For Brands Not Concerned About Customer Experience; It is the New Competitive Advantage

For Brands Not Concerned About Customer Experience; It is the New Competitive Advantage

The customer is always right and as silly as this saying is, it is the truest thing a business can ever adhere to. Interestingly, in Ghana, the voice of the brand is what they listen to.

The beauty of brands like Amazon, Apple, and Google among other global giants making bold decisions and pushing the frontier of the human experience is based on one thing and that is understanding the customer’s concern.

In the early years of Amazon, Jeff Bezos (CEO and Founder, soon to be the world’s richest man) said to the understanding of the company he was building by stating, “We don’t make money when we sell things, we make money when we help customers make purchase decisions.” For more than two decades, the company that has grown to become the world’s largest everything store has been guided by the thinking that superior experience is paramount to retaining customers.

However, the opposite is the norm in Ghana. The frontline staff of corporate juggernauts makes it a point to disrespect, work at their own pace and answer to no one when questions come up. Brands like ECG, Ghana Water and Melcom are on the list of ‘like-it-or-not-you-can’t-do-without-us-so-you-will-be-back’. They find themselves in a spot that has them exercising a bit of monopoly due to either state interventions or little competition and therefore feel ordained to do Ghanaians a favor.

As more and more brands elsewhere are finding interesting ways to phase out practices that make them second to competition, Ghanaians are subjected to these idiosyncratic tendencies with pride. With the world inching ever closer together thanks to the power of the internet, we find ourselves with a local champion mentality in a global playing field.

In other parts of the world where thanks to technology, customers expect service within 5 minutes, in Ghana, the customer only expects service as and when it will be available although they are paying for the service. “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground” is something the Ghanaian service provider doesn’t understand and has clearly over the years failed to make work for them. While this might sound like a dig at the big and mighty, the kenkey seller is as guilty as the guy trying to sell on Instagram and next kiosk, let’s not even go there.

This battleground fun as it may sound doesn’t come easy and requires a number of audacious tasks that go beyond the everyday-business-as-usual. Service providers need to start thinking of how to understand the customer since it is the surest way for a repurchase or return over and over again. Placing value on the needs of the customer puts their demand into perspective and allows the brand to react accordingly.

With social media being our second lives, brands need to understand the power of viral; be it good or bad, there is a spot the brand should look into avoiding. Hard as it may be for brands to evolve with the ever-changing technology, it can engage with customers and react to situations to be seen as friendly, warm and humane at least once in a while. A smile can take you places if you only care enough to make an effort.

By Abdullah Yusif Mahmud for CustomerDiscuss.Com

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