Who are Mukuru Movers? These are people dedicated to the Mukuru Mission. Individuals who every day on the job embody the Mukuru Culture of world-class service, sense of family, innovation, and creativity, passion in work and play, integrity, and growth through learning.
Meet Lisungu Muwamba, Contact Centre Team Leader – Cape Town, South Africa. Lisungu has kept growing through her Mukuru journey by being accountable for each role she’s taken on and every new set of challenges she’s faced. She is a great example of how success can be achieved by embracing accountability and growth through learning.
I was born and raised in Nkhata Bay, a Malawian port town on the western shore of Lake Malawi. The town is known for its harbour of sheltered bays surrounded by forested, rocky headlands. I attended high school in Mzuzu then went to college at the Malawi Institute of Tourism in Blantyre. Now I live in Cape Town.
I joined the Mukuru Family on 5 March 2015 as a relief Sales & Support Consultant. It was my first job since moving to South Africa from Malawi, so you can imagine how excited I was! February 2016 I was promoted to a Permanent Sales & Support Consultant and was one of the first consultants to form Team Shumba. Six months later I joined Team Nyathi and then the languages team as a Malawi consultant. I and my Malawian colleague handled and resolved queries and worked on campaigns to grow the Malawi corridor. We saw results after six months, and five additional consultants were recruited to form Team Chewa. A year later, I was promoted to Chewa Team Leader.
So far, the journey has been enlightening and amazing. I’ve had a chance to learn and appreciate new cultures and their traditions, and learn new languages. Yes, I can proudly say that I now speak and understand the Shona language fluently.
In January 2020, I was given more responsibility and took over leadership of an additional inbound team of 13 consultants. I’ve since risen to the occasion and see this as another opportunity to grow. Mukuru has indeed been more than a company I work for. When I came to South Africa, I had no friends, but Mukuru gave me an instant family and lots and lots of friends. It is a family for me, away from my own family.
What I love most about my job is the ability it’s given me to grow as an individual. To be able to assist others without expecting anything in return. Working in the Contact Centre has taught me patience and given me a chance to realise strengths I never knew I had until I was presented with a particular situation. As the saying goes, “Experience is the best teacher”.
The biggest challenge I face in my job is that the Call Centre acts as a filter for the rest of the business so if something goes sour, whether it’s from an internal department or one of our partners, the Call Centre is the first to hear about it and put out any flames coming from our customers.
As a team leader, I have learned to come up with solutions for our customers where there are none readily available. To be supportive to my team when they are frustrated dealing with an irate customer – most of the time the business only gets to know about a problem affecting customers once it has already happened. Keeping customers in the loop throughout the query resolution process helps to keep customers from getting irate in the first place.
We do not only talk about our values at Mukuru, we live them. One of the ways we do this is by ensuring resolution and world class service delivery to both our external and internal customers. Our customers are never just numbers, they are part of a family – the Mukuru Family, just like the rest of my colleagues.
My advice to someone wanting to start a career at Mukuru is; I hope you love people! Starting a career at Mukuru means you get an instant family, people that are not too shy to say hello and make you feel at home. You will feel as if you have known everyone all your life.
