Call for Leaders | Murielle Lorilloux (VODAFONE Romania): The business environment and humanity will overcome this difficult situation by working together

Mihai-Alexandru Cristea 06/04/2020 | 16:33

Call for Leaders – 3Q is a new category where Business Review features our 3 questions with some of Romania’s top business professionals, bringing a positive, insightful, or otherwise constructive view of their markets in the context of the current crisis.

 

Current conversation: Murielle Lorilloux, CEO Vodafone Romania

 

What are the measures you took for your business during this period?

We are facing difficult times with the spread of COVID-19, but Vodafone is doing its best to keep all Romanians connected.

The health and safety of our employees and customers is our top priority. While putting the health and safety of our teams first, using our remote working technology, our teams are working hard to support all our customers, whether that be businesses, authorities and government departments, healthcare institutions, as well as residential customers, by ensuring world-class connectivity and the communications services they need.

The presence of COVID-19 across Romania is having a significant impact on our day-to-day lives, changing the way we interact, work, learn, get entertained. Our mission now more than ever is keeping all our customers connected and ensuring them all the communication services they need to work, to stay connected to their family and friends, to have access to healthcare and emergency services.

Many businesses are relying on our services to ensure continuity. For those working remotely, it is critical that mobile and broadband connectivity supports everything they need to do. As a provider of critical connectivity and communications services enabling our digital society, Vodafone Romania has activated its Business Continuity Plan and implemented specific procedures to monitor and ensure fast reaction whenever needed. With the increase of traffic we experience on both mobile and fixed network, our engineers are working hard to maintain our best network quality and increase capacity as soon as it is necessary. Our ultimate goal is to best serve the Romanian society during such hard times in the way Vodafone truly can. Everyone needs good connectivity, perhaps now more than ever.

 

Read more about Vodafone Romania’s efforts to keep its customers connected, implementing smart work, and more, in an extensive interview with Murielle Lorilloux.

 

In addition, we have been focusing on the best way to support our customers in a meaningful way, therefore we have developed tailored offers to facilitate our customers’ communication with their family and friends. We are offering our customers unlimited calls to Romania from France, Italy, Spain, Germany, UK and Austria free of charge. Also, we have introduced a free bonus with 300 international minutes for mobile and fixed line available for calls to Italy, Spain, Germany, France, UK and Austria. For companies we offer several options as well, depending on their business needs, which may consist in 300 international minutes free of charge for fixed and mobile networks towards Italy, Spain, Germany, France, UK, Austria and all the countries from EEA until March 31st, unlimited national voice or data, or 600 international minutes within EEA for free, until April 15.

More customized offers will be coming fast in our effort to continue to help everyone in a way that really makes a difference during these times.

At Vodafone Romania, we put customers at the heart of everything we do, but our employees are at the epicenter of our business. We have taken immediate actions to protect them and ensure best technology tools for them to conduct their activities. We have constantly increased smart working and shifted to working from home in all the business functions where that was possible. Currently, all our office employees all over the country are working remotely, including all the customer care teams.

Our colleagues in retail locations that are still open have shorter working times and a new set of rules of conduct was put in place in the stores, for everyone’s health safety, which is being constantly updated, depending on how the situation evolves and according to authorities’ latest measures. Also, we have implemented a restricted access in the stores, one person per agent at a time. Floor indicators with the safety distance to be observed have been put in place in our retail network. We have provided protective materials to our staff and we are helping all our sales partners (dealers, franchise stores etc) to ensure a safe and healthy work environment for both employees and customers.

Our field teams, especially those working directly with customers, have been provided protective equipment and have been instructed regarding the preventive actions that they need to take in order to protect themselves and the customers. We have very strict measures in this regard and no works are being carried out by our field teams to customers’ premises without safety equipment. All our employees and contractors must remain safe and well protected. Therefore, more guidance and support with additional protective measures and equipment should be provided by authorities, especially for ensuring works in areas of higher risk.

We are constantly monitoring the situation at national level and we will act accordingly to protect our employees, as needed and with the observance of all enforced measures announced by the authorities.

Last but not least, supporting the Romanian society during this unprecedented crisis has been extremely important for us and Vodafone Romania Foundation has immediately got involved in supporting several initiatives, in healthcare, online education, digital platforms aiming to inform the population correctly, from official sources. For the triage center in Arad Vodafone Romania Foundation has sponsored the acquisition of a testing machine and of 5,000 tests to be used for people coming to Romania via Nadlac border, while for Marie Curie Hospital it has bought medical equipment consisting in 100 individual inhalers for the neonatology section, 50 air pumps, 5 air purifiers for larger spaces and 5 mini-inhalers.

 

What is your advice for business leaders for this crisis?

Definitely, the global situation we as individuals, businesses and society are facing is unprecedented. There will be much volatility around us and it is hard to predict how things will look like in three months, 6 months, one year from now. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the business environment and humanity will overcome this difficult situation by working together with agility and resilience, already adapting fast to the new conditions. By working together, by understanding the specific needs and challenges that each industry is facing right now, by supporting each other in a meaningful way, we can overcome the difficulties.

At the same time, I believe that this is also an opportunity for businesses to re-assess their flows, their processes, to recognize their vulnerabilities, think of how they can be better prepared for such situations and how they can grow stronger and more resilient. Others may experiment new ideas, new lines of business or new ways of doing things, and we can already see examples of reinvented business in just few weeks or even days.

But above all, I think that this crisis has shown us how central connectivity and technology are today, enabling businesses to continue to run using remote working and collaborative solutions, people to stay connected to their family and friends, students to continue their education virtually. Collaborative office, video conferencing, smart working, remote customer support and other systems have played a tremendous role in coping with the challenges posed by the epidemic.

I think that many businesses that were not ready to this new operating model will put digital transformation higher on their agenda, while others will confidently continue this journey even further.

 

What is the most positive business news you have read recently and want to share? 

Positive business news is hard to spot during such difficult times, extremely challenging for the business environment.

But I am very proud to see the positive mindset and spirit of Vodafone team having a common goal and working together to adapt fast and put all their effort to support our customers to stay connected and efficient on what they need to do. It is positive indeed to see our people already thinking how we will overcome this crisis and how we will be able to restart the machine fast, which shows optimism and resilience. A big thank you from me to the whole Vodafone team for putting such an amazing effort and for its willingness to stay strong against adversity!

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