DIGITAL MEDIA MARKETING - IN EAST AFRICA: THE CX ISSUE A white paper authored by Mrs Seanice Lojede, CEO - Blu Flamingo Digital Africa.
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DIGITAL MEDIA MARKETING IN EAST AFRICA: THE CX ISSUE A white paper authored by Mrs Seanice Lojede, CEO - Blu Flamingo Digital Africa.
THE CUSTOMER CARE ISSUE “The advent of the internet in Uganda is changing the way thousands of mobile phone users communicate with each other. It has brought about a new trend of using Wifi and Mobile data." So starts an article published On Online Portal 'UGO' on June 22 2016, in Kampala Uganda. The African market has largely been one that we consider as leap frogging technological and innovation boundaries as evidenced by the rise and rise of Mobile Money and several other creative applications and technology. As a digital marketing company lucky to have a front seat to many of the teams behind this innovation and contributing to the industry through initiatives like the social media awards, we are happy to present to you 5 Issues Covering 5 areas to watch in 2016, in Digital Marketing in Sub Saharan Africa. This is the first of 5 Issues.
EVOLUTION OF ONLINE CUSTOMER CARE
Uganda is a fairly small East African country with a population of roughly 38 million.
According to the Uganda Communications With all this online activity an interesting customer
Commission (UCC) the number of internet driven pain point is emerging - online customer care or
subscribers grew from 8 million in 2014 to 13 online CX as we call it.
million in 2015.
The advantages are numerous and obvious, customer
This has led to an interesting rise in the number education is more personal and one one, Word of
of data supported voice calls for the mouth can now be 'word of tweet/post/comment
telecommunication industry, e-commerce has /share'
boomed with the advent of online shops like the
more sophisticated Kaymu and Jumia to the But companies are still grappling with this beast:
simple down-town boutique selling second
hand clothes. Below you will find an example of what we mean:
HOW IT STARTED
WHO IS THE CLIENT
13.3K
CEO OF Followers
SCANGROUP on Twitter
THE RESPONSE
DOWNHILL
DOWNHILL
FURTHER DOWNHILL
EVEN FURTHER DOWNHILL
THEY’RE NOT HELPING
THE COMPETITION TAKES ADVANTAGE
WHAT WAS THE VIRAL IMPACT?
680,000 FOLLOWERSTEUSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2014
RMA MOTORS DEFENDS TWITTER GAFFE
RMA Motors has, through its CEO Sanjiv Shah, responded to the story published by Nation.co.ke about
its handling of a customer's complaint on Twitter.
In the response, Mr Shah said that RMA was puzzled as to why Mr Thakrar chose to use social media to
complain about the service rendered to him by the motor dealership yet he had an open line of
communication with RMA.
"We are puzzled as to why Mr Thakrar decided to air his views on social media in the early hours of the
morning on a public holiday (Monday 21st October (sic)).
Mr Thakrar had taken to Twitter to complain that his Sh30 million Range Rover Vogue, which is
specially customised, was not working as it was supposed to and asked for assistance.
Courtesy: www.nation.co.keTEUSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2014
RMA MOTORS DEFENDS TWITTER GAFFE
In response, the company said it was a public In this rejoinder, RMA stops short of calling Mr Thakrar a
holiday and he would have to wait until Tuesday hostile customer out to besmirch the dealership's
for assistance, and in the meantime he was good name. RMA also took issue with Mr Thakrar,
advised to take a "cold tusker". saying that none of its high-end clientele had ever
taken their issues with the motor dealer public.
In the same statement, RMA defended its use of
"cold tusker", saying that the company liked the "None of our other high profile customers have ever
reference, as Tusker is so Kenyan, and also in resorted to discussing their issues and slating us in the
deference to a blogger by the same name. public arena. Generally owners of these type of
vehicles (and we have many delighted such
"We used (the) reference to enjoying a "cold beer" customers) are private, discreet and very friendly.“
as there were many tweets from the @coldtusker
handle and we liked the reference to Tusker as it is Mr Sanjiv is also happy with the publicity Mr Thakrar has
so Kenyan, especially on a public holiday.“ garnered for them, terming this a bitter-sweet moment
for the company.
RMA's comments were taken to show the artless-
ness of corporates’ interaction with their clients on
social media.
Courtesy: www.nation.co.keLESSONS LEARNT
Clients do not expect you to be perfect; Which side of Twitter
Apologise they do expect you to fix things when they
go wrong. do you want to be on?
Listen and offer a solution. Don’t engage
Offer the customer in a war of words if you are
Solution not going to solve their need #TwitterThumbsUp
DO NOT Clients complain when their expectations
Blame the are NOT met. Do not blame them for
complaining via any channel.
#TwitterBigStick
Customer
DO NOT If you relax over a cold Tusker, not all
Assume people do!On a more cheerful note let us take a look
at how great social media care can be
when done right and it’s effects on your
bottom lineCASE STUDY: AIRTEL KENYA
Blu Flamingo Digital took over the
handling of the online customer care
for Airtel Kenya on July 2014.
The Airtel Facebook page on July 1st
2014 had 376,712 fans with 55
interactions per day.
The Airtel Twitter profile had 37,199
followers with 262 mentions per day.WHAT WAS OUR OBJECTIVE? To create a social care system that would differentiate Airtel Kenya not only from all other telecoms in Kenya, but from all other brands in Kenya. To be the number 1 social care team in Kenya. To introduce a new level of social care in Kenya & in the region.
HOW TO ACHIEVE THIS? By being relatable, human and approachable. We wanted to create a forum where existing and potential customers could not only get their queries answered, but engage with the brand on a personal level. Personal interaction and emotion = loyalty to the brand. So we went on the hunt for 2 loveable and compassionate personalities.
JAMO
Jamo is a young guy, 25 years old.
He is a very social person who loves
having fun.
Jamo is a football enthusiast, a music
lover and aspires to own a Subaru.CARO
Caro is fresh out of campus and is very
chatty.
She’s always in the know of everything; be
it celebrity gossip or upcoming events… she
knows it all.
She loves shopping and cannot go a week
without having chocolate.WHERE ARE WE NOW?
PERFORMANCE TRACKER The Airtel Facebook page currently has 618,959 fans with 2,500 interactions per day. The Airtel Twitter profile currently has 167,000 followers with 1,200 mentions per day
SOCIALLY DEVOTED Airtel Kenya has been on the socially devoted brands list every single quarter from Q2 2014
AFRICA BRAND INDEX Airtel Kenya was number 1 in Africa Brand Index for all categories in Kenya and ranked 4th overall across Africa April 2016
ABOUT JAMO & CARO Jamo and Caro are always at hand to help our customers with any query that they need help with. They both work around the clock to make sure all Airtel customers are happy and are served efficiently. Since Jamo and Caro joined Airtel Kenya, customers have responded positively to the personalization of their responses. They speak the customer’s language, literally. If a customer writes a query in Sheng’, Jamo and Caro reply in Sheng and the same for Kiswahili and English. They also ensure that they sort out all queries within 15 minutes.
PRE JAMO & CARO RESPONSES An example of responses from before Jamo and Caro.
JAMO & CARO RESPONSES
An example of responses from
Jamo and CaroENGAGEMENT POSTS Apart from responding to customers queries and feedback, Jamo and Caro also have engagement that have nothing to do with Airtel Kenya but more for creating a human relationship with the consumers. This is a chance for fans to relate to Jamo and Caro as ‘fellow humans’. Also, Jamo and Caro posts elicit healthy engagements rate. Engagement rate refers to the activity on our page and fan interactions to our post types.
- TAKE AWAY -
THE FIVE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER WHEN IT COMES TO SOCIAL MEDIA. 1. FIND YOUR VOICE It is Imperative as brands to understand that the ground has shifted beneath us, literally. A 35 year old today ‘feels’ relatively young but in the digital world (unless he or she is working in it) is light years away. Unless we are deliberate about it, we may have no clue on how to relate with an audience of 19-22 ‘snap-chattin’ year olds and these are the majority in the digital space in East Africa. As such it is necessary when putting together your online care strategy; whether you are a Telecom or a Bank a FMCG or a mom and pop shop that you start by identifying your ‘Voice.’ Will you be young, hip and trendy? Will you speak the local languages? Are you knowledgable/ dependable? Helpful and friendly, will your ‘thing’ be to always know your customers birthdays or to always observe certain national holidays in style? This pre work will help you determine your persona and help you be ‘consistent’ in your communication.
2. RESEARCH AND USE THE RIGHT TOOLS Without the right monitoring tools, online customer care can be an absolute nightmare, how to keep track of sentiment, how to compile reports, what KPI’s to measure - the list is endless. At Blu Flamingo our recommendation would be that you start by listing your objectives for engaging in the online customer care space and working accordingly. The three main areas you should consider: - Of course genuinely solving customers issues. - Educating the customer on your product and Increasing uptake - Gathering information on which of your products/services are capturing the market and which aren't and why. There are numerous tools you may consider looking into, that may help: Examples are Zoho and Hootsuite or Adobe. At Blu Flamingo we have built proprietary in-house tools that suit clients very specific needs.
3. TRAIN YOUR TEAM CONSISTENTLY The life expectancy of digital strategies and ideas is shockingly short, this means you will need to train your team at least quarterly on staying abreast with ideas, platforms, content and trends. The reason this is essential is because the online world’s biggest advantage is also it’s biggest Dis-advantage everything is out in the open’ Therefore staying up to date and consistently checking in on your teams knowledge levels is a crucial element of success. When choosing a facilitator for your training be sure to draw specific and measurable goals of the differences you would like to see in your online care.
4. RECRUIT THE RIGHT TEAM
This may seem obvious but I cannot tell you the Good grasp of written and spoken language you
number of times we at Blu Flamingo have seen primarily communicate in is equally important.
this mistake being made.
A creative flair and knowledge of social media will stand
At interviews the interviewer asks for social media you in good stead for when your customer service
followers as the main criterion for judging a needs to go the extra mile and then be used as a
candidate! marketing campaign!
Now, it is obviously necessary that one be an avid It is then essential to train this team extensively on your
or even fair user of social media if they are to work product- even better if they already consume your
with a social care team, but this is a skill you can product.
generally train for. It is better to choose Any photography/blogging and or graphics skills are
candidates with a passion for communication also an added advantage to look out for.
and a passion for people.5. INTEGRATE SEAMLESSLY WITH MARKETING
As an agency that started out exclusively doing It is for this reason that we ensure that our customer
marketing and that has also moved into the CX care teams are also creatively empowered to
space, one of our edges is our knowledge of contribute to the marketing objectives of the
marketing. company as well.
We do not consider the gap between customer care But primarily the purpose is always to provide value
and marketing and this is mainly because we feel whether this is through educating you about a
that successful and efficient customer care, markets product, fixing the product to provide a better
the brand - the trick is to make sure marketing experience, or sharing a fun video with you- all these
campaigns align with customers needs. are part of the experience a brand gives you and thus
the customer doesn't care if it’s in the marketing or
Who knows their needs better than the team that customer care department!
interacts with them daily? A team that has built a
relationship with them and is there to serve and be
on their side (the customers).www.bluflamingo.digital
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