How firms can leverage on technology to improve customer’s satisfaction, sales by Ilias

Aliyu Ilias is the Director, Nigeria Customer Service Awards Limited and Author of Understanding Customer Experience in Africa. In this interview with Emeka Nwachukwu, the customer relationship expert reveals how firms and businesses could increase sales and profitability by leveraging on the available digital space. He further shared information about the Nigeria Customer Experience Management Conference scheduled to commence today in Lagos and why organisations should maximize the opportunities inherent in the two-day workshop. Excerpts

What are the main issues that have stunted achieving customers satisfaction in the country?

The main aim of any business is to satisfy the need and desires of her customers, which would guarantee they remain in business and improve sales. Hence, making the customer relations’ desk the heartbeat of any business operation.

Though great efforts have been made towards achieving this objective, but certain hurdles have stunted its accomplishment including poor attitude of work by staff, poor communication services, unreliable telecommunication system, lack of adequate training on staff and ultimately the lack of modern technology in the ease to customer’s satisfaction.

The world we are into today is the digital era where everything is been controlled by technology and artificial intelligence.

Hence, digital customers service delivery and satisfaction has become very important to any business that wants to thrive and remain in business.

How then do we move from the hurdles and embrace the trend?

You will agree with me that customer experience management service is a secret to profit making in businesses as well as a tool for business sustainability.

So we adopted the 2018 theme for the Nigeria Customer Experience Management Conference as unleashing the digital experience for customers.

This is apt with the fast rising of digit growth in the world that greatly affects businesses as there is the urgent need to look into the use of cutting-edge technology to deliver excellent customer experience and achieve organizational goals.

We must all leverage the current trends in customer service through the digital space to create impact and satisfy our customers.

It is worthy to note that Nigeria is losing billions of dollars daily to poor service delivery because the world has moved on, hence any body that wants to remain in business must be able to proffer new solutions to current issues of customers satisfaction.

People now prefer to shop online and buy things from Konga and Alibaba and in few years time its all going to get better for those who are ready and bad to those who are not interested in advancing with technology.

With the conference, what should be our expectations especially in offering solutions to service delivery issues?