Quality customer service is essential 

Dorothy Kyeyune is the CEO of Mwoyo Experience. She believes in the  mantra that the best way to start is to start. PHOTOs/ Godfrey Lugaaju.

What you need to know:

Customer care. Dorothy Kyeyune is the CEO of Mwoyo Experience, a transformational customer experience consultancy firm that helps business owners and SMEs achieve long-term customer service. She is a firm believer that quality customer care is a hallmark of every successful business.

Dorothy Kyeyune is the CEO of Mwoyo Experience, a transformational customer experience consultancy firm that helps business owners and SMEs, achieve long-term customer service. The firm teaches strategies for retaining customers through employee training for effective performance.

Kyeyune, who is an author in Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Elsevier an open-access online preprint community providing valuable services to leading academic schools and government institutions, has more than 15 years’ experience in customer service and related operations in leading corporate entities.

Tell us about yourself?

I am a mother of four, senior university lecturer, and entrepreneur and customer experience enthusiast. My passion for quality customer care led me to founding Mwoyo Experience, a pioneering transformational customer experience consultancy firm in Uganda.

We help business owners, SMEs achieve long-term customer gratification and retain customers through strategy development, implementation and employee training for effective performance and leadership.

Take us through your career.

I started my career as a call centre representative at Celtel Uganda now Airtel Uganda and worked my way from bottom to the top. This really made me understand the needs of the customers to better serve them and made me a high performing employee.

Two years later, I was promoted to call centre supervisor. I was hailed by my line manager for working as a part of a team that managed to change the narrative of customer experience having turned the team of long serving call centre employees that had been assigned to me into the best performing team.

What inspired you to start your firm?

My biggest inspiration to pursue research, in customer loyalty came from the collapse of a relative’s business in the financial sector.

 During one of the many discussions I held with her to get to the root cause of the problem, her desperation and pain touched me deeply and motivated me to look for a solution. I wanted to unravel the secrets and strategies behind customer loyalty so that I would avoid a similar scenario from re-occurring through helping business owners retain their customers.


What do customers expect from brands to keep loyal?

From my experience and research there are six things that customers expect from every brand as a bare minimum. These are problem solving, anticipating customer needs, transparency, scope of competition, availability and consistent quality and reliability.

Explain the customer loyalty course your firm teaches business owners

Customer Loyalty Mastery is a 90-day six module online course that takes business owners through the A-Z of how to retain their customers for the long term and in so doing, increase their revenues and profitability. It avails them with powerful and proven techniques on customer loyalty; how to earn it and more importantly, how to keep it.

The course started in October 2021. Prior to this, it was run as a pilot. Having received positive feedback from our clients on how their customers transformed into repeat buyers, some into ardent fans, we then officially launched it.

How can brands best position themselves to achieve customer loyalty?

Brands should focus on improving employee experience. This is because the first customer of any business is the employees. Happy employees (internal customers) create happy clients (external customers) by going the extra mile to provide stellar customer experience, being creative, innovative and proud brand ambassadors.

They stop looking at employment as a job and start looking at it as meaningful work. Clients cannot become loyal to a brand that is not loved by its employees. Brands should also aim at offering a sense of community to customers, not rewards.

What is the best career advice anyone has ever given to you?

Gloria Evelyne Byamugisha then Human Resource Director, Airtel Uganda, now Group Chief HR Officer, Dangote Cement PLC once told me not  to follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Being one of the finest leaders I have met and hold in high regard, I have tried to live by this advice. It helped me understand the importance of finding one’s passion in life and going in that direction. 

I urge women with aspirations to believe in themselves, fight imposter syndrome, look out for mentors and start with whatever they have. My mantra is that the best way to start is to start.

How do you bring the best out of your team?

I believe in getting to know the employees individually beyond the obvious, for example what motivates them, their aspirations, challenges within and outside work. Trusting them creates an enabling environment for creativity, innovation and tolerance for mistakes. I also believe in rewarding and recognising them publicly, reprimand privately and celebrate wins, however small.

What do you do to destress?

I start off the weekdays swimming with our eldest children from 6-7:30am; jog twice a week with a group of friends, listen to slow music and read self-help books. The most recent book I read in this category was Grit by Angela Duckworth.

Drawing examples from successful personalities and her own research, she informs us that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence that she calls grit. I recommend this book to anyone striving to succeed.