya FM’s contract with its mobile carrier came up for renewal at the end of 2008, Pope decided that this was the perfect opportunity to bring mobile email to the salespeople by adopting the BlackBerry solution.

Kaya FM replaced the mobile phones of the salespeople with the latest BlackBerry smartphones using BlackBerry Internet Bundle and benefitting from the BlackBerry ‚push’ technology for email and now they synchronise their smart phones with the PCs for calendar, contacts and tasks.

Says Pope: ‚With the BlackBerry, email is instantaneous no matter where you are. You don’t have to set up anything. The email comes straight through and you can respond immediately.‚

‚I can see the salespeople are getting back to clients faster and are handling more sales calls. Another bonus is the BlackBerry¬Æ Messenger service, which the salespeople use among themselves for instant messaging.‚

Pope was also impressed with the ease of use that the BlackBerry Solution offers. ‚The salespeople found it quite easy. They were very happy to use it and excited when they got it because it enables them to do their job that much quicker,‚ Pope says.

‚The salespeople could see right away that the BlackBerry solution was going to make them more productive by converting downtime into productive time for sales calls,‚ says Pope.

In addition to the productivity gains, the BlackBerry solution has yielded cost savings by reducing the usage of 3G cards and the volume of mobile calls. ‚The BlackBerry solution isn’t costing us more per month than what we were paying for the old mobile phones, and now we have mobile email.‚

Says Deon Liebenberg, regional director for sub Sahara Africa at Research In Motion (RIM): ‚Kaya FM’s success with the BlackBerry solution shows that mobile technologies with low monthly costs and no upfront infrastructure investment required can make a massive and immediate difference for businesses with employees that spend a lot of time on the road.‚