ICGE Launches First Vodafone Corporate Competition
By Mahy Mohamed
Follow @mahymohamed_
The International General Conference on Global Economy (ICGE) together with Vodafone launched the very first Vodafone Corporate Competition to introduce students to issues of customer loyalty in the business world on April 22.
“Students were given the task to search for the Net Promoter Score [ a management tool used to measure customers’ loyalty to a firm] of Vodafone and suggest an initiative that Vodafone can do in order to increase their NPS” said Youssra El Balamony, ICGE’s competition director.
The NPS is calculated based on responses to the question: how likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or family?
Ahmad Kammonah and Omar El Essawy were announced as the winners of the competition on May 1, receiving a monetary prize of EGP 10,000 from Vodafone .
“Getting to talk to random people on and off of campus gave me a chance to get out of my comfort zone and improve my communication skills,” said Kammounah.
Kammonah also added that the obstacle is that faced him was the two-day rainstorm that occurred on 25 April because there were less amount of students on campus and limited his data pool.
“Due to the weather conditions that we experienced last week, we lost precious time that we could’ve used to conduct more interviews. For this reason, our data size was not as large as it could be and we had to work with what we had.,” El Essawy added
The scoring is measured on a scale from 0 to ten. People who respond with scores between 8 and 9 are called “promoters”.
They are the customers more likely to be on good terms with the firm and are willing to have a longer-lasting relationship.
Those whose responses are between 0 and 6 are called “detractors”; they are customers less likely to have a relationship with the firm.
The final score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.
Students were encouraged to participate in teams of two or three for a chance to win an internship at Vodafone, with a total of 45 teams signing up.
“I think it is very beneficial for students to finally get introduced to the corporate world, because they are put in the company’s situation,” said El Balamony.
Students are required to interview people from their social circle and estimate the amount of people who support Vodafone, as well as those willing to let their family and friends join the company.
They are also required to gather qualitative research data to ensure customers’ satisfaction.
“The students must take into consideration the company’s abilities while suggesting a certain initiative,” added El Balamony.
Mariam Soliman, finance junior, was among the participants who found this competition extremely beneficial and enjoyed working in pairs.
“I wanted to have a hands-on experience on what market research is like … In this competition, I learned to apply what I learned in class to real life situations,” she said.
