Telecoms Chamber CEO urges businesses to ‘collaborate to compete’

Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Kenneth Ashigbey says businesses need to concentrate more on collaborations than competition as that will make it easier for them to deliver delightful customer experience.

According to Mr Ashigbey there is a paradigm shift raising the bar on customer service in recent times and the businesses that are able to delight their customers are the ones likely to survive this shift hence the need for collaboration.

“The time for collaboration is now the time to be able to pull various competitors together to be able to deliver that delightful customer experience is today. The businesses that are going to survive going forward are businesses that are going to be able to bring various people together. It’s the time to collaborate to compete rather than to compete just for the sake of competition,” he noted.

Speaking at the Vodafone Customer Experience Summit, Kenneth Ashigbey stated that digitization is speeding up the shift “turning customer experience into an urgent imperative” adding that the adoption of digital payments is “revolutionizing the way businesses deal with the complexity of digital payments”.

As such, unlike the past where customers unhappy with the services or products from a company had only a few people to complain to, the onset of digitization has given them the platform to share their frustrations with more people which ultimately collapse businesses.

He was however quick to add that satisfied customers can help promote businesses.

“This digital amplification effect does not only punish a company for poor service, it also works the other way round, it can lead to your benefit. Positive messages from delighted customers boost a company’s reputation for good service or excellent product,” he said.