Following the rise in the electronic commercial activities in Nigeria and its contributions to the growth of the economy, stakeholders have long been agitating for policies and regulatory frameworks that can aid orderly conduct of electronic transactions in a manner that is fair especially to the customers.

It was against this background that the Electronic Transaction Bill was presented to the last National Assembly.

The bill is currently raising concerns among e-commerce businesses who anxiously await its passage into an Act.

However, reacting to this development, Oluwatayo Alofun, media officer of Supermart.ng, has said that while the bill is a welcome development that will be instrumental in bringing order to e-commerce in Nigeria, there is need for e-commerce firms to look beyond seeing regulations as the compelling factor for rendering quality services to consumers.

Citing the example of Supermart.ng, he said, “at Supermart.ng, “We already promised our customers to deliver groceries to them in as early as three hours of order.

“We understand that a customer’s time is very precious to him so we make it a goal to deliver on that promise against any logistics challenge.

“This has not being easy but we owe it to make life easier for households in Lagos by saving them three to six hours through our delivery system”.

The Electronic Transaction Bill is expected to regulate the e-commerce sector and protect consumers.

To this end, some of the key issues highlighted in the bill are non-disclosure of full information on products and services, deceptive advertisement, improper description of products, delivery of defective products, poor informal dispute settlement procedures, double payments and poor customer service.

Speaking on highlights of the bill, Alofun said “when you look at the key issues highlighted in the bill, they all go down to conscious efforts on our part as e-commerce business operators to put our customers interest first in our dealing, this is what Supermart.ng has been doing since inception-putting customers first. Take customer service as an instance, when we employ delivery men, they are professionally trained to be able to talk to customers, they are equipped with smart phones to be able to provide up to date information to customers and as well as update the Supermart.ng system. We leave nothing to chance in our customer service process which makes it almost impossible for us to fail on our promises”

Alofun however expressed hope in the possibility of the Bill to improve the state of e-commerce business in Nigeria and to boost consumer’s confidence in the electronic transaction system. He therefore urges the executive arm of the government to consider the Bill for assent into an Act.

Oracle Sparks CRM Evolution with New Cloud Solutions

By peter ugwu

Oracle has unveiled significant new functionality within Oracle Service Cloud and Oracle Social Cloud that helps organizations deliver better customer experience and drive more informed business decisions.

The new social customer service capabilities enable brands to increase social engagement and business insights via a new community self-service solution, enhanced social service and incident routing, and extended social listening and analytics capabilities to private data sources.

Today more than one in three customers prefer to contact brands through social channels rather than by phone or email (Nielsen), and the distinction between social and traditional channels is eroding.

To deliver the best possible customer experience across this expanding range of traditional and digital channels, customer care organizations need to provide a positive and unified experience where and when customers want, whether they are on Twitter, Facebook, customer communities or other social networks.

Through a unified and modern customer experience across channels, organizations establish a competitive advantage.

The latest release of Oracle Service Cloud includes Community Self-Service, a new approach to web self service that brings community functionality directly into the core multi-channel web experience.

Oracle Service Cloud now enables organizations to deliver a seamless experience between web service and community interactions, leveraging the power of customer knowledge to improve service operations.

This helps organizations streamline the customer journey and lets customers quickly find an answer, while also driving efficiencies by reducing the overall requests to the contact center.

Gartner’s research indicates that investment in Peer-to-Peer Communities drives support costs down and boosts profits.

In fact, in a December 2014 research note, nine CRM Projects to Do Right Now for Customer Service, “Gartner clients who are successful in this space are still seeing on average a 20% reduction in the creation of support tickets following the introduction of peer-to-peer communities,” wrote, Michael Maoz, vice president, Distinguished Analyst, Gartner, “Clients are seeing other business benefits as well. By enabling community-based support, clients have been able to recognize new sales opportunities and increase existing customer satisfaction, resulting in increased revenue in several of these cases.”

Oracle is also introducing new workflow and automation capabilities between Oracle Social Cloud and Oracle Service Cloud that empower organizations to leverage the power of social insights and engagements.

Business users can now attach contextual attributes and notes generated from posts or incidents identified by Oracle Social Cloud directly to the Oracle Service Cloud. By providing more customer information and context, organizations can improve service quality, drive efficiencies and improve resolution time as social posts are shared with the appropriate agents quickly.

The improved connectivity between Oracle Social Cloud and Oracle Service Cloud includes extended social listening and analytics to enterprise private-data sources such as the new Community Self-Service capability, survey data, chat and call logs.

Organizations can now listen and analyze unstructured data and gain insights with terms, themes, sentiment and customer metrics, and can view private and public data side by side in the Oracle Social Cloud Relationship Management dashboard.

“In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, understanding the voice of the customer is essential to providing exceptional experiences, whether on public social networks, across communities, or within high-touch contact centers,” said David Vap, group vice president, product development, Oracle. “The updates to the Oracle Service Cloud and Oracle Social Cloud help businesses listen, identify and track social conversations, enabling them to quickly and efficiently respond to customers looking for answers, which helps foster a loyal group of brand ambassadors.”

The latest enhancements to Oracle Social Cloud and Oracle Service Cloud extend Oracle’s commitment to help organizations leverage social channels to enhance the customer experience and build on the recent introduction of Oracle’s Twitter-enriched social customer service solution.

For more information, attend Stephen Fioretti’s session Accelerating Success with Modern Service in the Cloud at 3:10 p.m. eastern in A204 on Tuesday, September 18 at CRM Evolution in New York and visit Booth 300.