Easy Coach and Fish Ferrying: A Teachable Moment on How To Communicate With Customers

I am in Public Relations.

Sometimes PR and Communication feel like a superfluous and surplus need and an unnecessary expense. Until you do something silly, and you need experts to clean the mess. Or a competitor with better services shows up and you are left scampering.

What Easy Coach did yesterday completely lacked tact. On their part, they had a genuine concern about the packaging and ferrying of fish. But how they communicated smirked of condescension and a total disrespect of a people's culture.

Every community has its staple foods.

Stand outside Transline or Ena Coach and you will see lots of bananas, lots of maize and finger millet flour, and lots of traditional vegetables. From Ukambani, you will see lots of fruits mbaazi, and what else. From Central Kenya, you will see lots of potatoes and cereals.

One man's staple is another man's meal of contempt.

Fish as a meal has a unique challenge of smell that may be disagreeable to many people who don't like fish.

I love Omena big time, but I can understand why some people may not fancy it that much. Indeed in college, the worst cultural conflict was having a Kikuyu roommate and a Luo roommate. Kikuyu men hardly cooked in their rooms. Or simply boiled rice and minji, the most harmless meal, save for the gas minji can wreak on your stomach. Some Luo dudes could fry their omena and the entire corridor would be full of teargas. And you could see the fury in the eyes of Kikuyu fellows. This is a question of sensibilities.

We despise kamande. We despise minji. We despise njahe. Njahe especially. Some people get the shock of their lives that Kisiis eat ripe bananas with Ugali. And some people more so from Eastern Kenya can't understand why anyone will eat Nsaga or manage, with all their bitter-as-ex taste.

The politics of food is a sensitive topic.

And you can bet whoever wrote that Easy Coach statement is not a Luo. Because if he was a Luo, he would have some due consideration. Such as asking people politely to try and package their fish in airtight containers and carry it dry. Or create compartments in the luggage section where fish can be carried. Asking people not to carry fish was not an option.

But The Easy Coach attitude is something I see with a lot of monopolies. Here in Africa, we are yet to start seeing the shared humanity of others. We treat each so badly, and the rich can be nasty with the poor vibaya sana. But no business dies faster than a monopoly once a better alternative emerges.

I will give you an example of Kitengela.

For long, Rembo buses were a monopoly but their service was not the best. One day, Super Metro came knocking and they took away nearly half the customers.

Nowadays it is not uncommon to see people lining up at the Metro station for up to one hour waiting for a Metro, even when Rembo and other SACCOs are all there, helpless calling for people and even charging far less.

Recently another SACCO came and lined up next to Metro. It is currently trying to undercut and undermine Metro. They charge 50 bob to town but people are OK paying 80 bob to town with Metro Buses. Metro Buses' strength is their ability to keep time, drop, and only pick ready passengers. Not stopping at a stage, say Cabanas to pick up passengers for 15 minutes. Their buses are cleaner, even though some old ones have found their way there.

Is Metro the ultimate best? No.

Still, there is room for improvement. Clean, spacious, and quiet buses are the future. People now have phones to select music for themselves and don't need discos on wheels. Electric buses are giving commuters a much more dignified class of travel.

And most matatu owners will be caught off-guard.

Change or perish.

And you can never be too big for your customers. Empires come and go, but only those who treat their customers fairly and with dignity last longer.

My two cents.

So, if you run a business, always hire a competent PR and Communication team. They must understand the business, its publics, their needs, and potential challenges and how to handle them.

In an age of online feedback, and online ratings, the last thing you want are one-stars. Once those things catch on, you never recover. Kenyans especially move on very fast.

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