Stakeholder Engagement

Vodacom’s engagement with stakeholders on sustainability issues has largely been dictated by the strategic direction of the business, and issues that have received high-level attention are those that are close to the business operations.

The company’s achievements are testimony to generally successful relationships with its stakeholders. The Chief Officer Corporate Affairs assumed direct responsibility for external relations from February 2009, which will provide added impetus in formalising and improving our engagement with stakeholders.

Examples of specific engagement with important stakeholder groups are:

Employee engagement – Employee interests are formally represented by 33 local consultative committees which meet on a monthly basis.
Customers – Through our Customer Lifecycle Management programme, Vodacom interacts with customers to provide information, assess needs and measure satisfaction with our service. We also conduct customer focus groups, surveys, as well as monthly inhouse and independent customer surveys. Vodacom’s call centres receive approximately four million calls a month, of which 73% are answered within 20 seconds. 81% of all calls are resolved in the first interaction. Approximately 25 000 emails are received per month, of which 80% are responded to within 11 hours.
Governments and regulators – All the Group’s operating companies have dedicated resources responsible for interaction with governments at national, local and regional level. Vodacom is proactive in engaging with regulators.
Business partners – Vodacom SA engages with franchisees through eight regional franchise associations, as well as a national association. Vodacom SA’s Business Partner Conference, an annual event held over two and-a-half days, is hosted for all business partners – key suppliers, dealers, franchisees and national chains. Our aim at this event is to review the past year’s performance and to discuss the coming year’s plans.
Communities – Vodacom makes use of a number of channels to identify communities receiving inadequate network coverage. In South Africa, regions proactively conduct roadshows to municipalities sharing the company’s roll-out plans, but also to assess specific needs with ward counsellors, particularly relating to municipal Integrated Development Plans (IDPs). Vodacom SA also supports ICASA’s Customer Care roadshows in rural areas around the country, and builds base stations in support of government initiatives. More generally, requests by individual customers are received via Vodacom call centres and are resolved accordingly.

Independent perception surveys

In response to feedback on our last sustainability report, we contracted an external consultancy to conduct a series of high-level interviews with a range of stakeholders around Vodacom’s most important sustainability issues and their perception of our response to these issues.

Global Pulse, the Reputation Institute’s research study of corporate reputation conducted with some 60 000 consumers in 27 countries, ranked Vodacom top among the 19 South African companies surveyed, indicating a strong reputation among the South African public.

In line with Vodafone’s acquisition of a majority share in Vodacom, a stakeholder engagement opinion survey has been conducted by UK-based Nunwood Consulting. The report has yet to be completed but is expected to provide valuable insight into our performance in strategic areas that pertain to stakeholders such as municipal authorities, key scientific institutes, the Department of Health, Bureau of Standards and regulatory bodies.

We will build on these inputs over the current year to deepen our understanding of the most important business and sustainability issues impacting on the company and our stakeholders, adjusting our approach and policies where necessary and defining performance indicators to measure our progress going forward.