Entrepreneurship and customer experience in the age of AI

As the world remains engaged in the buzzword of the day, artificial intelligence (AI), we continue to explore opportunities for African entrepreneurs to leverage it in their business by enhancing efficiency, effectiveness, and efficacy to deliver a continuous last experience for customers better.

In engaging in this subject matter, we understand that this is a moving target which attracts mixed feelings from a broad spectrum of entrepreneurs.

Yet, it is an inescapable future that has arrived unexpectedly, calling upon a swift response towards calibrating businesses to harness the unlimited opportunities towards better-serving customers.

If African entrepreneurs are to be deliberate and appreciate the strategic importance of the customer experience in both thinking and practice, which has grown to be the differentiator so as to be a monopoly in any industry of choice.

Businesses will create a competitive advantage that is very difficult to imitate through providing what the customers really desire for their maximum satisfaction.

Though this is the strategic reality, a few crop of our entrepreneurs are yet to pivot on this technological dividend that can reposition their companies as an oiled machinery that is rooted towards competitiveness and seamless delivery of an experience to the customers.

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The essence of building an exceptional customer experience is not a short-term process, which can be achieved overnight.

It is a structured and strategic approach, which requires the business to operate as oiled machinery responding to the customer needs better than any competing forces.

This is where the AI comes in towards automating systems and processes to allow for consistence and predictability, though this should be done with the human interface as AI is still developing and at times prone to hallucinations that can compromise the much yearned for experience.

There are generally four basic hygiene factors that must be deliberately attended to before the organisation can start implementing the customer experience approaches that are integrated with AI in serving the customer and/or its stakeholders.

Companies and institutions around the world are finding it a daunting task to operate as an oiled or integrated unit.

The work culture in the bulk of the organisations is still much built around the functional silos.

With such a compartmentalised approach, building a customer experience will be a pipedream!

Yet with the development of AI there is an opportunity to better harmonise the cross functions through systems that allow for information sharing and harmonised processes in serving the customer from within.

It must increasingly become difficult for the external stakeholders to locate the compartments as they are cohesive in serving the same.

This includes AI systems in core-creating services internally that are integrated with the customers co-creating their services and providing feedback to the company.

Intertwined to the above challenge is the lack of structured internal education programmes aimed at delivering customer experience and how AI can upscale efficiency, effectiveness and efficacy through customises services.

 In most of the cases, the bulk of companies think they know what customer experience is all about, yet they share generalisations on the subject matter, which leads to the employees delivering a confusing experience to the customers.

The bulk of the businesses we have worked with on designing a customer experience framework, have proven to be overly complicated in their processes and culture, which leads to the same complexity being transferred to the customer.

If the strategy is designed well, leveraging on AI can lead to the companies simplifying their value proposition and processes. This calls for the businesses to be wired in a way that makes it easy for them to see things from the customer’s perspective.

Businesses that are geared for delivering an exceptional experience are focused on the long-term strategy.

This requires building the dimensional customer centric long-term strategy, which by its nature, requires patience to start measuring the results. Delivering an exceptional customer experience will not happen in the short-run. 

Having noted the above hygiene factors, which when addressed will create a conducive environment on which building a customer experience strategy will be established, it is equally critical to note that the bulk of the companies are unaware on the type of experience that they want to create.

This leads to the last three categories of experiences that define the customer experience notably:

The bulk of the companies as we know them today fall in this category that deliver sporadic experiences.

The customer is never sure at any given time of what type of experience to expect when they engage the company.

Surprisingly, the companies focus on employees doing a “lot of stuff” in tasks and products, rather than taking a customer perspective in measuring their impact. In such companies you find “very busy people” but of little impact in delivering value to the customer. With utilisation of AI in the HR, Marketing, R&D, Product and Service supply, there is streamlining of consistency and predictability.

When the company appreciates the essence of delivering the experience to customers, but doing so on a short-term basis, they start appreciating the necessity of giving employees space to think of customers in everything they do and fix problems with speed when they appear.

Cross-functional teams start sharing departmental information from a shared vision perspective. In this situation, AI provides opportunities for upscaling the experiential dividend to the customer.

This is the ultimate approach towards delivering an exceptional customer experience.

The companies in this category are few. This is because they recognise everything they do differentiates them from competing forces.

Everyone in the business has the ability to think and act in the interest of the customer!

When such evolution happens, that’s when you see a company like Apple that has created great brands has people sleeping in the cold, freezing in the queues all night just to be the first to buy its new and innovative offerings when the company opens its doors after product launch.

However, we must realise that there is need for the company to come up with a strategic intent toward creating, dispensing and sustaining a lasting customer experience that can be a source of competitive and comparative advantage.

There is no magic of delegating experience delivery to AI without a structure approach which AI is supposed to accelerate.

Till then think of the strategic drive that your specific business can take now and going forward infusing some of the aforementioned.

Also realising how you can create barriers to entries for any other competitor after maximising customer experience that is anchored on AI for all functions rather than marketing only.

Thrive and structure a learning organisation that supports every member with the potential to bring in excellent customer experience be part of the strategic vision.

It is a fact that AI is here to stay so configure for long-term through training, talent management, succession planning and continuous innovation. The sky is the limit!!!

•  Dr Farai Chigora is a businessman and academic. He is a senior lecturer at the Africa University’s College of Business, Peace, Leadership and Governance. Also a global business modelling practitioner. His doctoral research focused on Business Administration (destination marketing and branding major, Ukzn, SA). He is into agribusiness and consults for many companies in Zimbabwe and Africa. He writes in his personal capacity and can be contacted for feedback and business at fariechigora@gmail.com, www.fachip.co.zw, WhatsApp mobile: +263772886871.
• Dr Tabani Moyo is an extra-ordinary researcher with the University of North West, South Africa’s Social Transformation School. His holds a doctorate in Business Administration (Research focus on new media and corporate reputation management, UKZN),  chartered marketer, fellow CIM, communications and reputation management expert based in Harare. He can be contacted at moyojz@gmail.com @TabaniMoyo (X)