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Fund’s customer satisfaction rate has grown from 49% seven years ago to 92% as at the end of last December
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Once again, Uganda’s National Social Security Fund (NSSF) held its Annual Customer Connect Week with a number of activities including financial literacy trainings, investments and medical health camps from Feb 19-23.
The activity, in its 5th year aims at improving the livelihood of its members and the rest of the public but also increase the Fund’s customer engagement, update customer records as well as collect feedback in order to improve its overall customer service experience.
Speaking during the launch of the event at the Constitutional Square in Kampala on Feb.19, NSSF Managing Director, Richard Byarugaba, said this year’s Week themed ‘Revolving with our customer,’ a focused on providing literacy on savings, investment, retirements as well as provide free Hepatitis B screening, Yellow Fever vaccination, diabe- tes and high blood pressure.
This year’s event was organised in part- nership with the Capital Markets Author- ity (CMA), Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB), Uganda Law Society (ULS) and the Uganda Securities Exchange (USE).
“The Fund also focused on enrolling its members to their e-service channels that include Short Message Services and email alerts in order to improve convenience and efficiency in their service delivery,” Byarugaba said.
In terms of numbers, he said: “The average usage of our e-channels is at 56% on monthly basis while over the counter engagements with the customers stand at 43%.
We now want customers to be able to self-serve anytime, anywhere, eventually leading to reduction of queues at physical service points.” Byarugaba said through this and other customer focused initiatives, the Fund’s customer satisfaction rate has grown from 49% seven years ago to 92% as at the end of December 2017.
Dr. Charles Kabugo, the director at the government-owned, Kiruddu Hospital in Kampala, appreciated NSSF contribution towards improving the lives of its members.
He said it is time for the population to take time and screen for various diseases including Hepatitis B, diabetes and high blood pressure.
“Many of our people are suffering from these diseases and are not aware yet early detection makes treatment easier,” he said. “However busy you are, take some time and undergo disease screening.” This development comes barely a month since the Fund and the Uganda Blood Trans- fusion Service (UBTS) in partnership with Equity Bank unveiled a week long blood donation drive on Jan.08.
The initiative was to collect at least 4,500 units of blood to address blood shortage, especially among others, expectancy moth- ers, cancer patients, HIV positive patients and accident victims.
According to the data from the World Health Organisations, Uganda needs about 340,000 units of blood yet less than 200,000 units are collected annually as 99% of the eligible population to donate do not do so.
This year’s Annual Customer Connect Week came at a time the Fund’s contribu- tions were soon hitting the Shs9 trillion mark as a result of increased compliance and intro- duction of voluntary contributions as well as mobile platforms.
The company’s compliance towards employee’s contribution has increased from 49% six years ago to 80% at the moment. Last year, the Fund launched the NSSF Electronic Collections portal that enables employers pay NSSF contributions straight to the Fund’s bank account along with pay- ment schedules, which in turn enabled the Fund to automatically post individual con- tributions to member’s statements.
With customers nearly hitting two million, the Fund looks forward to achieving the Shs 20 trillion by 2020.
