Making a difference through farming and community services

In the beginning of the year I had the opportunity to visit rural areas north of the Philippines, where I grew up as a kid. The place has changed a lot since last time I visited there 18 years ago. There were progress made, people are still happy but poverty is still abundant. Although most people survive with their basic needs through farming and foraging there are still a lot of people with no permanent jobs, no source of income. Most farms are tended manually, hard labour and no machines making farming ineffective and unproductive. Due to the lack of infrastructure there are a lot of hits and misses as well, some years are good, some years are bad with most farmers ending in heavy debts. Visiting the farms it dawned to me that we should be able to help the community, essentially give back to the community where I send some childhood years. Hence me and my brother hatched a brilliant plan of acquiring lands in the area, developing this lands and employing people. The ultimate goal is to be able to help over a thousand families in the area, that’s equivalent to over 5000 people, our way of giving back to the community and making a small difference on our own way in this very big wide world where we lived in.

Since I have my business to attend to we hatched the plan of having my parents involved. My brother will essentially manage the business, my parents will oversea local operations while I simply advise on business and strategic matters, essentially a very small portion of my non-working time to give back to the community. We are starting small helping 5 families to start with while keeping that ultimate goal in mind. How are we giving back to the community? Its essentially simple focusing on people, infrastructure and the environment.

• Build infrastructure to make farming much easier. Dams, water ways, power distributions, access roads

• Acquire struggling farms at a premium and employ the same farmers giving them a stable income on top of the premium paid for their farms.

• Develop the farms to become productive and sustainable

• Hire workers and pay them a much higher salary than what the local government pays their employees

• Provide housing for free

• Supplement their incomes with free food stuff

• Provide scholarship to deserving students

• Provide free health care and free medical outreach program by bringing competent doctors from Metro Manila during outreach programs

• Organize festivals for the community every after harvest, recognizing their hard work and dedication.

• Facilitate financial service, micro finance to start with

• Create clean, green and sustainable farms without harming the environment

• Replanting on deforested areas

This we do funded by our own pockets without any help from the government with the goal of being able to help a thousand families long term. Once we have proven success for this community services model we will expand, bringing in more external investments to the community from investors who share our principles, our ideals and our commitment to support and develop the community. If you are interested in participating to develop impoverish rural communities in the Philippines in your own small way please feel free to contact me.

Embedding the customer in the center of our organizations

In a world where product differentiation is no longer an advantages it is very important that an organization differentiates in how good it delivers the promised customer services.  Most customers today are expecting only the very best service, even if that price for service is dirt cheap. Let's say I dine in an Island in the Philippines, I pay 10$ for an excellent meal coupled with an excellent friendly service so if I dine in London and spends 100$ I will expect the same level of service. If I don't get a good service I might not come back again or might give a bad rating for the place in Yelp or any other social channels. You see I am not the only one with this way of thinking. Do you think the same? Talking of London, I have been to Nobu and to Ramsey's I was surprise to spend less in Ramsey's where the service was a lot better and the food was excellent… Now I can say that Ramsey's is a very good example of providing a wonderful customer service, you leave happy and want to be back again as soon as you can.

All customer experiences are rooted to the people who provides them. When it comes to businesses, the customer experience is all that matters, most specially on service industries like Telecom. So the question to most if not all executives is "How do you embed customer centricity in your organizations?". There is no easy answer to this, there are no shortcuts. Its true that we train our front line staff to deliver a good service, but delivering a good service is no longer just a service, it is giving a positive experience that counts. To ensure that we provide positive experiences, our customers expects us to take the extra mile, go a bit further to give them delight and happiness. Doing should not break the bank either, after all as a business we aim for profitability and as executives we are judge on profitability by our shareholders. In April, at the CEM Summit in Dubai, Liz McSorley of du (VP  Customer Experience) will share how they do it in du.

For a product and technology led company like AmanziTel, we ensure that customer centricity is embedded in our corporate DNA by ensuring that each and every one of us understand and embrace customer centricity and the importance of ensuring happiness to our customers. We do this in various ways

• Customer centricity starts from the top, from our board members to our CEO down to our software developers.

• We hire resources who are naturally service and innovation oriented, so no matter how difficult our deployments get we continue to strive to provide happiness to each and everyone of them.

• It is embedded in our product and service design. When we design a product, especially new innovations and ground breaking product, in every decision we take our customer needs and happiness are taken into consideration. We call that customer driven development.

• We treat every customer request with utmost care and respect. Its like having your own baby being born when customer request arrives and ensuring that he or she is always happy and that he or she is raised and developed the right way.

• In times when we are not perfect, we ensure that we make up for our shortcomings by continuously delighting our customers in our own little ways and make that extra effort.. Walk the extra mile…

• We empower our front line resources to make key decisions in delivering customer happiness when they are put on those awkward situations.

• We always keep in mind that our customers are serving Billions of subscribers that at the end of the day each of our customers will have to deliver that happiness to their billions of subscribers

• For each and every one of us in the company we will always ensure our customer's happiness in our own little ways

And since its Valentine's day let me say we love our customers and we love the billions of subscribers they have.

A flood of opportunities

Recent storms in Asia has caused massive flooding in several countries having said that to most people flooding is a way of life and is a treasure chest of opportunities. Take for example Ford use this to advertise in social media how good their SUVs are:

However they tend to have neglected the sedan in the background which is also a Ford :-)

Now if you are advertising Rolls Royce, this is not the most brilliant flyer on how luxurious the car is: it is so luxurious that you need a butler to drain water that comes in to the cabin and 18 people to push it out of flooded streets :-)

And if you buy two supercars make sure you can also afford a garage that don't flood

or protect your car like this:

When you buy a car, make sure the alarms work even in flood waters :-) (notice the blinking lights underwater)

And for those teens who cant afford to be away from their video games, just make sure the power cables are not under water:

If you have invented the ultimate walk on water boots, make sure you have applied for patents, there will be more needing those:

While if you have discovered the new kind of transportation that works on flood waters before you go in it make sure it will not sink:

or perhaps simply use a jetski on city streets

Flood waters should never ever ruin your wedding day. You can make it more exciting by getting married on flooded streets :-) or surfing the flood or scuba diving your way to school or for a lost submarine to surface beside a shopping mall....

And don't forget to call in to tell your boss you can't make it to work today :-D