Q&A: Africa’s customer experience is evolving

ITNewsAfrica caught up with keynote speaker Micheal Baucke, Alcatel-Lucent Customer Experience Transformation Programme Director for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) during a break at the 14tn annual SATNAC conference in East London, South Africa.

During his presentation, Baucke provided a quick overview on how to define customer experience and why it is becoming more important for service providers.

“Customer experience is the internal and subjective response customers have to any direct and indirect contact with a company. It’s more than using a product or a service. It’s about the brand, it’s about how good the customer care is and how efficient the billing systems are,” said Baucke.

1. Provide an overview of the social communication customer experience trends in Africa?

It’s a great opportunity for Africa, due to the growth of smartphones in the market. It’s an opportunity to create a new customer experience for people in Africa. It can help them to create a better life.

2. Where are the growth areas?

I was in Kenya 2 weeks ago. In just a few months, Safaricom had sold 500 000 Android smarphones, worth about $80 each. Projections are by 2015 about 1 billion smartphone would be sold.

This proves that smartphones are coming to Africa. The price is right and if the networks are there to provide excellent coverage for mobile data services, it will enable smart application (apps) developers to write apps for Africa. It could be e-learning, e-health, trade, transportation and entertainment.

A study by TNS entitled “Digital Life” indicates that South Africans that are online are very social. South Africa is the second most social country in the world.

More than 50% of online user’s in SA primary use is social networking, using predominantly mobile devices at a rate of about 60%.

3. What is Africa’s main technology growth area?

Definitely mobile and data. In Kenya, data use is taking off and prices are being reduced dramatically. In some cases, prices have been slashed in half, making mobile data much more affordable for a wide percentage of the population.

4. What are the key challenges facing African customers and service providers?

For customers it’s an opportunity. For the service providers, it creates challenges. The main challenge is in the area of smartphones and applications. The ecosystem gets a little bit more complex. Before users had a simple mobile phone and simple networks. Mobile phones were used to make voice calls and send sms messages. It was easy for service providers to offer customer care.

Smartphones, which offer a number of apps that users can download, can complicate customer care service. Smartphones are not easy to setup and operate. If something goes wrong, it’s more complicated to find the cause of the real fault. Nowadays the customer care agents are not well equipped to handle those queries.

5. Are Africans overcoming the limitations of technology innovation?

I’m optimistic – I’ve seen it in Nigeria, which is the largest mobile market in Africa. I’ve seen a lot of engagement from entrepreneurs to develop new applications to make good use of mobile networks.

As Africa is very social, people like to socialize. I think it’s something that is embedded in the culture to communicate.

6. What needs to be done to create more African content and applications?

First you need some economy of scale – you need a certain amount of smartphones in the market. You need a certain amount of data coverage at a price point that is not too high. It will then become attractive for application developers to put work into developing the apps.

It is important to invest in people and their education. Invest into a developer programme, work with smart people and co-ordinate on how they can start creating applications.

Bontle Moeng