In line with its ethos of creating convenience and value to buyers and sellers, ikman.lk has continuously been on a staff expansion drive to find the most suitable individuals for its multiple divisions that offer myriad services. This staff expansion also prompted the company to relocate its head office to Lipton Circus, on a much larger land area with larger office space.
ikman’s Customer Support/Fraud team for instance has grown to 35 in order to keep up with the growth in ad postings with a larger staff being required in order to filter the ads and ensure that they meet ikman.lk’s strict guidelines for posting. These checks include reviewing the legality of the ads, whether the price is within an acceptable range, whether clear photographs which clearly identify the product have been included, all fields in the ad have been filled and so on. The customer service team also has a mandate to respond to customer queries within an hour. The responsibility of the fraud team on the other hand is to ensure the safety and authenticity of all advertisements posted on the website. The process involves carrying out a survey of all posted advertisements on a monthly basis by a dedicated and experienced team trained and equipped to identify any misgivings.
The company’s Telesales team which looks into paid advertising has also increased to 51 staffers, as customers have now realized that paid ads bring about better and faster results. The Telesales team’s role is to email customers about the nominal fee to be incurred for posting the ad and advise them on how they can make payments. They also have a team on the ground that visits customers and collect payments. ikman has tied up with almost all leading banks for the convenience of customers to make payment. ikman.lk at present charges for ads relating to cars, vans, buses, heavy duty vehicles, jobs, apartments, houses, land and commercial property. Charging for these ads have seen a decline in the amount of unnecessary ads being posted leading to a more quality inventory resulting in increased inquiries for sellers.
The ikman Buy Now team has also grown to 9 members now with many sellers opting for the Buy Now option, which bring about more customers to sellers as it involves delivering products to interested buyers who find this service convenient. The team will collect the item from the seller, deliver it to the buyer, irrespective of his location in Sri Lanka and will collect the money on the seller’s behalf and remit it to the seller’s bank account.
The Quality Assurance (QA) team works with all departments other than Banner Sales and Admin to ensure that ikman standards and guidelines are maintained across all operations. This team consists of 10 employees. Apart from carrying out quality checks on ads posted on the site listening to customer call recordings to monitor service levels and conducting ‘Mystery Customer Surveys’ by post fake ads in order to monitor the filtration process falls within the preview of the QA team. The team also follows up
to ensure customer complaints are managed effectively and conducts one on one training sessions and refresher courses for staff.
ikman.lk’s Category Management (CM) team is the largest department in terms of numbers with staff strength around 100 members. The CM team is ikman.lk’s boots on the ground responsible for promoting memberships on ikman.lk to businesses. Memberships were a recent value addition from ikman.lk whereby business advertisers who post above a predetermined limit of ads in each category per month will be prompted to go in for memberships. Members will have their own dedicated page on ikman.lk which will display all their current classified ads, a company profile, branding, contact information, opening hours, postal and web addresses and more.
The company’s Banner Sales team has also grown to 15 people, whose function it is to canvas web banner advertising from corporate and advertising agencies while ikman’s Admin/Finance team has also increased to 10 members.
As the digital industry in the country continues to grow and people increasingly start turning to online platforms for products and services, ikman.lk has identified ensuring a superior quality inventory and maintaining a positive user experience is vital. In order to ensure high standers ikman.lk is constantly on the lookout for superstars to propel forward Sri Lanka’s largest marketplace.
