The art of excellence

How Vodafone Ghana CEO Kyle Whitehill has led his team to break new ground in the telecoms industry

It is 4:10 pm at Vodafone Ghana’s impressive head-office building in Airport City, Accra. Kyle Whitehill, the network’s Chief Executive, is in his office on the second floor, shuffling through documents as he waits for an interview with the Business & Financial Times. Kyle works hard and honours all his appointments, on time. “It’s part of the culture at Vodafone,” he says.

In three years, Kyle and his team have built a dynamic telecoms network that has won unparalleled recognition from the industry and beyond. In April, Vodafone was named the best telecoms brand at the second edition of the Mobileworld Ghana Telecom Awards, where Kyle was also voted the best CEO in the industry. The network collected four other awards at that event, including one for the best customer service – the high point of the night, as Kyle now recalls.

Asked about Vodafone’s customer-service philosophy, he answers with a simple, forthright statement: “our customer philosophy is, ‘when you want me, I’m here and I’ll help you get what you need to solve your problem or realise your opportunity.’” Vodafone, he says, is passionate about people: the staff, customers and the ordinary Ghanaians whose lives the network has affected in several positive ways.

After its six-trophy harvest at the Ghana Telecom Awards, Vodafone doubled the number of honours before December, winning among others the ‘CIMG Telecoms Company of the Year’ and the ‘Fifth Most Respected Company in Ghana’. Indeed, Vodafone was the only telecoms company selected among the ten most respected businesses in Ghana in the biennial peer-review survey conducted by PwC Ghana, the tax-advisory and business consulting firm.

Even for Kyle, who says he never underestimated what Vodafone was capable of, collecting twelve awards in a single year is an overwhelming achievement. “I thought that if we could win at least just one award, that would prove to Ghana that Vodafone is doing something which is being admired by the external world,” he says. “But to think that we have got twelve awards from different bodies in a period of twelve calendar months, that is absolutely incredible.”

Incredible it may seem, but Kyle, who worked with the Vodafone Group for nearly a decade before arriving in Ghana, has no doubt about how his company has achieved so much barely three years after coming into this market. Apart from the millions Vodafone has invested to expand and upgrade its network, he enumerates four other ingredients of the network’s success in Ghana: a great workforce, a performance culture, pride in the brand, and the ability to capture the hearts and minds of Ghanaians.

“The first ingredient of our success was identifying that great people can make an enormous difference. So we set out to bring to Vodafone not only great Ghanaians but the best Ghanaians, who we believed could have a disproportionately huge impact on what we can do as a business,” Kyle says. He believes the recognition of Patricia Obo-Nai, Vodafone’s Chief Technology Officer, as the best female technologist in the industry, is – besides being a tribute to Patricia’s own good works – an affirmation of the “great workforce” Vodafone has assembled.

But having the best staff, he adds, was not enough “It was important to create a performance culture. So what I said was, ‘I’m going to recruit you, I’m going to set you some objectives and I’m going to reward and encourage you to deliver those objectives.’” Kyle says every member of his team understands that if they don’t do their job it has an impact on everybody else in the business. So he insists that they are punctual and reliable at all times and, more importantly, he is an exemplar of these virtues.

Kyle encourages his staff to be ambitious and creative, and they are assured of his fullest support for their ideas and initiatives. As a result, the network’s marketing campaigns, one of which won an award in April, have had the effect of a revolution in the industry, setting a new benchmark for communicating with different customer segments in the industry.

Vodafone loves innovation, and one of the best creations by the minds and hands that work for the company is the highly-acclaimed HealthLine Tv programme, which has successfully aired two series on the major television networks in the country.

Kyle says HealthLine “helped put a heart into the Vodafone brand”, making people appreciate what it stands for. “HealthLine gave us an emotional connection with people. And it wasn’t just a few Ghanaians. It was the whole gamut of people including middle-class Ghanaians in Accra and Kumasi, and Ghanaians in the villages in the north. All these people felt that this is a company that stands for something very inspiring and cares a lot about us.”

Kyle believes Vodafone’s ability to appeal to people on a personal level has won the hearts of Ghanaians to the brand, and this coupled with its unique products and the face-to-face customer service interactions that take place daily in the thirty-five Vodafone stores has helped the network achieve its brand promise of “helping people do what they want to do.”

A glimpse into Kyle’s weekly routine shows how he lives the values and principles he articulates about his company. Apart from regular meetings with reporting managers to review performance, Kyle sets aside part of his time to listen to new ideas from his staff and provides guidance when they need it. He also visits his customers to listen to their feedback, or sometimes he drops by the Vodafone stores to interact with the staff and clients.

So, does Kyle’s personality have a strong influence on the company? “It helps that I have been with Vodafone for twelve years in lots of different countries, but I couldn’t have achieved anything without the large Vodafone brand and organisation behind me,” he says. “So yes, I have been able to have a lot of influence on this company, but I’ve just brought with me the best of Vodafone to Ghana.”

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