One of the best ways to build brand credibility is to understand a customer’s journey and build long-term relationships with them. In this article, we ask industry professionals how they meet the needs of their customers.

1. Build engagement with customers

It’s no secret that we live in a time of unprecedented technological acceleration. Nowhere is that more true than in the customer experience space. Things that ten years ago seemed completely impossible are now commonplace and almost expected.

“Many organisations want to make changes in line with accelerations in technology and customer experiences, but the range of options available out there stops them from even starting, or worse, they settle for an option that they deem to be “good enough,” comments Brent Haumann, Managing Director at digital communications firm, Tilte.

Importantly, however, is that as technology accelerates, so do customer expectations, and what was considered good enough yesterday is not good enough for tomorrow.

It is critical that organisations aim to meet and even exceed these expectations, because if they don’t, their competitors will happily oblige.

“The problem is that engaging customers is not about sending an email or introducing a chatbot.” Anyone can do that. It’s about how to get your customers to actually engage with your brand and build a loyal relationship that will see their customer lifetime value grow. This is a lot more difficult and requires expertise in these spaces.” concludes  Haumann

2. Enhance the user experience

While the use of technology to streamline customer-facing processes is an integral part of SME growth, the user experience of such technology can often become a pain point for the business if the right tool is not chosen.

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“While SMEs need technology to reduce manual tasks and automate repetitive processes, complicated software packages and platforms can be more of a hindrance than a help. “In fact, as many as 70% of startups fail within the first five years, according to research from the University of the Western Cape, because they don’t have the technical support they need to get the basics done,” says Andrew Bourne, Regional Manager, Africa – Zoho Corporation.

Integrated, seamless solutions need to meet the needs of the user, regardless of the scale of the business. This means having a full-featured Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that will improve  the user experience and enhance customer service.

3. Provide access across borders

It’s no secret that mobile money has revolutionised the financial services industry, allowing individuals to transact within and across borders – opening up a world of possibility for small business owners on the continent. However, consumer pain points such as a lack of access to financial services, high transaction costs, and regulatory requirements still hurt interoperability and the cross-border payments innovations that are key for scaling access across Africa.

Remittances, as an example, are important to African countries, but the cost of intra-African money transfers still remains high.

In South Africa, the average cost of sending remittances was 8.14% in 2020 as against the global average remittance fee of 6.01%. Not only are billions lost to high transaction costs, but they also limit financial inclusion and aid to the vulnerable.

MFS Africa has been driving the next step in this revolution, addressing this pain point by bringing more possibilities, more connections and more interoperability to the mobile money user. The organisation’s full-service digital payments network now connects over 400 million mobile money wallets, over 200 million bank accounts and over 150,000 agents in Nigeria.

4. Harness technology to enhance the experience

“Solving the customer’s pain point is the foundation of a great customer experience. And experience is everything. We know that more consumers and business buyers are noting that the experience companies offer matters as much as their products.” says Zuko Mdwaba, Area Vice President Salesforce South Africa

This is all about meeting the customer where they are. Today, customers’ use of social media, knowledge bases, and live chat is near parity with phone and email. With the decline of in-person service since 2020 showing little sign of recovery, the use of mobile apps, online communities, and video support have seen massive expansion over the past two years.

Mdwaba continues that “Given the rising importance of digital channels, strengthening partnerships between service and IT departments is often key to breaking down data silos, saving on software cost, agent empowerment and resulting in faster time-to-market for new technology solutions.”

By investing in advanced technology, organisations can address customer pain points effectively to achieve greater customer satisfaction, which ultimately boosts engagement and revenue.

We also saw movement on the legislative front, with South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) coming into effect in July. (Kenya and Nigeria’s equivalent acts came into effect in 2019).

In fact, Gartner predicts that modern privacy laws will cover 75% of the world’s population by the end of 2023.

But there’s also clearly still a lot of work to be done. By the end of September 2021, there had been more data breaches than in the whole of 2020, impacting hundreds of millions of people. The average cost of a data breach rose to US$4.24-million, the highest it’s been in 17 years.

What this illustrates is that online privacy and security is an ongoing battle and that organisations of all sizes will have to keep stepping up their efforts when it comes to protecting their customers and staff. While it’s hard to predict exactly how this will play out in 2022, there are several definite trends that will have an impact throughout the course of the year.

Privacy will become (even more) mainstream

With big tech embracing privacy, or at the very least making an effort, it’ll likely become even more mainstream. This will be a positive in many markets, especially where the majority of ordinary business owners are naive to their consumers’ privacy wants and needs.

A survey Zoho conducted earlier in 2021, for example, found that only 22% of South African businesses are aware of privacy laws governing their marketing activities, despite POPIA coming into effect on 1 July. It also found that while 76% of the businesses indicated that they have well-documented policies for customer data protection, only 57% are strictly applying those policies.

At Zoho, data privacy is perceived as not just a legal obligation but an ethical choice. The team is serious about customer data protection and strives to develop applications that treat user data responsibly.

In 2020, Zoho also took a strong stance against adjunct surveillance—the practice of monitoring data and activity through third parties, cookies, and trackers embedded in the software/website—and removed all invasive/non-essential third-party trackers from its websites.

The growing importance of (safely) dumping data

Having spent years trying to gather as much data as possible on their users, companies are starting to realise that it’s not always an asset. In fact, many organisations are sitting on vast “data graveyards” that are a major security liability.

The better they get at safely disposing of that data, the less risk they’ll face when it comes to cybersecurity breaches. With increasingly robust laws, companies will be forced to improve their governance but the organisations that fare best will be the ones that go above and beyond when it comes to data governance.

Increased demand for transparency

As an effect of privacy becoming an increasingly mainstream issue, it’s also become a much bigger concern for ordinary consumers who are turning privacy-conscious with each passing day. People want to know that companies aren’t going to collect data that they aren’t comfortable sharing and that the companies will be wholly transparent with the data they do collect. For the next few years, organisations that boldly come forward and declare their data collection practices with complete transparency and accountability will gain a competitive advantage.

A higher responsibility

Ultimately, the onus is on the organisations to set up a company-wide data governance framework which ensures that only the minimum necessary amount of data is collected from customers along with their explicit consent and is further used, stored, and managed responsibly.

Equally important, organisations should ensure that their business software providers and vendors also follow the same amount of strict guidelines, policies, and compliance procedures when it comes to data privacy.

About the author:

Andrew Bourne is Zoho’s Regional Manager for the Africa region and is based in Cape Town, South Africa. He has more than 15 years of experience in sales and marketing, and has spent the last five years focusing on the implementation and testing of various business technologies. He is very passionate about Zoho and has exceptional insight into the business and marketing world.