Abstract
Securing phenomenal success in its regional business, the leadership at Nayatel is contemplating expanding the business from a regional to national level without losing its iconic service quality, which lies at the core of its service strategy. From efficient hiring of its employees to coherent customer touchpoints, from constantly updating product features to investing in automated processes, from developing an inclusive culture to forming robust and dynamic systems, all contribute towards service quality at Nayatel. In essence, service quality is at the core of Nayatel’s value proposition. Therefore, the decision of future growth is highly dependent on sustaining service quality.
Discussion Questions
How is service quality defined at Nayatel, and what are the different service quality types at Nayatel?
How are these different service quality types interlinked with each other?
Do you think employees perform beyond the call of duty to serve customers at Nayatel? Why or why not? How do we keep internal customers happy and working simultaneously?
How do organizational processes of Nayatel affect its service quality?
Hiring? Training? Productivity?
How does the role of leadership contribute to service quality at Nayatel?
Source of inspiration;
Objectives and changes; and
Personalities (complementarity in philosophy and educational background).
Is there any interrelationship between the above-mentioned factors?
What element do you think, if missing, would not have led to the current level of service quality at Nayatel?
Without which elements, Nayatel could still sustain its current service quality?
What could be the implications of growth on organizational functioning and service quality?
How would different growth strategies (penetration, geographic market expansion, innovative redesign of existing services, new core service development or concentric diversification, expansion to out-of-country market and conglomerate diversification) affect service quality at Nayatel?
How would different strategies to implement a particular growth strategy (organic vs. merger and acquisition) affect service quality?
On the morning of 1st May 2020, while looking back at the success of Nayatel in its regional business, Wahaj us Siraj, one of the founding members and CEO of Nayatel was worried about the growth strategy of Nayatel. He was concerned about Nayatel’s growth amidst the changing market dynamics but without compromising the service quality that was ingrained in Nayatel’s way of doing business.
Wahaj along with his two friends and founding members Saad (chief operating officer [COO]) and Aqeel (chief technology officer [CTO]) were considering various growth strategies for Nayatel. Among many other growth possibilities, the leadership was contemplating whether Nayatel should expand its triple-play service network of voice, video and data to the entire population of Pakistan or should it focus more on software development, a recent product addition. Both these options had their own prospects and opportunity costs and had varying implications on service quality.
Expanding to other cities of Pakistan was critical at the time when the competitors had recently surfaced in other big cities of Pakistan where Nayatel’s footprint was still missing. However, it was a resource-intensive strategy and required huge human and capital investments that Nayatel could not carry out organically. Instead, strategic growth via merger and acquisition was one of the promising ways ahead. This option would help arrange the needed investments but could take away some of the organizational control and hence could affect the quality of its services that Nayatel was proud of. On the other hand, moving towards the software development industry was relatively less capital intensive but could eat away Nayatel’s focus on its existing triple-play services, affecting the service quality. Moreover, the software industry was relatively mature in Pakistan besides the fact that Nayatel was recognized less as a software company and more of a fine telecom service provider.
Wahaj, Saad and Aqeel had to present their recommendations and action plan in the upcoming board meeting about how to move forward.
History and Development
In the late 1990s, three friends, Wahaj, Saad and Aqeel, unhappy with their government jobs, which could not get them decent livelihood earnings through legitimate means, started a small retail computer shop in Islamabad. Saad was the first to resign from his high-profile government job, whereas Wahaj and Aqeel worked part-time, assembling computers in the evening at the shop. With these humble beginnings, their business got multiplied with every passing day. There was no Nayatel in anyone’s imagination at the time but a small business start-up to make them a decent earning to support their families. Wahaj and Aqeel subsequently resigned from their government jobs when the business grew to a level that it could afford to pay salaries to the three co-founders.
The three friends, eager to expand and diversify their business, formed a company Micronet Broadband (Pvt.) Limited (MBL) in 2001 and launched the first-ever broadband service in Pakistan in July 2002, using digital subscriber line (DSL), under an operations and maintenance contract with Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), the national service provider. MBL started well by installing its equipment in PTCL exchanges and customers’ premises. However, the broadband was carried over PTCL’s copper phone lines. Early on, Nayatel realized that about 80% of customer complaints and problems were related to PTCL’s copper infrastructure, and the earlier resolution of customers’ complaints was dependent upon cooperation from PTCL’s field staff that was very difficult to acquire. Wahaj recalled that in those days of DSL, ‘when customers used to complain about the quality of service, we used to tell them that it was PTCL’s problem. But customers said they had no concern with it because they were paying MBL and not PTCL’. The founding MBL team realized that it was a genuine customer concern to which they did not have any solution. Within a couple of years, the founders were convinced that to provide quality service, they had to be independent of PTCL’s network.
When the fixed-line telecom 1 sector was deregulated in 2004, the MBL team wanted to acquire a fixed wireless broadband spectrum 2 that was hot in those days. MBL participated in spectrum auction but could not bid as prices were quite high. It was beyond the funds the company had. MBL then decided to go ahead with fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology where the broadband network architecture, using optical fibre cable, was brought to the home/office of the customer. FTTH was an expensive option, as it required complete optic wire network deployment from scratch, and there was no prior customer response to any such service, thus adding more uncertainty to pursuing this expensive option. Only a few developed countries, such as the USA, Japan and Korea, had this technology. However, one thing FTTH promised was premium service quality. This is how Nayatel, a new telecom service provider, was born with a brand new end-to-end optical fibre network—first of its kind in Pakistan. The word ‘Naya’ was taken from the Urdu language, which literally meant ‘new’. It could cater to the high bandwidth needs for TV and Internet, not just for the present but for the future as well. Nayatel started installing a fibre network in Islamabad in 2005 and, in September 2006, brought the first customer online. FTTH gave impetus to Nayatel in order to excel in the latest technology and bring it to the customers who valued it. Nayatel started with corporate and business customers but soon entered into the domestic consumer market. Many other new services were added over time that were previously not found anywhere in Pakistan (see Figure 1).
City-wise and Service-wise Total Number of Customers and Revenue Percentages in 2019
With these developments, the focus always remained on providing quality connectivity services. This was mainly achieved by carrying out maximum service operations in-house to maintain quality. The primary value proposition of Nayatel was to provide reliable connectivity service with quality and transparent communication of its company policies, including the pricing structure. Since Nayatel dealt in premium services, it provided services to those customers who wanted and valued uninterrupted quality services. Nayatel categorized its customers into two—home and corporate—based on the package/service requirements (see Table 1 for the city-wise total number of customers). The average revenue per user stood at PKR 2,000 for home users and PKR 10,000 for corporate users. Nayatel identified a pool of 149,000 potential customers in the Islamabad/Rawalpindi region, who could buy its services and had managed to capture around 35% of the market share in the twin cities. After the success in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Nayatel expanded its services to the city of Faisalabad in 2016 and Peshawar in 2018. It was a challenging step that helped Nayatel to leave its home ground of Islamabad/Rawalpindi and move towards becoming a national service provider. In 2020, Nayatel was recognized as a holistic connectivity solution provider with an excellent after-sales service provision. With a high-speed FTTH Internet infrastructure in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Peshawar, Nayatel delivered premium triple-play (Internet, Cable TV, Phone) services, on the one hand, and a variety of associated and add-on services, on the other hand.
Telecommunication Industry and Customer Dynamics
Pakistan’s telecommunication infrastructure was improving dramatically with foreign and domestic investments into fixed-line and wireless networks since the past decade. The total investment made in the telecom sector in the fiscal year 2017–2018 was US$670 million out of which foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow was US$247 million. Pakistan’s telecommunications infrastructure included a mix of microwave radio relay, 3 coaxial and fibre-optic 4 cable, cellular 5 and satellite 6 networks. The telecom sector contributed over PKR 147.23 billion to the national exchequer in the form of general sales tax (GST), withholding tax (WHT) and Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) deposits, which included license fees, spectrum fees, etc. Total telecom sector revenue reported during the fiscal year 2017–2018 was PKR 488.7 billion that showed 3.96% growth in 1 year. Overall, the financial health of the sector remained stable, and networks continued to grow and add increasing number of subscribers.
Pakistan also witnessed a growth in mobile telephony—from 0.3 million cellular subscribers in 2001 to 162 million cellular subscribers, which gave a boost to the total tele density that stood at 76% as of mid-2019. Similarly, broadband subscribers, mostly mobile customers, as of mid-2019, stood at almost 70 million with broadband penetration around 34%. With the latest upsurge in technology consisting of a range of digital facilities, consumers demanded enhanced communication technologies with access, affordability and quality as essential attributes.
PTCL: A Public Company
PTCL was a national telecommunication company in Pakistan. It provided telephone and Internet services nationwide, with the largest fixed-line copper wire network. Data and backbone services such as global system for mobile communication (GSM), 7 high-speed packet access (HSPA+), 8 code-division multiple access (CDMA, 9 long-term evolution (LTE), 10 broadband Internet, 11 Internet protocol television (IPTV) and wholesale were an increasing part of its business. Originally a state-owned corporation, the shareholding of PTCL was reduced to 62% when 26% of its shares and management control were sold to a multinational Emirati-based telecommunications services provider, Etisalat Telecommunications. The remaining 12% were sold to the general public in 2006 under an intensified privatization programme.
Ever since Nayatel started offering its FTTH services in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, PTCL lost a substantial amount of market share in this region due to Nayatel’s offering of various quality services under one umbrella. However, Nayatel faced undue barriers from its competitors to expand in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. For example, in August 2016, a complaint from a resident of a renowned housing society in Rawalpindi was forwarded to the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP), which revealed that the private housing society was deliberately preventing other fixed-line service providers, except for PTCL, from expanding, and thus giving PTCL the majority of the market share in the housing society. It violated the Competition Act (2010). Six months later, CCP imposed a fine of PKR 2 million on the private housing society for deliberately not issuing a no objection certificate (NOC) to Nayatel.
Fibre-optic Companies
Nayatel entered into consumer and home FTTH market in 2007, whereas many other fixed-line optical fibre companies, including PTCL, Multinet, Wateen, LINKdotNet (LDN—owned by Mobilink/Jazz) and Cybernet, ventured into long-distance fibre-optic intercity networks and metro rings focusing on business customers only. The business customers segment faced saturation during the 2010–2015 period as many competitors fought for the same customer segmentation. Not seeing any growth in business customers, these companies entered into home FTTH market with new brands, such as StormFiber (Cybernet), Optix (Multinet), TransWorld (TWA), etc., and started providing triple-play services of telephone, cable and Internet, using fibre-optic wired network in different cities of Pakistan, including Karachi, Lahore, Hyderabad, Peshawar, Faisalabad, Multan, etc. Vision and mission statements of all these companies suggested their resolution to provide high-speed services with a high-scale reliable network spanning across different cities in Pakistan. All these companies were younger than Nayatel but were ahead in setting up their infrastructure and provide services in cities where Nayatel had not spread its footprint yet. However, the fibre-optic network was very expensive to deploy and needed huge investments beyond the regular profit earnings, a fact that applied to the entire fibre-optic industry. That was the reason why most of these companies had regional presence, including Nayatel.
Cellular Companies
Among the wireless cellular services, only four major players existed, that is, Jazz (Mobilink + Warid), Telenor, Zong and Ufone (a subsidiary of PTCL). Within the broader telecommunication industry, Nayatel did not view the wireless cellular industry and its complementary services as a threat to the fibre-optic industry. The cellular companies provided on the go phone and Internet services with the help of a terrestrial transmission network system and had a presence in almost entire Pakistan. Fibre-optic network companies, on the other hand, provided wired services for stable locations and were present in limited parts of Pakistan.
Operations/Processes/Infrastructure
Nayatel discouraged lateral hiring and believed in the idea of producing home-grown leaders. Complying with all the labour laws in Pakistan, Nayatel had a very stringent hiring process to ensure the right selection of people. It considered the academic performance of prospective employees right from matriculation (tenth grade) to graduation, hiring people who had consistently performed well. Moreover, academic excellence was a must but not enough to get into Nayatel. The company had hired a professional psychologist who developed customized tests based on values and traits that Nayatel would like to see in prospective employees and made hiring recommendations accordingly (see Table 2). Overall, Nayatel had a very vibrant set of people at its workplace. An average employee’s age was 30–32 years with almost 95% of fresh graduates in its workforce. The young and energetic workforce coupled with internally groomed senior management provided the needed fuel to keep up the services with the fast-paced demand of the industry.
Once hired, Nayatel sustained desirable work habits among its employees. Professional trainers trained employees at all levels, harnessing employee skills and competence to maintain the utmost professionalism during the work hours. Senior and junior management continually participated in executive training programmes held from time to time. Similarly, the lower-level staff was trained by professionals, for example, trainers from Pearl Continental and Marriot, two of the largest five-star hotel chains in Pakistan, trained office boys on how to carry oneself, greet and serve tea/coffee in different company settings. Moreover, traffic police professionals trained Nayatel drivers about traffic rules and regulations. Besides investing in internal technical and human development initiatives and quality products, Nayatel also worked on its brand image and cherished professionalism at all levels. For example, Nayatel had a user-friendly website with the right mix of information and creativity. Also, Nayatel deployed professional field teams wearing clean and tidy Nayatel uniforms and driving a fleet of field vehicles with printed Nayatel logo.
Psychological Profiling of Prospective Employees with an Example Candidate Ranking
The consistent policies of reward in the form of monetary and non-monetary ways and reprimands for unacceptable behaviour kept the high standards of the working environment. Earlier, Nayatel treated its employees as a large family and avoided reprimands and punishments. However, as the company grew, a false kindness syndrome emerged that gave way to mediocrity being tolerated. The company soon realized that this may compromise the quality of the services it promised to the customers. Nayatel avoided false kindness via a cut-throat evaluation. Nayatel, instead, promoted a team culture among its employees, where the performance was objectively evaluated and rewarded accordingly. Consistently underperforming employees were let go. Merit, performance and value addition became the sole criteria of rewards, recognitions and promotions. The company brought a visible shift from a family culture of tolerating mediocrity to team culture where only performance mattered. Nonetheless, Nayatel still tolerated honest mistakes and incorporated many employee welfare programmes. For example, Nayatel provided scholarships to 120 children belonging to 60 employees besides creating a family fund where many members voluntarily contributed whatever amount they could to provide financial assistance to colleagues with financial restraints.
Previously, there used to be one-to-one interaction between higher management and employees as there were a handful of employees, and the delegation of work was not as big. In recent years, when the company had grown from a mere 20 employees to 1,300 employees, improving or maintaining the same level of employee engagement was a continuous challenge. To ensure optimal employee productivity and consistent delivery of quality services to the customer, quality control (QC) protocols, with specific details to the minute level, were established for various employee jobs and activities, which were unmatched in the industry.
For example, for the installation process (which was one of the initial formal and lengthy customer touchpoints), Nayatel had defined a detailed set of instructions and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that needed to be followed by the installation team to complete any installation. Runtime visit against each installation was carried out by the QC team member to ensure that these instructions were implemented accurately by the installation team. The maximum attainable score against each installation was 96. Each point represented an attribute/SOP clause/procedure that needed to be performed correctly. If the task was not performed according to the requirement, then a point was deducted against that installation. If the ratio of issue occurrence against the total number of installations carried out was greater than 5%, then that team was in the danger zone (see Exhibit 1 for the number of attributes to be checked for installation). Regular follow-ups were carried out, and trouble tickets were generated to ensure that these issues were resolved even after report sharing. This process was not meant to focus on problem escalation; rather, the focus was on the resolution of issues.
Nayatel from the very beginning recognized that it had to manage all its critical processes in-house to provide its promised services reliably. From initial planning, civil work, exchange, software development, sales/marketing, technical assistance to complaint handling, Nayatel carried out all these activities in-house. It procured optical fibres, switches, cables and bandwidth from the market and had developed a strong relationship with its suppliers. At Nayatel, processes were designed and continuously updated to monitor customer’s demand patterns in real time and keeping efficient departmental coordination, particularly among the office and field teams. This had helped Nayatel to resolve complaints efficiently and make precise forecasting about changing customer needs. Moreover, two special teams—Team X and Team One—were formed for the soul purpose of identifying customer pain points and new value-adding opportunities, respectively. For example, young and talented employees working in Team X assessed the effectiveness and user-friendliness of all possible customer touchpoints (website, app or form) from customers’ perspective and suggested changes accordingly. Similarly, people in Team One continuously tracked service consumption patterns and dynamic customer needs. These two teams not only allowed Nayatel to proactively handle customer problems, thereby improving customer experience, but also helped Nayatel to keep on adding new services and service features, thus enhancing service portfolio and customer loyalty simultaneously.
Technological Development and New Initiatives
Nayatel provided a one-stop solution to all possible communication needs of its residential and corporate customers (see Figure 2). It promised holistic and continuous service support from initial inspection for service need, installation, to constant contact with its customers throughout the service period for hassle-free services. The backbone of all its service solutions was the use of the latest technology of fibre optics that provided unmatched reliability and speed compared to all other fixed-line and wireless telecommunication technologies. Moreover, various options were available within the fibre-optic domain, that is, fibre to the exchange, fibre to the curve and fibre to the home. Nayatel chose fibre to the home, which was relatively a costly option, but it promised no compromise on the quality and reliability of its services at its highest. Despite the ever-increasing presence of wireless technologies in Pakistan, Nayatel leadership firmly believed that advanced wired technology would always complement the wireless technology, and that the two would grow together due to the ever-increasing demand of both the stable high-speed connectivity and on-the-go connectivity as was the case in developed countries.
Recently, Nayatel had started designing, developing and selling software products, for example, enterprise telecom billing applications, IPTV middleware, network analytics, customer relationship management and organizational support system solutions besides the voice, video and data services (see Table 1 for service-wise revenue percentage). The software development was initially carried out for in-house use but was produced for commercial use as independent products in 2019. The provision of these new services was a part of the growth strategy at Nayatel.
Nayatel had always remained open to adaptation and change for good. There were a variety of initiatives taken to ensure the best use of resources. For example, Nayatel outsourced some of its billing functions like invoice printing service to TCS, a courier service company (see Table 3 for comparison of invoice printing cost), to curtail the cost of printing. Though TCS cost less per invoice printing, the total invoice printing cost had got higher due to the ever-increasing number of customers. Considering this upward shift in invoice printing cost, the management was in the process of transforming from paper invoice to e-invoice and had already shifted almost more than 55% of customers to e-invoice by integrating with various online payment solution providers. This move had significantly reduced the operating cost of manually handling the customer invoice and subsequently improved the cash management at Nayatel.
To ensure that neither an employee was overburdened nor was he/she underutilized, Nayatel calculated per person productive time to the minute detail with the help of a software and assigned duties accordingly (see Table 4 for per-person productive time matrix for billing department executive). The company also regularly conducted expense review meetings to actively look for ways to reduce the cost, ensuring maximum manpower and capacity utilization (see Table 5 for the per-seat cost for billing department). The strong integration among purchasing, technical, operations, sales and other departments was possible due to the integrated information sharing and retrieval system. The close integration had also led to the unification of earlier separately running call centre departments for technical, sales and billing queries, minimizing cost without affecting the service quality.
TCS Versus Nayatel Billing Cost Comparison
Per-person Productive Matrix
Per Seat Costing (billing)
Quality and Customer Service
Nayatel’s mission statement, ‘to become a role model of trust, set highest standards of quality and add value to the society’, presented a strong indication of Nayatel’s primary objective of doing business, that is, trust, quality and society. To achieve and sustain such objectives, the leadership had made two sets of values that were to be observed at all levels, that is, truthfulness, simplicity, sacrifice and kind gesture. These values were related to one’s character, knowledge, discipline and hard work, which were related to one’s ability and competence. Translating these values to every individual working at Nayatel was a challenge as it became increasingly difficult for top management to maintain effective communication with employees at different levels. This was particularly so because of the ever-increasing number of employees at Nayatel as the company was continuously growing. However, the top management was clear that without such values, it could not go far in realizing its goals. Therefore, the management undertook several measures to inculcate such values.
Employees were constantly reminded about the importance of these values. This was carried out by reciting the mission statement every day by all employees before starting the work. Moreover, Wahaj used to frequently tell his front-line employees that they were warriors, fighting to spread good in the society and were doing khidmat (service) to the masses by providing continuous services. He used such terms to encourage people at Nayatel to carry out jobs with more meaningful goals. This gave the employees a higher sense of achievement and made them emotionally attached to the work and the organization. For example, Hassan, a dedicated employee, while resigning from Nayatel (for some unavoidable reasons), entered the meeting room where Mr Wahaj was chairing a meeting. He entered the room crying and hugged Mr Wahaj who also cried at his departure.
On many occasions, Wahaj told his staff that they should not think that they were selling the Internet. Instead, they were spreading happiness among families so that they could spend quality time together enjoying uninterrupted services. This was complemented by sharing the corporate lessons of consistent hard work, trustworthiness and honesty from the life of the Prophet. These values were then reflected in employees’ work attitude and readiness to go beyond the call of duty. There were several celebrated stories of employees who had maintained their dignity and morals. Khalid, a field employee, was one such person among many, who found a gold chain at the customer’s site of work and returned it to the owner immediately. For the sake of self-respect and dignity, the front-line workers did not accept any tip at the end of the service and gracefully declined any such offer. Nayatel, instead, rewarded its members for each applause received from customers with its celebrated Best Customer Services (BCS) awards. Following was the excerpt from an email regarding a dedicated employee, sent by Wahaj to all his employees at Nayatel:
Last night at around 9:00 pm, I received a call from Ms Misbah, GM, Gerrys (an old customer) as she struggled to send an urgent fax through our phone lines. I told her that this can be fixed but would take some time at that time of night. She asked an urgent way to get that done. I offered her to use our office to send a fax. I called Engineer Ali Malik and requested him to help the customer. Here’s the message that I received from Ms Misbah: ‘I have literally no words for the kind of help and support that your engineer Mr Ali has extended to me. This was the help I’m going to remember in the years to come’. Ali’s shift was ending at 9:00 pm and he stayed in office till around 11:00 pm to help the customer and made all of us proud. Hat’s off to Ali. It is said, ‘products and services are sold in the market but brands are made in hearts’. Technically speaking, the fault could have been very much with the customer’s fax. But by going the extra mile and helping a customer in distress keeps the traditions of Nayatel alive. That’s helping customers, out of the way, the Nayatel way.
These values reflected in the practices of Nayatel’s leadership. All three leaders (Wahaj, Saad and Aqeel) at Nayatel added a different value to the organization. Wahaj (CEO) was a seasoned professional who was well versed in maintaining a soft image of Nayatel within and outside the organization. His office was always open to all employees for any suggestions and grievances. He always motivated his employees by delivering frequent talks that kept the workforce emotionally attached to their work. He also used to involve himself directly in resolving customer complaints, and he felt the pain points of customers and employees. He had played an important role in shaping Nayatel’s culture that depicted a friendly work environment for employees without compromising quality services. To cherish a comfortable work environment, Wahaj told his employees,
If a senior colleague walks into or exits from a room and some junior colleagues are already sitting, there’s no need for them to stand up. The ‘class stand’ slavery culture was in schools and ‘all rise’ culture is in courts. But this is not to be a culture at Nayatel. Prophet Mohammad PBUH said ’if you want that people should stand up for you as a sign of respect (when you enter a room/place), then you’re definitely getting a place reserved in the hell’ [Bukhari/Muslim]. I certainly or any other senior member at Nayatel doesn’t want to get a place reserved in hell.
At other times, he would communicate to his employees,
Many team members have started writing names of seniors in their communications as Sir Tahir, Sir Ahmad, Sir Wahaj, etc. This culture is typical of a military org (aye sir!) and Nayatel is certainly not. Regimented culture kills creativity and freedom of speech. We have to be a disciplined organization (unlike a crowd) but have to be open and frank in communications to remain an innovative team. Anyone should be able to freely communicate with anyone. Decision making follows hierarchy but communication certainly does not. That should be the heart of culture at Nayatel. A better alternative is to write designations instead of names. For instance, the phrase ‘as per the discussion of Sir Akbar…’ could be rewritten as ‘as per discussion of AM (Billing) or Mr Akbar or Akbar Bhai. So, let’s keep it less formal, yet respectful, friendly and brotherly for all, juniors as well as seniors’.
Saad (COO), on the other hand, believed in maintaining discipline and work ethics at all costs. He did not believe in giving a second chance to people who do wrong knowingly. He would keep people on their toes during the work hours but often sat with them for informal and friendly talks at social events or off-work hours. Aqeel (CTO) was a technical expert and had the right sense of aptitude. He was the man who was the key to tying the leadership together at all times to pursue the goals in the best interests of the company (see Exhibit 2 for more details on the leadership profiles).
By looking at the vast portfolio of Nayatel services other than triple-play services, it was clear that their progress towards innovation and new initiatives was not limited. Nayatel recently launched a phone app which enabled the customer to dial and receive landline calls through smartphones. Applications like N-Doctor were launched by Nayatel, which diagnosed the problems faced by a customer with their Internet connectivity and suggested potential solutions besides providing comparisons with neighbouring Wi-Fi signals. Customers themselves could then check the Internet reliability and compare the Internet speed that was promised and delivered to them. Nayatel launched the Naya TV app and web service, where customers could stream a bouquet of live TV channels for free. Moreover, Nayatel offered a variety of innovative packages/customized services to serve its diverse customer base. For example, Nayatel launched a data gift feature whereby customers could share their unused data for free with other customers who run short of the data. On average, 70+TB of data were shared every month between consumers. As the packages had data limits, this feature saved customers on their monthly spending and resulted in better customer loyalty and satisfaction. Similarly, Nayatel launched an ‘unlimited bundle’ offer, after conducting internal research on the data consumption patterns of customers, which revealed that some of the most visited sites included Google and social media websites/applications with almost 75% traffic. Nayatel contacted these companies and acquired the relevant content distribution networks commonly known as CDNs to provide its customers with a low-cost package that not only improved their streaming quality but also saved their monthly volume consumption. Moving towards corporate customers, Nayatel provided a vast portfolio of corporate services from business email solution, web hosting and server hosting services to cloud services coupled with network security services (see Figure 3 for major corporate clientele and Exhibit 3 for customer testimonials).
Moreover, since its inception, Nayatel had always kept its promise of service quality and proved itself to the test of time on many occasions. For example, when a nearby information technology (IT) business park was destroyed in the Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing on the night of 20 September 2008, Wahaj, along with his team, went to work that night, and within hours shifted the fibre-optic connection of the businesses to other locations to prevent disruption of services to their national and international clients, thus rescuing the IT industry with immediate connectivity. Similarly, in the recent wake of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic when every organization was affected globally, Nayatel not only ensured the service quality of the existing services but also offered a free conference calling solution for businesses with simple scheduling and sign-up process, thus helping local businesses.
Future Outlook
In the formative years of Nayatel, the focus was more on quality (services) compared to quantity (expansion), which led to the formation of strong internal service protocols, effective human resource development and in-house production of majority of the service steps. In a nutshell, quality was reflected in each and every process and policy at Nayatel, that is, quality was ingrained in the DNA of Nayatel. However, the high service quality currently observed at Nayatel did not only require monetary investments but also long-term commitment, leaving relatively less time and money for business expansion, resulting in slow growth. In April 2020, Nayatel provided services to around 70,000 customers and employed around 1,300 team members. The company had expanded its services to the cities of Faisalabad and Peshawar besides its services in the home ground in Islamabad/Rawalpindi (see Figure 4 for revenue trajectories in different cities) with their recent footprint in the software development industry.
Due to the recent surge of competitors in the fibre-optic industry and the organizational maturity achieved at Nayatel over the years, Nayatel was seriously considering following two expansion possibilities among others. First, the leadership was concerned about the expansion of its core service network of phone, cable TV and the Internet to other major cities of Pakistan. Slower or organic growth of Nayatel’s existing services would ensure quality services but would have serious future implications for Nayatel, given the presence of competitors. A further delay could give other players incumbent advantages in the remaining metropolitan cities of Pakistan that Nayatel would certainly like to have. However, expanding nationally would require huge capital investments to develop the needed fibre-optic infrastructure that Nayatel could not afford on its own in the near future. Strategic growth via merger and acquisition was considered as one of the potential ways to go ahead, but the merger and acquisition could eat away some of the organizational control that could compromise the quality of services that Nayatel could never envision. PTCL and some other big companies in the telecom industry had approached Nayatel for such a development.
Second, the leadership was also contemplating whether Nayatel should continue more aggressively in developing new services and advance in the software development industry, which was a relatively less capital-intensive growth strategy, but it could hinder Nayatel’s focus on its existing triple-play services. Moreover, the software development industry was relatively more mature compared to Nayatel’s existing business industry, and it would be a challenge for a fine telecom service provider to immerse into the software development industry and get a decent market share.
Revenue Curves Islamabad—B2C
Revenue Curves Faisalabad—B2C
Revenue Curves Faisalabad—B2B
Revenue Curves Peshawar—B2B & B2C
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
QC Parameters for Installation
A unique colour was assigned to each one as described below to improve the prominence of reported issues and identify their current status (whether issues were resolved or not).