Porsche seeks $235M in damages from Audi over diesel scandal

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Porsche seeks $235M in damages from Audi over diesel scandal

Volkswagen’s Porsche brand is seeking 200 million euros ($235 million) in damages from its luxury stablemate Audi over costs related to manipulated diesel engines, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported.

Porsche’s management delivered the claim in written form to counterparts at Audi, the newspaper said without citing its source.

Audi admitted in November 2015 that its 3.0 liter V6 diesel engines used in about 80,000 VW, Audi and Porsche models were fitted with an auxiliary device deemed illegal in the United States.

The German government earlier this year ordered a recall of Porsche’s Cayenne sport-utility vehicle (SUV) and prohibited registrations of the model’s diesel version, and said as late as June of this year that it had detected new cheating. And Porsche’s former R&D chief was recently arrested in the scandal.

Porsche wants compensation from Audi for the costs of the retrofits, legal counseling and customer measures, Bild said.

A spokesman for Porsche said VW group-internal issues were not meant for public discussion, without elaborating. Audi declined comment and referred inquiries to Porsche.

 

Culled from: https://www.autoblog.com/2017/10/09/porsche-seeks-235m-damages-from-audi-over-dieselgate-scandal/

Zenith Bank, Total Nig., others win 2017 Nigeria Customer Service awards

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Zenith Bank, Total Nig., others win 2017 Nigeria Customer Service awards

In recognition of their customer centric offerings, Zenith Bank, Total Nigeria and others have emerged winners of the 2017 Nigeria Customer Service awards. The award is in commemoration of the customer service week held recently.

Before the award, Nigeria Customer service Award Limited, the organisers of the event, had a customer service conference in Abuja which played host to a plethora of professionals in various sectors.

The Conference was themed: Customer Experience Management in Nigeria. It had as key speakers Chiamaka Ugo-Obide, Miriam Jackson-Alero, Ijeoma Okeke and Victor Oshadare, and Aliyu Ilias all of who emphasized the importance of customer journey mapping and touch points, customer engagement, the 21st century drivers of contact centres and the use of data in promoting customer experience and loyalty to service providers.

Customer service expert and convener of the Customer Experience Management Conference, Aliyu Ilias opines that excellent service does not happen by chance. According to him, it is a result of an organisation’s deliberate and strategic design.

Following the Conference was the NCSA awards ceremony which, according to Ilias, was a strategic move to applaud companies who have been dogged in proffering excellent services in their various sectors.

HealthPlus, Zenith Bank, Total Nigeria, DHL, Wakanow, Berger Paints, Airtel, Halogen security, Stanbic IBTC Pensions,  took home the award for best in customer service and experience for the Health and well being, banking and Oil and Gas sectors, respectively. Other winners were: People’s TV, Dana Air and Vfs Global.

Ilias also used the opportunity to challenge other organisations to be proactive in delivering an experience to customers worthy of the consumers loyalty.

Kelechi Erondu and kelechi Emmanuel Okeke were awarded as the 2017/2018  Nigeria customer service Ambassadors for their immense role in promoting customer service and consumer rights in their communities.

Customer Service Week is celebrated annually during the first full week in October when customer-oriented organizations and institutions around the world recognize the importance of customer service excellence to their organizations. This year’s week focused on the theme ‘Building Trust’ and was commemorated from October 2 – 6.

BIC Shavers’ promo winner relishes success

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BIC Shavers’ promo winner relishes success

Leading shaving brand in Nigeria, BIC 1 Shaver has finally made the dream of Miss Blessing Odudu come true as she was presented with her brand new Mitsubishi Space Star Car, following her emergence last month as one of the grand prize winners in the just concluded BIC Shave & Realise Your dream promo.

“This is a dream come true for me,” she said, in an emotion-laden voice, during the brief handover ceremony held inside the sleepy confines of the Ojo Cantonment, Lagos, where she lives with her father, an army officer.

“I can’t believe that going out to buy something of N70 could turn out like this. It is like a dream to me, but I have to believe that it’s real. When I first saw the car I was still thinking it’s a dream, that maybe I was going to wake up one day to realise that everything I was seeing was a dream. But now I know it’s not.”

The key to the glossy yellow coloured car was handed over to her by the Country Business Development Manager, BIC World, Mr. Adeyemi Ojo amidst celebration and cheers from a large crowd of her family, friends and neighbors, including Mr. Megwa Chikodi, who sold the lucky product.

The crowd was particularly thrilled by BIC’s exceptional demonstration of loyalty and fidelity to its teeming consumers, something they noted was becoming a rare practice in Nigeria’s corporate environment.

Speaking about the outing, Ojo said the responses of the consumers resonated with BIC’s core brand proposition. “We want to see our consumers rejoicing. Every little thing we do we want it to have a great impact in their lives. The shaven stick we sell is little in terms of cost but it provides huge value to the consumers. As you can see everybody is happy, this is the excitement we want to bring to consumers,” he said.

The ceremony was a fitting conclusion to a three month long the Bic Shave & Realise Your Dream promo. And it capped off a very successful campaign that deepened BIC’s leadership in the shaver’s segment where it controls about 70 percent of the market in Nigeria and also transformed into a bigger top of the mind awareness for the brand.

The draws for Pan Nigeria campaign which was very experiential in execution as it was innovative was held in two locations- Onitsha and Lagos. The Grand Prize winner in Onitsha was Mr. Bassey Effiong who has since taken delivery of his Mitsubishi Space Star Car.

But there were other great prizes including television sets, refrigerators, mobile phones, N15 000 worth of airtime among other consolation prizes won.

Speaking further about the promo, Ojo said, “We are delivering on our promises on this occasion. This is the proof of our integrity and commitment to whatever we are doing; we say hearty congratulations to all our winners”.

BIC is a leading international brand, a manufacturer of stationeries, lighters and shavers across the world.

 

 

Culled from: http://www.marketingedge.com.ng/2017/10/11/bic-shavers-promo-winner-relishes-success/

Indomie Independence Day Award: Dufil rewards 10 children for bravery

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Indomie Independence Day Award: Dufil rewards 10 children for bravery

Dufil Prima Foods, makers of noodles brand, Indomie, has rewarded 10 Nigerian children with millions of naira worth of scholarship each for their outstanding bravery.

The winners were announced at the 10th edition of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative tagged ‘Indomie Independence Day Award’ (IIDA).

Three winners were awarded from each category of the award (Physical bravery, Social bravery and Intellectual bravery) and one for the ‘most outstanding bravery act’ category, making a total of 10 as against 3 winners in previous editions.

The initiative is to extol and support the exemplary accomplishments of children who have shown courage and determination in situations that ordinarily would bring fear.

The winners for Intellectual Bravery are 13year old Paul David from Markurdi, invented radio station; 11year old from Markurdi who exhibited various inventions; 14year old Joel Clement from Kano who constructed Incubator for hatching eggs.

Winner for Physical Bravery are 14year old Zulka Mohammed from Adamawa who saved group of children from terrorist attack; 14year old Ubong Akpan from Akwa Ibom that saved the life of a nursing woman and Adejorin Oluwatobiloba, 15 years that rescued a girl from kidnappers.

Other winners from Social Bravery are 15year old Olarenwaju Oluwafemi from Ibadan who used football competitions to campaign against crimes; 12year old John Blessing from Ogun who advocates against child abuse and 8year old Wealth John from Nasarawa who saved a girl from child marriage. Also, Chibuoyim Nnakwe, 11year old who saved his mother from impending death won the award for the most outstanding bravery act for the year.

In her goodwill message, the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Senator Aisha Jummai Alhassan, commended and congratulated Dufil Prima Foods on the occasion of the 10th edition of IIDA. The Independence Day Heroes Award to Nigerian children that have shown extraordinary acts of bravery and determination in the face of danger to their lives and difficult challenges in the society is indeed an addition to the success story of Dufil Prima Foods, having made Indomie a household name in Nigeria.

While delivering the keynote address at the event, Mr. Graham Stothard the Executive Director, The Caleb Group of Schools, Lagos, said the country has a great future especially with young innovators and brave children emerging. He therefore urged all stakeholders to support children in their quest to achieve their dreams and aspirations.

Social Insights into African Commercial Banks: Nigeria is the Most Competitive Market for Gaining Share of Voice

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Social Insights into African Commercial Banks: Nigeria is the Most Competitive Market for Gaining Share of Voice

Gone are the days where people have inherent trust in their bank and deem it to be the safest place for their money. In the last decade, after the global financial crisis and with the introduction of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, the banking industry has come under a lot of scrutiny and pressure. Nowadays banks need to earn their customer’s trust and assure them that they have their customer’s best interests at heart and endeavour to maintain loyalty.

It is important for a banking customer to feel at ease with the service they are receiving from a bank, with the knowledge that they are looking after their funds and facilitating their transactions optimally.

Service and mobile banking are the most popular topics when people discuss banking. This shows that good service is important for customer retention and people are quick to moan about poor service but will also speak out and acknowledge a great customer interaction. Ease of access to their money and being able to make transactions is another high priority area for customers. As seen in the social index the competition among banks at the top is fierce and it takes just one key element
or action to change how a brand is perceived by the customer or how they will choose to engage with their bank.

In this report, we looked at the top 5 commercial banking brands on Facebook in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria over the second quarter of 2017.

Read on to find out how brands like KCB, UBA and Capitec performed on:

  • The Social Index
  • Audience Analysis
  • Social Landscape
  • Share of Voice

The African Banks Social Index presents important metrics in a brand’s online presence and displays each brand’s social media performance across five different factors.

The index has evaluated the 15 banks across these five factors:

  • Audience Social Activity: This metric examines the total audience engagement a brand earns on social media. Specifically, it measures, @mentions, replies, retweets, likes, comments and shares.
  • Brand Social Activity: Brand social activity looks at how active a brand is on social media, measuring how often they tweet, reply, retweet, post, or comment.
  • Followership: This score measures how big a brand’s social media following is in terms of Facebook page likes and Twitter followers.
  • Content Performance: Content performance examines how much engagement a brand draws from their content. More specifically, it looks at how many likes, comments, shares, replies and retweets their social media posts receive.
  • Total Score: The final score is the sum of the four scores above. There is no special weighting given to any
    score.

Key Takeaways:

  • The report shows that in each country analysed; Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, there is always a bank that stands out among the competition. Nigeria is the most competitive market for gaining share of voice and there are 2 banks, Zenith Bank and UBA, that stand out.

 

  • The commercial banking audience has a gender split that is slightly skewed towards males (55%). Their  interests include business, sports as well as family and parenting. This can be because business and families both need financial support and speaks to the investment that many banks make in terms of sponsorship for major sporting events. Sporting sponsorship is a key way to align with their customers’ interests.

 

  • All the banks analysed use social media on a daily basis to interact with their customers in order to solve customer support queries and to promote various marketing activities. The audience is very open to this channel of communication and respond well on Facebook and very actively on Twitter.

 

  • Mobile banking, followed by internet banking, are popular topics of conversation among those discussing commercial banks. This indicates that customers want to be able access and transact with their money at their convenience. From the middle of June there was a noted increase in conversations about mobile banking.

 

  • Overall, the sentiment within the banking industry was neutral, with a greater positive (13%) than negative (4%) tone.

 

Click here to download the entire document…

Whysatisfy & Brandwatch

The Evolution of Traditional Yoruba Architecture

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The Evolution of Traditional Yoruba Architecture

The architecture of the ancient Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria was a communal endeavour and the house was a statement of ideological, economic and social position in the larger urban context. Adams Adeosun bemoans the fact that it is fast disappearing.

Universally, architecture is dependent on culture, which, in simple terms, embodies the way of life of a people. Even though factors such as climate, materials and methods directly influence building practices, they submit to the common denominator of culture. The traditional Yoruba man was a polygamist, counting his wives and children when numbering his properties – and his lifestyle fed into his building. Yoruba architecture is a family panegyric – it shouts the glory or misfortune of a family in clear structural language. Traditional Yoruba settlements were vast cities (as evidenced in Oyo, Ife and their sprawling counterparts) whose land-use patterns were confined to residences, markets, palaces, shrines and farmlands.

The Yoruba house as the physical manifestation of unity

In mainstream African cultures, the man is both arrowhead and anchor of the family. From this perspective, it is only sensible that the blessing and responsibility of owning a house is bestowed on him. In the past, whenever a Yoruba man decided to build a house, he began by informing his friends, who gathered their wives and children at the building site on a fixed date. Construction was hardly a vocation until much later. While the actual construction work fell to the men, the women and children were in charge of the catering and house finishing.

The Yoruba home could take one of two forms: The traditional compound, built around one or more courtyards, or the rooming house, famously called ‘face-me-I-face-you’. The rooming house became popular in the 1930s, but the courtyard design is the root architecture of the Yoruba people, inspired by a culture of honouring family.

To accommodate an extended family, the house would be a rectangular, open-plan compound, with one entrance gate and rooms opening onto one or more courtyards. Between the rooms and courtyards, there would be porticos of lean-to roofs with timber columns for support. A segment of the compound would belong to a lineage or, in the case of traditional rulers and, perhaps, the wealthy, a wife and her children. This system allowed for much personal contact, which contributed to the unity of the community microcosm that is the family. The image of co-wives connecting and gossiping in a courtyard was, in fact, a cliché.

The more recent face-me-I-face-you is a non-compound design with rooms arranged in two rows opposite each other along a passage that leads to a shared corridor that served as space for domestic chores and relaxation. This building type, which could accommodate almost as much as the compound, was not necessarily for close relations as it was not uncommon to find two, usually more, different families (even cultures) occupying a housing unit. However, it is not exclusive to the Yoruba landscape.

The traditional Yoruba city is a model of social hierarchy. The king’s palace is at the centre, his chiefs are around him, and then come the people, in order of importance. The town radiates from the king’s palace to the outskirts, after which there are farmlands. The defining characteristics of palaces include multiple courtyards and ornamentation – usually columns of abstract sculpture. The principal market, which is the city’s equivalent of the courtyard, shares the city centre with the palace.

The ambition of Yoruba architecture

Before the emergence of expertise, architecture followed a process of trial and error. The way doors and windows vary in size – especially in and around preserved traditional groves like the Osun shrine in Osogbo – is proof that measurements were achieved by instinct rather than knowledge. The standardisation of Yoruba vernacular architecture started when European missionaries arrived, armed with the paraphernalia of change. It progressed when ex-slaves returned home from Brazil with a newfound style and reached a peak after Portland cement became popular.

In 1842, when Reverend Henry Townsend laid the foundation of the White House in Badagry, he rerouted a country’s architecture. The Badagry building was the first storeyed building in Nigeria and its construction marked the point at which Yoruba traditional architecture started aspiring to modernism. Later, 85 Odunfa Street, built by a Sierra Leonean in 1914, became the first three-storey building in Lagos. Christened Ebun House, it is in the theatrical Baroque style of 16th century Italy. Soon after, storeyed structures became the new measure of wealth. Bungalow owners began to deck their old houses and new buildings would not stop after the first floor. When the owner could not afford more than one floor, he decked his house and hoped to complete it later.

The world is a global village now and local culture is losing its influence on Nigerian architecture. There is a Small London and a Chinese Village in Lagos. The ancient courtyard buildings that spoke for the wealth of families in the not-so-distant past are now markers of poverty. Cultural identity has been stripped from the architecture of Yorubaland.

Culled from: http://allafrica.com/stories/201710110696.html

Nigeria needs $16bn to construct, modernise rail lines

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Nigeria needs $16bn to construct, modernise rail lines
The Nigerian government needs about $16 billion to construct and modernise major rail lines, an official said.
This was revealed by the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, on Thursday while speaking with State House correspondents after emerging from a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.

Amaechi said he was summoned by the president to brief him on the progress made on the projects.

“You are aware that we have gotten approval for eastern flank of the Nigerian Railway modernisation which is from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, which is cutting across Aba, Owerri, Enugu, Umuahia, down to Abakalili, Awka, Makurdi, Lafia, Bauchi, Gombe, Yola and to Damaturu and ends in Borno.

Efforts by the City of Kigali to phase out low-capacity commuter taxis from operating on key routes have been boosted by the introduction of new big buses by Akagera Motors…

“And then the other railway from Kano to Maradi in Niger Republic and then (I came) to brief the president about how we are progressing with the negotiations for loans and possible financiers,” he said.

Amaechi also said he briefed Buhari about projects within the Lagos-Ibadan axis and what is being done we to complete the Lagos-Kano railway.

The transportation minister said his ministry has already been given approval for all the projects, adding that the government “has to look for the money first.”

“The money is not just there, it is a total of about $16 billion and you don’t just pluck $16 billion from the sky,” he said.

He also said the ministry is looking at the possibility of a public private partnership (PPP) for some of the projects.

“We will try and see if we can get PPP especially as it pertains to the seaports. Don’t forget that there are two deep sea ports that were approved: Bonny Deep Sea Port and Warri Deep Sea Port.

“For the Port Harcourt Railway industrial park; we should also be able to get that through PPP; I hope we can. But I doubt if we can get Railway as PPP because it is quite expensive,” he said.

Amaechi said the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) is handling that dredging of Calabar Port in Cross River State. He said the NPA has already advertised for a PPP arrangement.

On how much loan the government intends to go for to finance the projects, Amaechi said, “the total expenditure for that area will come to about $16 billion.

“But not all is necessarily loan, that is why I said the first step of action is PPP, it is after we finish PPP that we can say what the actual total figure for the loan will look like.”

Amaechi said he was summoned by Buhari because “the president sleeps and wakes up thinking about railways.

He said Buhari was particularly pleased with what had been done in terms of “railway narrow gauge”. He said between now and December 2017, the ministry will ensure efficiency in the rail system.

“We are bringing in more locomotives, coaches, and wagons. ” In terms of the narrow gauge, if not for a hitch, we would have commenced trucking cargo from Apapa Sea Port to Ebute-Metta and taking away the challenges we are having with that Apapa road. That would happen before December,” he said.

The minister said he was expecting 10 trains for Kaduna-Abuja rail line, while another seven will also come soon at the Itakpe-Warri rail line.

“We believe that by next year, June, Itakpe-Warri should be ready,” he said.

Internet Traffic Rises As Nigeria Ranks 13th On Broadband Adoption Index

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Internet Traffic Rises As Nigeria Ranks 13th On Broadband Adoption Index

Affordability Drivers Index (ADI) rankings of the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) has ranked Nigeria 13 out of 58 countries surveyed in terms of adoption and use of Internet access by its citizens.

The ADI does not measure actual broadband prices, nor does it tell how affordable broadband is in a given country. Instead, it scores countries across two main policy groups, which are infrastructure (extent to which ICT infrastructure has been deployed as well as the policy framework in place to encourage future infrastructure expansion) and access (that is current broadband adoption rates as well as the policy framework in place to enable equitable access).

The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta at the ITU Telecoms World 2017 in Busan, South Korea, disclosed that broadband penetration in the country currently stands at 22 per cent.

Meanwhile, in a document made available to The Guardian, A4AI explained that each country is awarded score (out of 100) across a range of variables within each grouping, and is then ranked against the other countries in the ADI. Higher scores indicate the existence of a combination of factors, which contribute to lower the cost structure for broadband provision and eventually lower prices.

High ADI scores are correlated with reduced broadband costs–both for industry and for consumers. The rankings reflects country’s relative performance compared to other countries, this means that even if a country does reasonably well on the ADI, if it does not perform better than others then its ranking will not improve.

Countries which ranked ahead of Nigeria includes Colombia, which ranked number one, has access score of 85.28; infrastructure score of 58.15 per cent and an ADI score of 72.87 per cent. Mexico is second with 71.47 per cent ADI score; Peru is third with 70.84 per cent; Malaysia has 68.65 per cent; Costa Rica is fifth with 67.40 per cent ADI score. Other countries ahead of Nigeria are Equador (63.81); Argentina (63.62); Mauritius (61.70); Turkey (61.13); Brazil (60.78); Morocco (57.75) and Jamaica (56.88) respectively.

Countries including Domican Republic (55.49); Botswana (55.37); Vietnam (53.55); Thailand (53.40); Cote’d’Ivoire (53.25); Bolivia (52.83); Honduras (51.63); South Africa (51.20) and 36 others ranked below Nigeria.

A4A1 explained that Colombia ranked number one on the ADI for the second year running due to increases in available international bandwidth, improvements in competition policy and the expansion of access to under-served areas through programmes such as the Plan Vive Digital. It stressed that the country has also recently launched a new programme to subsidise the cost of both data and devices for those living in poverty and those who have never been online before.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has predicted that by 2019, the volume of global Internet traffic is expected to increase 66 times from what it was in 2005.

UNCTAD in its Information Economy Report 2017 said the international community has a huge responsibility to ensure that no one is left behind in this transformation process.

Given the very rapid evolution of the digital economy, many developing countries will need to develop or strengthen their capabilities in a wide range of policy areas, including in all key aspects of e-trade readiness: connectivity, payment solutions, trade logistics, Internet security and legal frameworks.

UNCTAD said the digital economy is evolving fast but at very different speeds, stressing that the global production of ICT goods and services now amounts to an estimated 6.5 per cent of world’s gross domestic product (GDP), with some 100 million people being employed in the ICT services sector alone.

According to the report, exports of ICT services grew by 40 per cent between 2010 and 2015, adding, worldwide e-commerce sales in 2015 reached $25.3 trillion, 90 per cent of which were in the form of business-to-business e-commerce and 10 per cent in the form of business-to-consumer (B2C) sales.

The UN’s body noted that monitoring the digital divide remains important, though the number of Internet users grew by 60 per cent between 2010 and 2015, more than half of the world’s population remains offline.

The report noted that broadband connectivity in developing countries, when available, tends to be relatively slow and expensive, limiting the ability of businesses and people to use it productively.

“Only 16 per cent of the world’s adult population uses the Internet to pay bills or purchase items. And while more than 70 per cent of the population in several developed countries already buys goods and services online, the equivalent share in most LDCs is less than two per cent,” it stated.

MDXI TARGETS ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS WITH NEW ‘TAKE A BREAK’ CAMPAIGN

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MDXI TARGETS ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS WITH NEW ‘TAKE A BREAK’ CAMPAIGN

West Africa’s premier Data Center solutions provider, MDXI (a MainOne company) has launched an advertising campaign aimed at reinforcing the company’s position as the data center provider of choice for Enterprises in the region. Tagged “Take a Break”, the campaign will increase awareness of the MDXI brand as the most interconnected and reliable West African datacenter company and urges C-level executives across the region to take a break from the rigors of managing in-house IT and outsource their Information Technology infrastructure needs to MDXI.

Thecampaign, which began in October in Nigeria and Ghana includes a redesign of the MDXI website and press adverts in numerous national publications, building on the company’s expansion efforts across Nigeria and West Africa. The campaign is expected to spotlight the company’s data center initiatives not only in Nigeria, but across West Africa including its Accra facility, a new Data Center in Sagamu, Ogun State Nigeria as well as planned development in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire.

“Unknown to local Enterprises that outsource their data center needs off-shore, MDXI is home to numerous large multinationals that West Africans interact with daily online as we have raised the bar to provide world-class ICT and Data Center solutions, at par with similar facilities in Europe, Asia and America. Our Data Centers have undergone rigorous compliance audits to ensure we are able to provide same level of service locally that our international customers are used to” says MDXI General Manager, Gbenga Adegbiji.

MainOne’s MDXI has put Nigeria on the global map, with its premier Tier III Lekki Data Center, the only data center in West Africa that is authorized to process and store payment card information with its PCI DSS certification. MDXI is also certified as ISO 27001, 9001 compliant and is the only SAP certified provider of hosting services in the region. The company has contributed significantly to deepening Nigeria’s digital economy with its highly available, carrier-neutral ICT infrastructure, enabling network operators and content providers exchange traffic within its data center. As West Africa’s most connected data center and home of the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), MDXI has impacted internet traffic in-country, by localizing traffic, reducing transmission costs and improving user experiences.

Who’s winning online in African banking?

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Who’s winning online in African banking?
Banking is something we all rely on, but when faced with the thought of having to deal with your bank, your emotions tend to go to a negative place. Commonly perceived as a time-consuming and unnecessarily stressful part of adulting; interacting with banks has been taken online and onto social media. Interestingly enough though, sentiment is not as bad as you may think.
According to the recent report by WhySatisfy and Brandwatch, it was found that one bank in each country analysed (Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa) dominated online and social media conversations.

Competition in this space is fierce though and thus the major players can change at any time. Getting the lion’s share of voice can be achieved relatively simply, for example: by running an effective social media marketing campaign (e.g. Standard Bank’s #WhatsYourNext campaign). The audience for this industry is very active on Twitter and this platform has become one of the easiest ways for customers to interact with a bank.

Millennials are mobile

In order to not get left behind, banks need to be innovative and agile in listening. Understanding and engaging with the needs of today’s customers. Millennials are the future of the commercial banking industry. Its success will be based on the banks’ ability to get their internet banking and mobile banking customer experiences right.

The experience of ‘visiting your branch’ needs to be completely digital, from beginning to end. If the user has to go offline for a single step, they’ll be lost. An example of a bank that is winning at this is Capital One in the USA. They recognised where the future success of their bank lies and therefore only target millennials. When studying this target market, they found that the top two places millennials like to hangout are: coffee shops and yoga studios. Capital One Cafes were born…”We believe that banking should fit your life, not the other way around.”

The report also notes that the majority of conversations on social in this industry were around mobile and internet banking which is not surprising as this is a very mobile savvy user base. Mobile banking is where future success lies. In the past quarter, this topic of discussion online and on social media was growing at an accelerating rate.

On the web, 37% of all conversations were around mobile banking which was reflected on Facebook and Twitter, with 29% and 42% respectively. This data shows just how active commercial banking customers are on social media in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

Changing perceptions

In Africa, mobile connectivity is growing exponentially, with 90% penetration of the continent’s 1.2bn population, 57% of which are smartphones. Being able to access a full range of banking services for your mobile device is centred around convenience. Customers want to be able to access and transact with their money at any time but most importantly, in a secure way. Succeeding with social customer service mid-June until now has also seen a sharp increase in online and social discussions about service – another high priority area for customers.

Adding value

Banks need to show potential customers they are able to add value and are willing to help with any problems quickly and efficiently.

The customer needs to be made to feel at ease with the service they are receiving and that their bank is looking after their hard-earned money. Effective social customer care has developed into a leading driver of success. All it takes is a single action or key element to completely change how the bank is perceived by a customer. It is good to see that all banks analysed were active daily on social media; interacting with their customers.

Almost 80% of these social discussions were neutral, while only 12% were negative and 8% were positive. On the web 28% of conversations were around service, which was mirrored by the conversations on Facebook and Twitter. Almost a quarter of all conversations were service related as well, being 26% and 24% respectively.

This audience is very open to this channel of communication. They are quick to complain about poor service which can be unnerving for some larger institutions. Hwever, they are also very vocal about publicly acknowledging a great customer interaction. It is all about how you manage these interactions that will lead to success or failure; reinforcing the necessity for brands to have clear social media policies, customer care guidelines and visible Ts & Cs.

The South African banks that received the biggest share of positive conversations on social media, in the past quarter, were Capitec and Standard Bank. This was aligned with also having students as the largest percentage of their audiences as they are part of the most active demographic on social media.

This is by far their preferred method of interaction with a brand and will only increase as the adoption of mobile banking saturates this customer base. That is not to say that other interest groups should be ignored – financial wellbeing is a core necessity for both business and families as well.

Innovate to survive

Future banking services still need to cater for all professional types, including all interest groups (e.g. business, sports, family and parenting).

Sponsorship of sporting events, teams and equipment continues to be a key way banks can align themselves with these customer interests. One thing is clear…banks need to innovate to survive!

The data is clearly outlining the way forward for this industry. The growing interest in and around mobile banking should be ringing those alarm bells for banks to optimise their mobile banking apps, to ensure that the banking services for customers are completely digital and secure. Prioritising and organising social customer care will ensure that they are always at least part of, if not leading, the online and social media conversations. The effective management of these areas will put them ahead of the competition and ensure that they keep winning online and on social media.

Written by: ROMY HONNEYSETT, Honney Social is a Social Media Marketing Consultancy for Small Businesses, based in Cape Town. It provides freelance services to various clients. Honney Social provides tiered packages to clients to handle their Social Media Marketing (and other integrated marketing activities) where they can choose the package suited to their budget and marketing goals.
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