Expresso Ghana changes MD again

Expresso Telecoms Ghana has changed Managing Directors just months after coming into the country through a buyout of Kasapa Telecom Limited.

Prior to Kasapa being rebranded to Expresso, the then MD, Bob Palitz resigned and Hisham Ayoub took over as MD just before the rebranding.

But months after, a new MD by name Al-Ameer Ahmed Al-Ameer Yousef has been sneaked in quietly to take over from Hisham Ayoub, who was equally transferred quietly to another Expresso operation outside of Ghana to serve in another capacity yet to be confirmed.

Mr. Yousef was introduced to workers at a special durbar held in his honour at Alisa Hotel at North Ridge, Accra.

Sources at Expresso disclosed on grounds of anonymity that Ayoub was replaced for poor performance, characterised by the consistent loss of subscribers from about 400,000 when Bob Palitz left, to the current 200,000 plus.

Ayoub took over Expresso Ghana on the note of nationwide coverage and a promise to shed off the rather reserved image of Kasapa and be more aggressive.

He introduced the Cliq modem for starters, which is currently one of the most competitive on the market in terms of prices, tariff and speed, but that did not seem to be enough to keep him in office.

Meanwhile, Expresso has not been doing any better since the new MD, Yousef came into office, except that,  the source said he made all departmental heads do a presentation of their strategies and he practically damned all the strategies saying they were not competitive strategies.

“It looks like Mr. Yousef is going to bring some positive change, but some of the old guys at Expresso have entrenched themselves into their positions through all kinds of means so I am not too sure if he will succeed,” the source said.

The source also said even though lots of subscribers were lost under Hisham Ayoub, he also sacked a number of valuable staff from the company, including top management staff, some of whom are now working with Enterprise Insurance Company Limited.

The depletion of strong hands at Expresso has compelled the new MD to put the substantive Marketing Manager, Fred Quainoo in charge of Operations and Devices in addition to his duties at Marketing Manager.

Meanwhile, the Expresso Cliq modem, introduced under the watch of Hisham Ayoub, has been temporarily withdrawn from the market and has been under review for months now, while tens of thousands of customers are said to be on a waiting list for their modems.

The source noted that the Cliq modem is practically the cash cow for the company with each individual sales person sometimes making sales of up to GH¢4,000 per day, but the company’s current review is of the Cliq modem is denying them of all the that potential money.

Prior to Expresso’s coming, its predecessor, Kasapa was at the forefront of the campaign for Mobile Number Portability (MNP), but Expresso under Hisham Ayoub went completely flat on MNP, possibly because they suddenly realised that they would need to give new phones to people who port to their CDMA network.

The company has since the introduction of MNP been losing customers consistently every month.

“As we speak now all the computers at the High Street branch of the Expresso have all broken down for months now and staff there are not able to get into the company’s data system to enter daily transaction so the manager there records all transactions in books and sends them to the Dansoman branch every day for entry.

“Management is not thinking about how to fix all these challenges to bring us back on track to get customers and make some money but they are quick to write query letters to customer service staff and are rather running quizzes for customer service staff every week as if the customers service staff are the problems,” the source said.

Expresso is the only CDMA operator in Ghana and the smallest operator by subscriber based, holding some 204,153 subscribers as at September ending this year, which is less than one per cent market share.

By Samuel Nii Narku Dowuona