Accra, Ghana//-A businessman and an author, Captain Prince Kofi Amoabeng (rtd) has advised businesses in Ghana and beyond to ensure that their products and services save customers’ time.
According to him, products and services must serve the real time needs of the customers.
Customers must not travel several kilometres to get defective products or services replaced. The time that they will use in traveling such a distance can be used to do something else.
Mr Amoabeng gave the advice when he spoke on the sixth edition of Time Keeping Dialogue Series organised by Transformation Leadership Concepts (TLC), a behavioural and attitudinal change advocacy group.
He used his erstwhile UT Financial Services to show how businesses can cut time in their delivery of goods and services to their customers.
Mr Amoabeng said: “When we started Unique Trust, we realised that businesses and individuals wanted loans to address their financial needs on time. We were not offering anything special that the commercial banks and non-banking institutions were not offering at that time.
But they at Unique Trust (UT) Financial Services challenged themselves to do things fast by cutting the lending processes of loans short”.
The seasoned entrepreneur continued: “We used to offer loans to our customers in less than 48 hours in those days”. While several commercial banks, micro-finance companies and non-banking institutions still provide loans to their customers in weeks, months and in some cases a year.
When asked by Mrs Georgina Asare Fiagbenu, the host of the Dialogue Series which was held via zoom and streamed live on Facebook, Mr Amoabeng attributed the success of UT in lending loans to customers in less than 48 hours to his then team.
They did that by building the team to respect themselves as well as their customers which resulted in more business for the company.“The most critical thing we also did was to build the right organisational culture of our team to enable us deliver on our mandate effectively and efficiently”.
“By spending quality time to solve their problems means you are showing your customers respect”, Mr Amoabeng added.
To be a successful businessperson, he said businessperson or businesspeople must love everybody. This can be achieved by putting good systems in place and respect them to check the misbehaviour of your workers.
“If you love and respect people, you must provide quality products and services that will have impact on their lives and hard-earned money which they used time to get”.
Mr Amoabeng however observed that in recent times most companies don’t genuinely respect their customers, but they rather show insincere respect because they want their money.
Why Africans don’t respect time
Speaking on the topic: ‘’Time As a Critical National Resource”, the retired army officer did not mince words when hit the nail on the head that Ghanaians and Africans in general don’t respect time.
This he said is because Africans live in the land of abundance where there are no natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, among others.
Mr Amoabeng put it blandly when he said: “In Africa, we are naturally a bad people. Because we don’t respect the next person or persons. But you can’t make more money when you don’t respect the people”.
It is also because we are living with abundance natural resources such as gold, oil, diamond, manganese, among others, we don’t care about anything, according to him.
Indeed, public servants include African presidents especially present and successive presidents of Ghana who are entrusted with all the resources to make their movement easily, still attend public events late.
“If our leaders don’t waste time with us, we will say that they don’t respect us. So, we normally vote for people who are like us”.
Mr Amoabeng who spoke more than one hour in the zoom Time Keeping Dialogue Series concluded that Africans waste their precious time on things that don’t fetch them money.
What can be done
Although Mr Amoabeng who is noted for being discipline to time and principled nature, did not see how Africans disrespect to time which he described as “currency” can easily be addressed.
He called on Ghanaians and Africans as a whole to change their mindsets towards time management by being punctual to programmes.
For instance, Mr Amoabeng observed that when Africans travel to Europe, United States and Asia where systems work, they excel in time management. “So, one of the solutions is we must change our mindsets”.
He added that change could only come when Africans change their leadership. “As we have it in democracy, we appoint leaders through the wrong process. Because we use the wrong process of voting them into office”.
So, our system of choosing leaders is not working. Democracy is not yielding good results. But military regimes did not help either.
For Ghana, Mr Amoabeng stated that the country could only change from the top, saying: “What will change the country is what is coming from the President”.
He therefore called on the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to direct his ministers to set aside day to listen to concerns of the people and provide answers to them.
One of the participants from London called into the zoom dialogue series to proffer a solution to address the poor time management canker.
According to her, Ghanaians should nurture their children on time management right from the home. However, Mr Amoabeng said the decay starts right from some of the homes.
The Chairman of the Dialogue Series, Togbe Kwasinyi Agyeman V, the chief of Adidome and communications for change advocate, said people could use a lot of means to put pressure on people to improve timekeeping.
These he mentioned include boycott for long delays and name and shame.
Call to action
As the Ghana goes to the polls next year, Togbe Kwasinyi Agyeman V and his time want politicians to make political commitment on time keeping.
Background
Instructively, the timekeeping initiative is being undertaken by the TLC to help create a better timekeeping culture in Ghana and across Africa.
It was launched to improve the chronic lateness and lack of respect for time and timekeeping in Ghana, according to Mrs Georgina, Asare Fiagbenu, a communication for development advocate.
The national timekeeping initiative is targeted at policymakers, media, legislators, event organizers, corporate leaders, politicians, teachers, professionals, the youth, civil society, and behavioral change agents, she explained.
The dialogue series has featured distinguished personalities such as Professor Lade Wosornu, a retired surgeon, poet, and a fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences; Nana Kwasi Gyan Apenteng, communication and culture expert; Sydney Casely Hayford, social commentator; Manasseh Awuni, journalist and a social commentator; Ibrahim K. Asante, International speaker, trainer and peak performance strategist; Mrs Comfort Ocran, motivational speaker and author; Mrs. Ewurabena Benin, learning facilitator and author; Yvonne Oppong Ayisi, a manager at CBG, among others.
