The equities market turnover yesterday declined marginally to Ksh777 million from the previous session’s Ksh799 million, the number of shares traded stood at 17.5M against 29M posted the previous session.

Family Bank has expanded its branch network to 93 branches across the country with the opening of a new branch in Isiolo County bringing services...

Mobile games development company Usiku Games has developed a new game to help school-going children learn sign language and help them to communicate and...

Without the sponsorship grants, teams in the top-flight league and at the grassroots lose out on one of their most important revenue streams.

The inaugural meeting of the African Union African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) for non-state actors was held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 23rd September 2021....

Absa Bank Kenya has partnered with Pan African impact investment platform - Melanin Kapital – have launched an investor readiness program to help startups...

A former Business Today editor is now a communication professor in the United States, after graduating with a doctorate in a record three years....

The SEZ Association intends to attract foreign direct investments (FDI) and support local investment by encouraging the development of favorable policies and creating a conducive operating environment.

The trial began with both individual and enterprise customers in Nairobi, Kisumu, Kisii and Kakamega. By the end of the year, Safaricom intends the service to an additional 200 sites across nine towns.

SportPesa has upgraded the Umoja Boxing Gym with a new roof enabling permanent installation of its ring, giving amateur boxers access to train round...

Global Voice Group (GVG) has launched TransFin, its seamless payments interoperability solution. GVG is a regulatory technology developer and Big Data Analytics organisation. The solution, aimed...

The Kenyan Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Court (High Court) has cleared Dr Martin Elia Lomuro, the South Sudan Minister of Cabinet Affairs, of money...

The term ‘customer engagement’ is arguably one of the biggest buzzwords in today’s business landscape. It's so widely used that when many people hear the phrase, they interpret it as a checkbox item. It is, however, an ongoing crucial relationship between a company and its customers, which is determined by the customer’s preferences and behaviour. Customer engagement entails actively engaging with an audience through messaging that interests, educates or helps them, as well as encouraging two-way communication with your business. In short, it’s about figuring out what the customer wants and giving it to them at the right time. This may appear to be a simple and straightforward task. However, in today’s world, where the majority of a business's customer base is composed of the digital-native 'millennials and zoomers', the consumer has little patience for complicated processes in the name of customer engagement. So what does this mean for you as a business, and how can you adapt to this new market reality and ensure that your engagement techniques are actually engaging? Preparing for a mobile-led shift Mobile use has surpassed laptop use, and today’s target audience is more likely to look something up on their phones or tablets than on a device. According to the GSMA’s The Mobile Economy Sub-Saharan Africa report, the mobile market in Sub-Saharan Africa will reach several significant milestones over the next five years: including half a billion mobile subscribers in 2021, 1 billion mobile connections in 2024, and 50% subscriber penetration by 2025. Over the next five years, the number of smartphone connections in Sub-Saharan Africa will nearly double to reach 678 million by the end of 2025, representing a 65% adoption rate. It is, therefore, no longer an option to provide a mobile-friendly website or customer support portals - it is now a requirement. Catering to the ‘always-connected’ generation Being accessible to current and potential customers is the most important aspect of customer interaction. This is particularly challenging in today’s setting, where time and geography are no longer important and the customer expects businesses to be reachable at all hours of the day and night. While the advent of chatbots has eliminated the need for businesses to hire additional employees to cover multiple shifts, bringing developers onboard to build bots that can meet multiple requirements can end up being costly too. Instead, try thinking along the lines of using a sales engagement software that provides easy-to-use features like drag-and-drop chatbot builders. Making AI chatbots more human Though chatbots were invented to free up staff from mundane tasks so they can focus on the more complex ones, research shows that customers find it harder to get issues resolved by AI chatbots. The ideal solution is an AI-driven chatbot that can greet prospects or customers, respond to small talk, and even understand common questions, regardless of the tone or words used, and respond to them using a company’s internally available documented resources. If the customer chooses to speak with a human agent, the AI-powered chatbot will forward the conversation to the team member. Personalising your messaging without over targeting While personalisation is widely regarded as the pinnacle of customer engagement, it’s all too easy at the same time to cross the line between being helpful and being intrusive when dealing with a more privacy-conscious generation of customers. So make sure your conversation is relevant and provide timely information to your most valuable customers right when they need it, like an offer for help after a failed transaction, or when they’ve spent a long time trying to decide between two products. Achieving business zen with a unified customer view Many of us fall prey to ad fatigue and endless re-targeting. While it’s frustrating, it throws light on the fact that customer data is still jumbled, redundant, or even mismanaged chunks of information. Businesses should make sure that they use a CRM tool that gives a holistic view of customer data, and helps avoid any missteps in data management and customer communication. A customer engagement strategy is critical to the success of any business. Customers who are actively engaged not only spend more money, but also become a company’s best brand advocate and recommend the business to their friends, colleagues, and family.

President Uhuru Kenyatta, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Sports Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed were among the dignitaries alongside other Kenyans who cheered the record-breaking Omanyala.

“Enterprises, especially those in highly regulated industries like financial services, face unique challenges when it comes to balancing innovation and regulatory compliance,” says Alan Peacock, General Manager, IBM Cloud.

Mid-tier lender Sidian Bank has signed a Ksh990 million deal with the Netherlands-based social impact investor, Oikocredit. The funding deal will enable the bank to...