Cape Town, August 8, 2018:  Africa’s customer experience leaders gathered in Cape Town last week for the 2 day Customer experience Management Africa Summit. The delegation of over 600 customer experience professionals discussed pressing issues such as generating a return on investment in cx, practical application of data and driving emotion to create exceptional experiences.  

South Africa’s customer experience professionals are slowly emerging as some of the best in the world, and the data is there to back this up.  

Sarina de Beer, Managing Director of Ask Afrika stated in her keynote “As mentioned right up-front it is a celebration year. Service levels are at its best ever…with satisfaction ratings of 91%, delight ratings of 54% and very low dissatisfaction scores of 5%. This is largely driven by technological advances and progress, with systems, and technological solutions, self help channels and chat bots in place to deliver bigger, better, faster.”  

Looking into how these results have been achieved, much of it can be contributed to the work customer experience professionals are doing in designing deliberate customer journeys. Diane Magers, CEO of the world’s largest and foremost association for CX professionals, the CXPA, elaborated; “Designing these deliberate customer experience is like building a bridge. Just like any team sport, it takes coordination and a clear understanding of the goals and it requires collaboration and contribution by all team members to ensure the bridge across the support structures is solid and consistent.  Building in silos or vacuums creates an inconsistent experience for our customers. Inconsistent experiences are one of the key factors commonly identified as a factor of dissatisfaction by many other organizations, particularly B2B, as a key opportunity to improve CX.” 

“The results presented by Ask Afrika were for me a great reward and justification for what we do, but great customer experience is a double-edged sword. The better you get, the higher the customers’ expectation and that baseline sets a new bar. You have to keep improving, keep evolving and stay moving when it comes to delivering exceptional customer experience. Finding and nurturing talent in the CX profession will be the next great challenge businesses face within in this industry” Juan Mouton, Portfolio Director for the Customer Experience Management Africa Summit.  

Grace Sikapokoo, the Chief Customer Office for AIG, South Africa spoke on this topic in both her keynote and as part of a panel discussion on customer centricity. The AIG CCO shared five steps to remain relevant and continually skilled; understand your organisation, understand you customers, understand customer experience management, understand technology and most importantly understand your purpose.  

The future for Customer Experience in South Africa is bright and there is much to be positive about, but the challenge will continue to grow harder, and the search for CX talent will be a driving competitive advantage for businesses serious about customer experience through 2018 and beyond.  

Follow @CEMAfricaSummit on Twitter and join the conversation using the #CEMSummit18 hash tag.

ABOUT CEM AFRICA CEM Africa is a meeting place for CX professionals and innovative CX solution providers. The show took place on the 1-2 August 2018 at the CTICC in Cape Town, where like-minded customer experience experts and the top CX solution providers gathered for an informative and educational summit with the common goal of improving customer experience across Africa. The event provides a platform for like-minded CX professionals to showcase their industry knowledge as well as solutions to better the customer’s perception of the brand.

ABOUT KINETIC Kinetic is an international business-to-business conference and exhibitions producer based in Cape Town. Our mission is to equip senior management executives with knowledge, market intelligence and viable commercial opportunities. Kinetic are leaders in providing business facilitation platforms throughout Africa.

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Released by:  KINETIC SA
Juan Mouton:  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Africa’s top customer experience experts are gathering Cape Town for the 7th annual Customer Experience Management Africa Summit, held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on the 1st and 2nd of August. The African leaders from companies such as AIG, MTN, Naspers, Old Mutual and Comair, will be joined by global customer experience experts such as Diane Magers the CEO of the CXPA (Customer Experience Professionals Association).

The Summit will be addressing three of the most pressing customer experience issues facing corporations in Africa; driving customer emotions, establishing a return on investment from customer experience and putting insights from data to practical use.

Diane Magers will open the Summit with a keynote on guiding executives who are looking for a financial return on investment. Magers, CEO of the world’s largest CX association will show how value creation requires CX professionals to change their language and their value story.

Mike Joubert, a South African marketing rainmaker and Sean Drummond, screenwriter for the acclaimed Five Fingers for Marseilles will deliver a one hour workshop on the art of storytelling and how brands can use it to create emotional relevance within their customer journeys.

Clint Payne from Multichoice will be delivering a case study on how the right data and measurement tools can inform service design. This Multichoice experience team has won multiple CX awards around the world, including three of the five awards at last year’s African Customer Experience Awards.

“This Summit will showcase a powerful combination of customer experience leaders sharing best practice and debating on the future of the African customer experience. Whilst this is an African gathering, customer experience has no boarders and expectations are set on a global level. The content we have lined up is most certainly at the level of what is happening in Europe and the United States. What is discussed this week will resonate across the African consumer landscape over the next 12 months. It is a very exciting event to be a part of, the change initiated from the summit is lightning fast and a testament to how seriously these companies take customer experience” states Juan Mouton, Portfolio Director for the summit.

Follow @CEMAfricaSummit on Twitter and join the conversation using the #CEMSummit18 hash tag.

ABOUT CEM AFRICA
CEM Africa is a meeting place for CX professionals and innovative CX solution providers. The show takes place on the 1-2 August 2018 at the CTICC in Cape Town, where like-minded customer experience experts and the top CX solution providers gather for an informative and educational summit with the common goal of improving customer experience across Africa. The event will provide a platform for like-minded CX professionals to showcase their industry knowledge as well as solutions to better the customer’s perception of the brand. 

ABOUT KINETIC
Kinetic is an international business-to-business conference and exhibitions producer based in Cape Town. Our mission is to equip senior management executives with knowledge, market intelligence and viable commercial opportunities. Kinetic are leaders in providing business facilitation platforms throughout Africa.