By Phiwa Sikhondze
This year’s edition of the Eswatini Customer Experience Conference is underway.
The two-day conference is currently held at IRDM College in Mahlanya and discusses practical customer experience strategies, tools, methods, and initiatives that local companies can utilize to speed up their customer-centric growth.
The event gathers key decision-makers, Cx experts, technology leaders, and thought leaders to explore the theme “Technology 4.0 for Total CxP”.
Topics include the ‘E’ in experience, negotiation, characteristics of a winning team, and accelerating digital transformation in Cx, as well as Cx as a pathway to growth and strategically embracing Cx technology.
The Eswatini Customer Service Experience Conference is one of the largest platforms discussing customer experience (Cx) in Eswatini and is organized in strategic partnership with stakeholders with an interest in excellent customer service.
Dominic Manhundu, Executive Director of the Chartered Institute of Customer Management in Zambia, gave a thought-provoking keynote address and discussed his experiences in the customer experience industry.
In order to accomplish the goal of providing exceptional customer service, he urged customer service representatives to engage the emotions of the clients. He emphasized that based on his experience, he has found that the customer experience in business is greatly influenced by emotions.
In addition, businesswoman and former mayor of the Manzini Municipality, Zinhle Matsebula, enlightened the delegates on negotiation as one collaborative measure for ensuring customer satisfaction.
Matsebula noted that negotiation is one of the major contributors to customer satisfaction hence companies cannot achieve the customers’ expectations without homogenizing and harmonizing all experiences together with their customers.
The Managing Director of InstaCash and 2022 Eswatini Customer Experience Business Leader Award winner, Mandla “Cheeks” Nxumalo shared the characteristics of a winning team. Nxumalo highlighted trust, respect, engagement, communication, diversity, participation, and conflict management, among others as essential qualities of winning teams.
“A team is a type of organizational group of people that are members. A team is composed of members who are dependent on each other, work towards interchangeable achievements, and share common attainments. A team works as a whole together to achieve certain things,” he said.