Ghana’s newly developed online portal called, Kuzima, is expected to oversee poor customer care services provided by continent’s corporate service providers.
The portal, Kuzima.com, integrates with mobile phones allowing customers to review services as well as comment on experiences with African businesses including banks, telecom companies, government institutions and airline among other service providers.
Launched September last year, it enables consumers to shame brands that provide them with bad services and praise those that provide them with good services. It in addition eliminates use of suggestions boxes in naming and shaming corporate services.
“The suggestion boxes have also become ineffectual as it does not allow accountability and transparence,” said Ocansey.
The portal’s Kuzima Hall of Shame and Hall of Praise has categorised companies into different categories depending on the areas of operations including Banking, ICT , churches, government institutions and Insurance.
The app also provides a graphical view of the most shamed and praised service providers. Companies that have attended to reviews are ranked as either five-star for excellent services or nil for poor services.
The comments posted on Kuzima are open to the public online. Users review the companies by either logging in or posting on the comment space the portal provides.
Kuzima expects to make money through ad sales, creating Kuzima pages for corporate bodies, sale of detailed reports to corporate service providers, and the SMS commenting.
“The online service is free to use. SMS uploads however cost a little more than regular SMS rates. We sell SMS ads to make up for the cost,” Ocansey said.
Ocansey said they are coming up with Kuzima Apps for android, iOS, windows mobile and other mobile operating systems as well as java versions for java phones.
Poor customer service has characterized Africa’s top businesses. Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) global survey show that 84 percent of consumers consider customer care service as poor. The study also shows 81 percent of the customers consider blogging and online rating systems as essential for giving greater voice to consumers in reviewing company brands.
In East Africa, Rwanda Development Board (RDB) reportindicated Rwanda loses about US$40 million each year from poor customer care services.
