Firms use AI to boost customer experience

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bound to not only shape mankind’s future, but also businesses.

At some point, almost everything that takes human effort to accomplish is set to be automated.

The AI spell will be felt right from the procurement of goods and their payment up to identifying a target market and making a sale.

Here at home, Ajua, an integrated customer experience company for businesses, has just signed an agreement with tech giant Facebook to automate commercial interactions and customer support for businesses through WhatsApp.

This means that customers of businesses which have acquired Janja, Ajua’s platform which enables automated customer support, borderless banking, and payments across apps and social media platforms, will have active interactions, and can carry out transactions with the businesses on WhatsApp.

Janja is an award winning AI and natural language engine that is created to enable businesses get more sales, speed up customer query resolutions and deliver automated services to your clients.

As customers type their feelings or place their orders on WhatsApp, and probably the business owner is on other errands, Janja responds to queries and takes stock of the customers’ demands.

This partnership is one of two in Africa of companies that are directly partnered and integrated with Facebook. Facebook is currently facilitating the growth of economies in Africa through WhatsApp.

This has created a growing need for social media-based customer support to drive a holistic shopping experience.

The Ajua platform aims to change how people shop and also how businesses engage with their customers by making the process, in the words of Ajua, “quick, easy and painless.”

“Our platforms will give businesses across Africa an accessible set of tools that will help them increase their market reach, receive secure payments on mass reach platforms like WhatsApp and automate customer issue resolution and feedback collection,” said Teddy Ogallo, VP of Product, Merchant services for Ajua.

“Businesses across Ajua’s African markets will now be able to access WhatsApp business application programming interface ( API) in minutes, upload their products, knowledgebase of their services and start enjoying an enhanced interaction with their customers straight from their mobile phones or web devices without having to invest in cumbersome integrations or enterprise sales cycles.”

WhatsApp, with its ease of use and popularity, has become one of the preferable platforms for small businesses in Africa. Kenya has among the highest percentage of monthly WhatsApp users of any country in the world. According to the Global Web Index’s 2020 Social Media User Trends Report, 97 per cent of internet users in Kenya use WhatsApp every month. Nigeria had over 90 million social media users as of January 2021.