Telecom
#AfriTECH2021: Key takeaways from Zoho’s workshop on Driving Business Growth through CX
For organizations large and small, the year 2020 was the longest year ever. The quick lesson is the urgent need to reorient the workforce to a new way of working to ensure uninterrupted delivery of exceptional CX (customer experience). It came swiftly with playbooks being written and rewritten depending on what leaders were learning from government authorities, medical professionals, and from their own employees.
Andrew Bourne, Regional Manager – Zoho Corp
Thus, CX innovation is now more than merely a topic for conferences; it is a necessity for survival for people-centric organizations.
And this newfound need means that many customer experience trends are very quickly developing and coming to fruition, helping shape the future.
This is the crux of a workshop conducted by Andrew Bourne, Regional Manager – Africa at Zoho Corp. during Africa Tech Alliance Forum (#AfriTECH2021), organised by TechEconomy.ng in Lagos on Wednesday, 13th, October 2021.
He said that the ‘Generation C’, usually referred to as ‘The Connected Society’, expects great customer service; through interactive customer platforms offered on mobile devices as well as efficient and consistent service delivery that will be available 24/7.
These, he said, are all forms of an effective customer experience. Concerning what the future customers expect, Andrew told the Workshop participants that it has become imperative for businesses to carry out research on ‘what’ their future customers will expect.
The Zoho Regional Manager referenced a Forbes report, which reads: “Millennials currently hold the largest purchasing power, but Gen-Z is close behind. The group, which was born between 1996 and 2010, already holds $44 billion buying power ($600 billion when considering their influence on their parents’ spending) and will hit the workforce and become powerful consumers in the next few years. In the next year, they will account for 40% of all U.S. consumers. To succeed, companies need to know how to tailor a great consumer experience for Gen-Z”.
To satisfy customers who fall within Gen-Z, Andrew said, “Businesses should consider: mobile-first as Gen-Z demands quick access on the go; Personalised service – Gen-Z wants a real customer relationship; Video – Gen-Z responds well to visual content, especially videos; Trust – Gen-Z cares about trust and authenticity; and Efficiency, implying that Gen-Z have an average attention span of about about 8 seconds”.
Buttressing his point using a PwC report in 2018, Andrew said that if you give customers a great experience they will in turn buy more, be more loyal and share the experience with their friends; in other words, they will give a great testimonial and/or a review.
CX vs CS
The Zoho Regional Manager said that CX is majorly about customer relationships; adding that CS – Customer Service is reactive while CX is proactive and continuous. Therefore, if CS is expected, CX is how you exceed customer expectations. To do this effectively and efficiently, you would need a CRM – Customer Relationship Management system. “To lead in CX, organisations cannot compromise digitisations such as Online Forms, Customer Portals, Digital Signatures, Website Live Chat and Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistants like Live Chatbots, etc.”
Andrew also demonstrated how to drive customer loyalty through a CRM system. “A ‘Repeat Customer’ comes back because you gave them a great first-time experience; The ‘Loyal Customer’ follows you because of continued great experience and continuous improvement of the CX and the ‘Promoting Customer’ gives your company a boost by promoting you to others based on the experience and will continue if their loyalty is acknowledged and shown appreciation,” he said. Moreover, new customers get introduced to the company through a ‘promoting’ customer which could be triggered by word of mouth, social media recommendations or a customer testimonial.
The workshop drew rapt attention from both government and private sector operators who strongly shared the view that COVID-19 has overwhelmed businesses around the globe, encouraging customer teams to rethink what customer care actually means.
Zoho is well-known for its CRM solution as well as its other SaaS offerings for business management. Zoho CRM is a cloud-based, integrated customer relationship management platform that caters to the needs of businesses and industries of all sizes and types. Be it multi-channel communication, taking care of multiple tasks, predictive analytics or in-depth CRM insights, Zoho CRM offers a host of features that can supercharge a business’ CRM decisions and elevate its CX delivery.
Including its CRM solution, Zoho has 50+ apps in nearly every major business category, including sales, marketing, customer support, accounting and back-office operations, and an array of productivity and collaboration tools.
More than 70 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho every day to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. Zoho is privately held and profitable with more than 10,000 employees.
Telecommunication companies have threatened to withdraw their Unstructured Supplementary Services Data (USSD), services from banks over what they called misinformation.
MTN Nigeria, Airtel, Globacom and 9Mobile- the telcos disclosed that the banks’ notice to their customers on the new billing system and airtime deductions for USSD services was misleading.
Also, Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) also denied that the directive was from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
USSD is done via shortcodes on mobile phones and allows bank customers to make transactions in places with limited or no internet service.
Recall that banks earlier this week claimed that NCC has directed them to begin charging them from their airtime rather than from customers’ accounts.
The notice from the banks read in part: “In line with the directive of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), please be informed that effective June 3, 2025, charges for USSD banking services will no longer be deducted from your bank account.
“Going forward, these charges will be deducted directly from your mobile airtime balance in accordance with the NCC’s End-User Billing (EUB) model.
“Under this new billing structure, each USSD session will attract a charge of ?6.98 per 120 seconds, which will be billed by your mobile network operator.
“You will receive a consent prompt at the start of each session, and airtime will only be deducted upon your confirmation and availability of the bank to fulfil this service.
“If you do not wish to continue using USSD banking under this new model, you may choose to discontinue use of the USSD channel.”
Reacting, ALTON, umbrella body of telecom operators in Nigeria, said the banks’ notice is a gross misinformation deliberately hatched to suit their selfish interests.
Hence they threatened to withdraw network support to the banks’ USSD services.
Engr Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of ALTON told Vanguard: ” I don’t understand why the banks are twisting agreements and distorting information just to favour their selfish interests. In the first place, the information wasn’t a directive from the NCC but a joint regulatory agreement between the NCC and the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN witnessed by the telcos and the banks. The agreement was that if the banks finally cleared all USSD debts owed to the telcos by June 2, 2025, they are free to migrate to the end-user billing method, so long as the model of migration is transparent and agreed upon by the telcos.
“The reason for that clause was because the telcos insisted that the process of migration is such that will not allow a customer to be billed twice; in other words, that a subscriber would not have his airtime deducted and also have his or her money deducted for same services from his or her bank account.
” As we speak, some of the banks have cleared their debts, but the majority are yet to do so. So, even if all the modalities of migrating to end-user billing have been perfectly carried out, the implementation cannot even begin because the banks are yet to clear the USSD debt owed to the telcos.
“Our position now is that if that is the way the banks want to treat the agreement, we may withdraw support for their USSD services. It is not a must-have. They can do without it. But, they should clear the debts as agreed,” he added.
MTN Nigeria has announced plans to embark on a massive capital expenditure (CAPEX) drive in 2025, committing nearly N900 billion to significantly enhance network service quality across Nigeria.
Dr. Karl Toriola, CEO, MTN Nigeria,
The substantial investment, more than double the combined CAPEX of approximately N440 billion spent in 2023 and 2024, underscored MTN’s aggressive strategy to address persistent service quality issues and meet growing customer and regulatory expectations.
Dr. Karl Toriola, CEO, MTN Nigeria, detailed this unprecedented financial commitment during a recent interview on Arise TV, emphasizing that improving service quality is the company’s paramount message for the year.
He highlighted a clear understanding and expectation from both the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and security agencies for improved network quality.
A primary focus of this increased CAPEX will be on putting additional capacity in a city like Lagos, particularly in Abuja, where you have a lot of buildings coming up, you need additional sites because there are coverage issues.
Beyond these critical urban centers, the investment aims to bolster network resilience and ensure power stability for its infrastructure nationwide.
This includes proactively addressing site outages by ensuring timely payment for operational necessities such as diesel for generators, a persistent challenge in the Nigerian operating environment.
Toriola outlined a comprehensive upgrade process, which involves placing orders formally, opening letters of credit, and then the equipment gets shipped in and installed.
He added that MTN will be acquiring new sites and laying fiber to the base station to create better stability” where necessary.
While the immediate CAPEX is geared towards improving existing service quality and capacity, this investment aligns with MTN’s broader goals of enhancing financial inclusion in underserved rural areas, suggesting a long-term vision for network expansion and service improvement that extends beyond metropolitan areas.
Subscribers can anticipate tangible improvements in service quality, with a significant improvement in quality of service expected by the end of the second quarter or early in the third quarter of 2025, according to Toriola.
“This year is all going to be about capital expenditure on an aggressive basis to fix quality of service issues (and) meet both the regulators’ and the public’s expectations,” he affirmed, reiterating MTN’s steadfast focus on customer experience through substantial capital investment.
Telecom regulators and industry leaders from across the Middle East and Africa gathered in Cairo last week to chart a data-driven future for the region.
In a region where digital transformation is accelerating at unprecedented speed, connectivity intelligence firm, Ookla and Egypt’s National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) joined forces to organise the Telecommunications Regulatory Summit
Themed ‘Harnessing Data and Technology for Superior QoS’, the summit focused on how data, particularly crowdsourced insights, can transform regulatory strategies across the region.
The summit attracted stakeholders from over 30 countries, including delegates from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and World Broadband Association (WBBA), who engaged in high-level discussions on optimising network performance and accelerating digital inclusion.
Karim Yaici, lead industry analyst for the Middle East and Africa at Ookla, said the event set the tone for the growing value of data-driven decision-making.
“Access to and the use of crowdsourced data contribute to making more informed decisions, fostering transparency and ensuring that citizens in the MEA region benefit from high-quality, accessible and affordable connectivity,” he said.
The experts underlined that crowdsourced data is becoming a critical complement to traditional regulatory methods.
They agreed that it helps identify service gaps, prioritise infrastructure investments, and drive innovation.
With broadband speeds now closely tied to GDP growth and productivity, accurate performance data is seen as key to socio-economic advancement.
Dr. Hossam Abdel-Mawla, vice-president of technical affairs and quality of service at NTRA, stressed that the summit was pivotal in fostering regional collaboration.
“By actively sharing best practices and exploring innovative data-driven strategies, we are shaping a future where telecom regulations ensure digital inclusion and economic growth across the region,” he said.
In a key session, Ahmed Nabawy, director of client services at Ookla, presented findings on 5G performance in Egypt and Tunisia.
He demonstrated how Ookla’s unified data platform, powered by AI, enables operators to analyse 5G-capable device density and prioritise high-impact rollout areas.
The summit also explored the shift from conventional network quality metrics to more user-centric Quality of Experience models. These advanced analytics tools promise to enhance transparency, improve accountability, and ultimately deliver better connectivity experiences for all.
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