Ajua has signed an agreement with Facebook to automate commercial interactions and customer support for businesses through WhatsApp. This partnership is one of two in Africa of companies that are directly partnered and integrated with Facebook.
There has been an upsurge of businesses on the continent taking advantage of the Whatsapp platform to sell goods and provide services. This has created a growing need for social media-based customer support to drive a holistic shopping experience.
Ajua’s Janja platform enables automated customer support, borderless banking, and payments across apps and social media platforms. The platform aims to change how we shop and engage with our customers by making the process quick, easy, and painless.
Speaking on the impact of the partnership to businesses in Africa,Teddy Ogallo, VP of Product, Merchant services for Ajua said, “Ajua aims to implement a combination of its proven Ajua 360 platform, Ajua Merchant and the award winning Janja solution to 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. Businesses across Ajua’s African markets will now be able to access WhatsApp business 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.”
This partnership hopes to revolutionize e-commerce for Micro-Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in Africa by making the shopping experience more seamless for customers which could result in more sales. With over 40M SMEs in Nigeria alone, Ajua will be seeking to maximise their revenues and increase their operational efficiency by automating their customer interactions.
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WhatsApp has become the preferable platform for small businesses in Africa. Kenya has the highest percentage of monthly WhatsApp users compared to the rest of the world. According to the Global Web Index’s 2020 Social Media User Trends Report, a whopping 97% of internet users in Kenya use WhatsApp every month. For more perspective into how popular the platform is in Africa, Nigeria had approximately 33 million active social media with over 90 million users as of January 2021.
As several SMEs continue to look for ways to acquire more customers, many are beginning to realize that exceeding customer expectations is key to standing out above their competitors and improving customer retention.
“The Salon business is highly relational. People tend to visit the same barber all the time so we have to work hard to maintain our customers. We try to be unique to keep our customers coming back,” shared Peris, Director, Aloe Barber & Spa.
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