Broadcasting
Modern Customer Engagement: Keeping up with Gen Y and Z
By Andrew Bourne, Regional Manager, Africa, Zoho Corp.
The term ‘customer engagement’ is arguably one of the biggest buzzwords in today’s business landscape. It’s so widely used that when many people hear the phrase, they interpret it as a checkbox item. It is, however, an ongoing crucial relationship between a company and its customers, which is determined by the customer’s preferences and behaviour.
Andrew Bourne, Regional Manager, Africa, Zoho Corp
Customer engagement entails actively engaging with an audience through messaging that interests, educates or helps them, as well as encouraging two-way communication with your business. In short, it’s about figuring out what the customer wants and giving it to them at the right time.
This may appear to be a simple and straightforward task. However, in today’s world, where the majority of a business’s customer base is composed of the digital-native ‘millennials and zoomers’, the consumer has little patience for complicated processes in the name of customer engagement. So what does this mean for you as a business, and how can you adapt to this new market reality and ensure that your engagement techniques are actually engaging?
Preparing for a mobile-led shift
Mobile use has surpassed laptop use, and today’s target audience is more likely to look something up on their phones or tablets than on a device.
According to the GSMA’s The Mobile Economy Sub-Saharan Africa report, the mobile market in Sub-Saharan Africa will reach several significant milestones over the next five years: including half a billion mobile subscribers in 2021, 1 billion mobile connections in 2024, and 50% subscriber penetration by 2025. Over the next five years, the number of smartphone connections in Sub-Saharan Africa will nearly double to reach 678 million by the end of 2025, representing a 65% adoption rate.
It is, therefore, no longer an option to provide a mobile-friendly website or customer support portals – it is now a requirement.
Catering to the ‘always-connected’ generation
Being accessible to current and potential customers is the most important aspect of customer interaction. This is particularly challenging in today’s setting, where time and geography are no longer important and the customer expects businesses to be reachable at all hours of the day and night.
While the advent of chatbots has eliminated the need for businesses to hire additional employees to cover multiple shifts, bringing developers onboard to build bots that can meet multiple requirements can end up being costly too. Instead, try thinking along the lines of using a sales engagement software that provides easy-to-use features like drag-and-drop chatbot builders.
Making AI chatbots more human
Though chatbots were invented to free up staff from mundane tasks so they can focus on the more complex ones, research shows that customers find it harder to get issues resolved by AI chatbots. The ideal solution is an AI-driven chatbot that can greet prospects or customers, respond to small talk, and even understand common questions, regardless of the tone or words used, and respond to them using a company’s internally available documented resources. If the customer chooses to speak with a human agent, the AI-powered chatbot will forward the conversation to the team member.
Personalising your messaging without over targeting
While personalisation is widely regarded as the pinnacle of customer engagement, it’s all too easy at the same time to cross the line between being helpful and being intrusive when dealing with a more privacy-conscious generation of customers. So make sure your conversation is relevant and provide timely information to your most valuable customers right when they need it, like an offer for help after a failed transaction, or when they’ve spent a long time trying to decide between two products.
Achieving business zen with a unified customer view
Many of us fall prey to ad fatigue and endless re-targeting. While it’s frustrating, it throws light on the fact that customer data is still jumbled, redundant, or even mismanaged chunks of information. Businesses should make sure that they use a CRM tool that gives a holistic view of customer data, and helps avoid any missteps in data management and customer communication.
A customer engagement strategy is critical to the success of any business. Customers who are actively engaged not only spend more money, but also become a company’s best brand advocate and recommend the business to their friends, colleagues, and family.
Broadcasting Organization of Nigeria (BON) has established six committees to help strengthen and modernize the country’s broadcasting industry.
The committees will focus on content creation, skills development, digital transformation, sustainability, policy and commercial opportunities
The initiative aims to support industry growth and improve collaboration between broadcasters, regulators and media experts
The official launch recently, was led by Tony Akiotu, president, BON and attended by media professionals, program directors, former journalists and heads of specialized media organizations.
The event brought together several prominent figures in Nigeria’s media industry, including veteran broadcaster and trainer Bimbo Oloyede, Tony Uyah of M4S TV, Kingsley Uranta of Channels Television, Ismael Sani of Platinum TV and Ibrahim Shehu of Trust TV.
Together, they are expected to help drive innovation and support the growth of Nigeria’s broadcasting sector.
According to Akiotu, the committees are intended both to help shape industry policy and to provide a forum for dialogue between BON and broadcasting experts.
Akiotu said the ad hoc committees were intended to strengthen BON’s work and ensure that the umbrella body for Nigeria’s broadcasters played a more direct and meaningful role in developing the country’s broadcasting sector.
The six committees reflect the sector’s main priorities. The first focuses on collaboration and innovation to promote content creation.
The second is dedicated to training and talent development, while the third focuses on industry sustainability by improving the sector’s long-term financial viability.
A fourth committee will focus on digital transformation and work with the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) on regulatory issues.
The remaining two committees will oversee public policy advocacy and the development of sports and commercial rights to help broadcasters increase revenue and attract more investment. Together, the committees are expected to guide BON’s efforts to modernize and strengthen Nigeria’s broadcasting industry.
The committees, chaired by members of BON’s General Assembly and supported by the organization’s Secretariat, have an initial 12-month mandate that may be renewed if necessary.
They are required to submit a progress report within three months and implement approved recommendations within the following six months.
The arrangement is intended to ensure close oversight and the timely implementation of their work.
Akiotu also reminded committee members that Nigeria pioneered television broadcasting in Africa and urged them to carry out their work with greater effectiveness and efficiency.
Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) says it is investigating about 34 tertiary institutions over allegations that they failed to refund students whose tuition fees were paid twice under the Federal Government’s student loan scheme.
The Managing Director of NELFUND, Mr Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this during an interview on Arise Television.
Sawyerr said the agency had deployed a five-member investigative team, including operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and internal auditors, to examine the allegations.
According to him, the investigation was prompted by numerous complaints received from affected students.
“As of right now, there are 34 institutions that we are looking at closely with respect to this issue,” he said.
Sawyerr explained that the double payment issue arose because President Bola Tinubu directed that the student loan scheme commence in the middle of an academic session instead of at the beginning.
He said the decision compelled many students to pay their tuition fees to meet registration deadlines while awaiting approval of their loan applications.
“What happened is that a lot of schools got double payment; some from the students and some from us,” he said.
“The refund process is entirely out of our hands. It is the recipient of the double payments that is obliged to make refunds to the students.”
The NELFUND boss noted that many students had borrowed money from family members, friends and other sources to pay their tuition with the expectation of receiving refunds once the loans were disbursed.
He said while some institutions had promptly refunded affected students, others had failed to do so.
“Some have been very good at this. Others haven’t been so good at it,” Sawyerr said.
“I reserve judgement on the intentionality around it because, for some of them, they just didn’t have the process to make refunds.”
Sawyerr disclosed that NELFUND was exploring a tokenised payment system that would enable students to authorise tuition payments directly to their institutions, thereby reducing the likelihood of duplicate payments.
He said the agency deliberately chose not to disburse tuition loans directly to students to minimise the risk of fund diversion.
“Paying the funds to the students could really lead to the temptation for them to divert and do other things,” he said.
The managing director, however, acknowledged that NELFUND lacked the statutory powers to compel institutions to refund students or prosecute officials found culpable.
He added that many frustrated students had submitted complaints not only to NELFUND but also to anti-corruption agencies, including the EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).
Sawyerr also expressed concern over increases in tuition fees by some institutions following the introduction of the student loan scheme.
He said NELFUND had declined to pay institutions that increased their tuition fees beyond acceptable levels.
“Some schools, because they get paid easily, started to put up their fees. We refused, point blank, to pay institutions who had hiked their fees beyond a certain level,” he said.
He reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to investigating every reported irregularity and strengthening the implementation of the student loan programme through continuous monitoring and internal reviews.
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