ABOUT two decades ago when the country transited from a state-run economy to private participation we witnessed a lot of changes in various economic sectors among them mining, manufacturing as well as communication and transport.
Those who recall, there was the government-controlled United Buses of Zambia popularly known as UBZ which was then dissolved or liquated.
Before this development, however, many of us who were fortunate or unfortunate to be around at the time, witnessed what one would term, the worst kind of customer service ever seen in the transportation sector.
Without taking everything away from the bus company then, good customer service or at least the effort of it could only be experienced on the luxury coaches of the same company.
As for the ordinary buses these were normally characterised with overloading, late departures, delayed arrivals, lack of comfort on board and not to mention the frequent breakdowns.
I can vividly remember sometime around 1985, while on a trip to Chipata, Eastern Province a distance covering about 700 kilometres.
Can you imagine having to stand for a distance of 400 kilometres, up to Petauke after some disembarked to give others chance to secure some seats.
This was how extreme things could get when one travelled using the UBZ buses.
This state-of-affairs could be mainly attributed to the monopolistic policy that prevailed in the country during those years.
Despite there being some private buses on the scene, they still had challenges competing effectively with the state owned UBZ buses.
Remember that during those times the vehicle importation tax was relatively high much to the detriment of the private transporters who could only manage to buy second hand buses from the UBZ during auctions.
The high tax on importation of buses then was government’s deliberate plan to try and protect the state owned transport company from competition.
This motive as was evidenced later turned out to cause more harm to the state-owned bus companies than good.
It was not strange to hear that UBZ coach from Kabwe to Lusaka would not be available for some days, thereby causing anxiety and leaving the travelers inconvenienced.
To say the least the transport company had become totally unreliable and a state liability.
As I have already pointed out, this situation was mainly due to the existing government policy on the national economy then.
Subsequently with the change of government we saw a complete shift from the government controlled economy to a private sector driven one.
With this development we soon started to witness an influx of buses on the roads and the introduction of private coaches.
This now meant that competition was getting tough and the players needed to add value to the way they provided services to their travelling customers.
Customer service could no longer be relegated to the back seat or overlooked as a critical success factor.
The public transportation sector had now been revolutionalised.
During the period between 1994 and 1995 some enterprising and clever Senegalese transporters took advantage of the opening up of the transportation sector to establish among the first private luxurycoaches in the country.
Some of you may recall the name ‘JAFANU’.
Taking advantage of the vacuum left by the former state owned transportation company, JAFANU immediately established itself as the best and only option when they introduced luxury coaches, some of which were acquired from the then defunct UBZ.
During my holiday trip to the Eastern Province, I had an opportunity to travel on the then famous JAFANU.
My impressions and encounter with the bus company was rather totally different from praises most people gave.
Initially when starting from Lusaka the bus observed the expected luxury bus standards by having a restricted number of passengers.
The bus was also on schedule on departure time. I was impressed with the effort taken to serve the passengers with some refreshments.
So far as we started off everything seemed to be okay.
However as we proceeded with the trip, things suddenly changed as the bus started making unnecessary stoppages to pick up passengers at undesignated points along the way.
Many years later the situation has become even more complex as the market has become more fragmented and there are more players in the sector.
This being the case the travelling public are equally becoming cost conscious and looking to getting value for their money.
The only way to remain competitive is constant improvement in customer service.
Good examples of good customer service in transportation include: convenience and reliability, arriving and departing on schedule, comfort and observance of safety guidelines and extra incentives such as providing some entertainment and refreshments on board.
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