How NBK Invested in Network Infrastructure and Turned Around Its Fortunes

If there’s one thing that can give a company a hedge over its competitors, it’s in service deliveries. Customer feedback and reviews play a big part in helping firms onboard new customers and maintain existing ones.

The National Bank of Kenya (NBK) is an example of a bank that turned around its fortunes through revolutionizing customer service. Over the past two years, NBK has improved its efficiency in service delivery.

The turning point for NBK was when they contracted DownToEarth Technologies (DTE), an IT systems integrator, to improve the efficiency of services rendered in each of the bank’s 88 branches. DTE has been successful in reducing the amount of network outages in the bank’s branches which had many customers get inefficient service delivery.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Bank of Kenya (NBK), was consistently getting complains  from customers because of constant network outages. In 2020, the bank invested in correcting this through onboarding DTE and they have since sorted it.

The bank informed CIO Africa that their investment in DTE has since paid off as the customer complaints have reduced.

Peter Malla, the Head of IT Infrastructure at NBK, told CIO Africa that the bank’s contract with DTE has helped it even save up on the budget. Peter quantified it to be over $100,000 that has been saved by the company through the contract with the tech startup.

“DTE is a selfless company. There are certain things that they could come, see and single out within the network. It can be something that is billable and is worth a lot of money but they do most of the things free of charge. Some of them are not even related to what they are doing for us but they are always willing to help when they can,” Peter told CIO Africa.

Peter added that the DTE have successfully changed the NBK narrative as the bank hasn’t had any network outages in the past year. Latest reports have shown NBK as one of the preferred banks in Kenya in terms of efficiency in service delivery.

According to the Managing Director at DownToEarth Technologies, Vincent Milewa, National Bank is one of the IT firm’s flagship projects in Kenya.

“National Bank is one of our flagship projects in Kenya. We commenced a 3-year maintenance of the network of 88 branches during the covid year (2020). When we took up the project, the bank had not had such a contract for a while’ Milewa told CIO Africa.

“We have seen a drastic reduction in the number of tickets raised due to outages impacting network performance. Our team manages most issues proactively before they impact the bank’s services” Priscilla Gachoki, the Projects & Services Manager at DTE added on Milewa’s statement.

As DTE joined the NBK team, they managed to stabilize the network enabling the vast branch network to deliver to its customers.

The bank also has a positive testimony to give about its engagements with DTE, the tech startup. From the onboarding of the tech startup.

DTE was founded in 2011 as an IT systems integrator to give customers in Kenya, and East Africa a dependable home bred company that executes complex projects seamlessly.