Customer engagement evangelists at Agilitude, a Salesforce reseller and consulting partner, aim to exploit what they say is growing interest in customer experience management in Africa, especially in East Africa.

There is a ground swell of understanding that to compete and win in today's market, organisations will have to focus on the customer, the journey they have with an organisation and the ability to provide value rather than transactional interactions says Quinton Pienaar, chief executive officer of Agilitude.

The company established a presence in South Africa in 2013 and has recently announced the opening of an office in Kenya, officially signalling the beginning of its strategy to target the East Africa region.

"Kenya is a vibrant economy and underrepresented in terms of cloud and customer experience service providers. It is also strategic in that it can more easily service the region," says Pienaar.

Tejpal Bedi, managing director of Agilitude East Africa says that Kenya has many innovative businesses and a strong ICT sector: "There is a drive for a richer customer engagement and finding efficiencies across the business. Local companies are growing at a tremendous pace however their IT systems have not kept up with the growth."

While there are many technologies that offer point solutions in the customer support/ engagement arena, there are very few that offer an end-to-end omni-channel platform, the company adds.

Mobility is another key growth force within East Africa. Pienaar says that the region is burgeoning with the use of social media and apps: "Given that Salesforce was built for mobile first, there is tremendous opportunity."

He says that similar to South Africa, Kenya needs basic sales force automation, customer service, contact centre and marketing automation. "More importantly, there is a desire to move from customer management to customer engagement, allowing companies to differentiate via experience rather than product and price."

Being everywhere, all the time

Pienaar is a strong believer in the omni-channel approach and believes it is one of the best ways to ensure that the customer is placed at the centre of an organisation's engagement strategy.

"Internationally, omni-channels are becoming more prevalent as experts predict that retailers will die without them within the next decade. This bold statement makes this concept a vital one to understand and adopt," he says.

According to Agilitude part of understanding an omni-channel is to accept that it is greater than just the business or a consumer, that to be omniscient "you need to perceive and understand all things. An ideal Omni-channel should allow a customer to perceive everything and allow them to own their data and experience, then give them the ability to use it to guide creation and context of every future experience," Pienaar adds.

The company points to a recent study by Deloitte which indicates that consumers would not only rather find information themselves on their smartphones to assist their shopping experience (i.e. looking up prices, item availability, product information, in-store item location), but would also prefer to use unmanned in-store devices such as kiosks and digital display.

The brands that can best interpret omni-channel data and understand all customers will succeed: "It's all in the data and the smart use thereof," says Pienaar. "If a retailer is going to apply an omni-channel approach, they need to collect as much data as they can from any consumer that engages with their brand. The challenge then is to use this data and manipulate it appropriately. Being able to triangulate will only come later and will be driven by cloud computing."

Local buy-in

Pienaar and his team have devised a two-pronged go-to-market strategy for Kenya which is to concentrate on industries and sectors where the company has enjoyed a successful track record, and then also focus on industries where there is a growing requirement for customer experience management and on companies who are struggling to differentiate their products and services.

The plan is to focus on salesforce.com and its associated ecosystem as its platform and concentrate on the financial services, telecommunications, high-tech and retail industry sectors.

When it comes to local business buy-in and adoption of technologies, the company believes that strategies must start with strong leadership and buy-in.

Pienaar explains that a leadership team that is focused on customer engagement and believes their customer base is a strategic asset represents the cornerstone of a successful program.

"Understanding your customer persona, engagement, touch-points and journey will allow you to ready the organisation for a customer experience mindset and successful technology implementation," he says.

The goal for Agilitude is to help introduce an uninterrupted experience across brands, across formats and devices that are completely tailored. "This does not exist and this new way of thinking and marketing needs to be addressed if a customer engagement strategy is going to be successful into the future," says Pienaar.

"If an omni-channel approach is adopted, a new dimension of customer engagement and decisions will be born and it will touch on all aspects from price to place."