Please forgive the late publishing – I have had a clients work which I had put on hold to attend the conference, to finish and meetings all week long. I have not put any links but I will once work eases off. This is only the first days recap. Second Day’s recap is for another day. Regards.

The E-Tourism East Africa conference finally happened this past Thursday and Friday. The conference lived up to its billing. The attendance was superb, the speakers were excellent and the networking opportunities were plenty. For those of you who for whatever reason could not make it there, I was taking notes. If you were there, this is a recap.

I got here when @DamianCook was speaking. He was talking about

Thanks to the Nairobi Traffic, I got there late and found Damian Cook just wrapping up his session. He was talking about travelling the whole wired world (nice word play there). When I started paying attention, Damian was showing this Augmented Reality video of where we are headed in this wired world. His presentation was a wake-up call of sorts to the delegates on where the world is moving and the role technology is playing in it. He set the stage for the remainder of the presentations.

Next on Stage was Maria Schwarz, the strategic consultant of Seismonaut, a Dutch company. She spoke on e-Marketing for tourism.

She had a pretty good presentation on how technology is changing the tourism industry the world over. The biggest take-away from her presentation was a series of images where the company websites of various hotels had these beautiful sparkling shots that most hotels tend to have and beside them were less flattering images of the same hotels that people had published online to counter the illusion the these hotels were presenting. She made a very good case that the travel and tourism industry is now contingent on more than what you have to say for yourself. What other people have to say about you is more important and that is what you need to be listening to.

Find her presentation here…

Next on stage was Jerome Touze, the Co-founder of WAYN. WAYN is the largest social network for travel with over 16 million active members online. Jerome is a pretty good speaker. He communicates very well and with great ease, and he’s a funny guy. I hope I don’t get him into trouble with the French once more but while introducing himself, he said that he was French for all his troubles. That got us laughing.

The story behind the founding of WAYN is a familiar one since all the great tech companies seem to share those modest beginnings like working from the bedroom or garage with little or no funding not to mention the unsavory remarks aimed at killing ideas at their infancy to get you them to get jobs like normal people. After hearing out how WAYN came to be, Jerome got us going with other interesting insight.

Apparently, WAYN which is an acronym for Where Are You Now actually means Where in Arabic which was pure coincidence.

WAYN was initially to target the travelers market purely but like every other startup, how people start using these platforms dictate how they mould and what they eventually turn out to be.

Jerome told us how they bid for adwords on Google and how this helped them immensely in getting users. He informed us on how they moved from 45,000 users to 1 million in six months – orgasmic, isn’t it. They now stand at 16 million users.

On their revenue model, Jerome said that the market changed when everything became free. They were initially getting revenues from using a subscription model but they had to shift from this when the market changed. He mentioned that even ads were changing such that today, it is how you are interacting with community which is important.

Jerome then took us through the work they were doing with the S.A Tourism Board… It is pretty interesting what can be done through WAYN by the tourism industry. Read up on the South African case study here. Let

Air Asia – allows people to book via their profiles on WAYN. When people comment that they want to go somewhere, they get redirected to the profile page of someone working with AIR Asia. They get convinced to

Newzealand dude and WAYN usage -

Then Jerome gave what was probably the best advice of his presentation. When talking of campaigns, he said that destinations are today based not on where you want to go but rather what you want to do – and that is how campaigns should be designed. If people are looking to sky dive, swim with sharks, bird watch – what destination will they chose? If you are doing your job is done right, it is you that people will find because again, their search for destinations is based on the activities they plan to do.

On running tourism campaigns like the one they did with the S.A Tourism Board, he advised that each campaign should have the following fundamental features;

• Relevance
• Purpose
• Realistic Timescales
• Does the competition engage and inspire audience
• Are the entry instructions clear.

Finally, he mentioned one last bit of critical information which is users are really clever. People do not want to be flagged by what they do not want. Understand what users want and it will spread very easily. See the web as an opportunity.

KCB people were next on stage to talk about their rourism specific online payment solution and merchant services.

The KCB payment solution has been made possible through a partnership with Nightsbridge which now allows online bookings and payments in a simple and accessible way.

The gentleman from KCB who was presenting this was a little shy of the details because, as he confessed time and time again, he could not speak on the technical details which he left for the Nightsbridge people to do. He was a banker and spoke about this being the first tourism specific online payment solution and merchant service. A couple of people on Twitter disagreed with this because there are quite a number of online payment solutions in the country. They don’t have the clout KCB and Nightsbridge have but they are there, in their modest capacities.

He could not answer a number of questions asked because they had technical connotations to them.

Q. What are the costs?

He did answer this by saying that it will cost you 50 USD to have this payment gateway installed on your website. But he prompted more questions because that was not a sustainable revenue model. We were hoping to hear a transactional based revenue model but he was lost once more on the details and referred us to Nightsbridge.

Q. What about MPESA?

He said not yet. People can only pay through VISA and Credits cards but not MPESA.

I honestly believe, like most delegates there, that an integration with MPESA might be the one thing to spur local online booking because our comfort levels with MPESA is way beyond what it can ever be with VISA and credit cards.

Next up was Theresa Emerick, the Co-founder and C.E.O of NightsBridge.

The idea with nightsbridge is bringing bookings to your world. Emerick mentioned that travel research was the one constant even as the world dipped into recession. Her presentation showed how online travel research is increasing even with the downturn in the economy that happened. Given this reality, Nightsbridge are addressing the problems facing many tourism destinations and these are availability visibility, and bookability.

Availability

We found you on the internet but we do not know whether you have an availability? Today, people need to tell from your site whether there is availability in your hotel. Having people email you to check whether there are any rooms available simply doesn’t cut it anymore. Emails have too many problems including timing of response to emails where you may respond too late to an email or at least after your competitor already has. Difficulty in checking availability and booking may not only cost you a booking in your hotel but as you may as lose out as a destination.

Visibility

People cannot find you. One thing the tourism industry in Kenya need to realize is that people do not enter your hotel names when they search for you online. They put industry terms that should get them hotel listings like Malindi Hotels. Even in my line of work, people do not search for my company names but rather for social media or online reputation management in Kenya or even social media strategy in Kenya but not my company name. As a business then, we need to ensure that we rank very high for these terms and that is what nightsbridge offer with their package.

Bookability

Never let your ads write checks that your website can’t cash. When people get to your website, how do they book with you? Do they have to travel first and book with you in person? Is the process of booking accommodation with you easy and convenient? Having availability online means you get the booking there and then, before the competition.

Nightsbridge through their software provides the following solutions for businesses:

Front office – booking software with invoicing and excel reports. You can integrate Nightsbridge with your existing booking platforms if you already have one.

People allocate rooms to nightsbridge and allow nightsbridge to allocate the rooms instead of giving these rooms to various tours and travel agencies. You only pay for the rooms that have been allocated to Nightsbridge.

As things stand, most hotels have to sign up with multiple accounts and post their booking information across many platforms and this has many disadvantages one being having to sign in to multiple accounts and updating them all. Nightsbridge allows you update all accounts from one account which is not only efficient but also effective in that there are few or no mistakes made in updating info.

There is also the Paybridge Gateway which has been developed in conjunction with KCB. You can check out this payment gateway in action on the Khweza Hotel website.

Nightsbridge sent the info to all their marketing sites that the room is booked.

The nightsbridge usually check whether the credit card number to see whether it is real. You do not have to cancel a booking just because of an error with expiry date or something of the sort.

Benefits of Nightsbridge include

• Increased internet exposure
• Market access to many different distribution channels
• Integration to online merchants
• Only one system to update.

The nightsbridge software offers you?

• Easy booking entries on the calendar.
• Add client details and special requests.
• Reserve rooms and release automatically after a set time.
• Search on dates or names.
• Copy and paste details for repeat customers.
• Make a booking with multiple rooms.
• Change rates and room descriptions.
• Add specials and minimum stays.
• Allocate guests to different rooms and dates.

In the Q & A, the following questions were asked:

Q. Do they work with tour operators?

Activity bridge will work for anything that is not accommodation like the Safaris and Complete booking systems. This will be cross selling platforms. The check out form for accomodation will prompt activity or accomodation provers whether they would like to offers the each of the other. It will be simple but it will be integrated in the future.

Q. How does it work with the finance department?

Owners log-in in the system. You can print reports to see outstanding payments. Nightsbridge does not take any commissions and therefore not interfere with finance. They have a monthly flat rate charges based on the number of rooms they have. Bookings on your own website are not charged.

They also have a master Dashboard online if the computer you installed the nightsbridge software is down or stolen.

Q. If the booking is canceled, who repays, how is this handled?

If it was an online transaction, there is an online option that you can charge the card back. But where there are transactional risks with regard to online payment, remember that Nightsbridge is a terminal, period. You are taking the risks yourself. They have all the safeguards to prevent fraud but they cannot be liable for general online transaction risks.

Expedia – Diego LoFuendo, the Regional Manager, Eastern Med & Africa at Expedia was next on stage.

LoFuendo is a funny dude. He had a strong accent and given his personality and how he talks, his presentation beyond being informative was really funny.

The facts and figures he had were quite interesting:

• $26 billion sold in travel.
• 75 million people visit Expedia per month.
• 75% of people searching for holidays online, they pass through one of the Expedia related sites.
• 2 rooms sold every second on Expedia
• 14 million searches made on Expedia every day.

He then talked about Promotion and Distribution via Expedia

Content Management

Content is king, price is queen. The geographical boundary of an online consumer is really relative. Therefore, when offering content, he LoFuendo advised that businesses should show content that justifies the price.

Provide excellent service

Word of mouth is now on steroids with the internet. It is the same thing we have been saying with regard to social media. With everybody today being a publisher, if your service falls short of what you promised, people will publish that for the world to see either through the various social networks and review systems. At Expedia, they have rating systems of a scale of 1-5.

Inventory and Rate Management

Mr. LoFuendo then went into really deep analysis with regard to inventory and rate management. He asked where East Africa is today on the online map and he then through went through the following points as he explored where we lie.

• External and Internal Factors?
• Long and Strong tour operator foot point in the market (E)
• External package culture versus FIT Internet needs (E)
• Low internet culture in the country
• Poor revenue channel management understanding
• Poor understanding of the customer and his needs…

When is the last time you read reviews on your competitor? Or replied to comments made about you.

You must read this guy’s presentation because the data in there will jolt you especially the hotel room nights and air tickets sold, for instance, flights and hotels booked through Expedia in Africa both stood at over $100,000,000 in 2009 and is expected to be just about $120,000,000 in revenues in 2010.

When asked to look at the dynamic in Africa when compared to the rest of the world with regard to the role that tour operators play. The gentleman asking the question said matter-of-factly that tour operators have a stronghold in Kenya that Expedia has no immediate solution to. LoFuendo was still adamant that the role of these operators is diminishing. He said that the same challenges that are currently in Kenya are those that were there years ago in Cancun and other now established destinations 6 years.

Next on Stage was Rory Montgomery of eRes HTI who talked Central Reservation Solutions.

HTI systems are Africa’s largest provider of large scale central reservations systems for groups, tour operators, airlines and online travel portal. He was discussing the growth and distribution channels across the region. His presentation focused on the convergence between central reservations and Internet. He talked of web based reservation systems where the human aspect of the call centre is now removed.

The only problem with his presentation was that he assumed we were all acquainted with his Jargon as his presentation was filled with many acronyms that left many delegates looking at each other with question marks on their faces. Occasionally, you could tell how important and crucial it will be to integrate their system into your business but you would soon get lost in the acronyms and jargon.

That said, what I got from his presentation is that their reservation system is so comprehensive it allows for the following: Quality Guaranteed Booking, Online Distribution – more shelves 24/7, Channels Management and Relationships, Rates Management, Create Calendar and overlay with events, Build good baseline rate structures, Link other Rates to Baseline, and manage Rate Integrity and Discipline.

LIVE Inventory and Rates

This system also allows for changing rates across multiple platforms even if it is 25 times a day as is the nature of the tourism business. There can never be standard rates the whole season. And because money never sleeps while people do, their booking system can automate varying rates easily without constant human input.

LIVE distribution will also give you minute to minute occupancy therefore allowing you to change rates as you see fit. For instance, if you have 90% percent occupancy, you can afford to offer high rates. If occupancy level is too low prior to a set date, give special rates. At low demands, encourage occupancy or special rates but not discounting.

Basically, this systems enables you to monitor Scarcity vs. Perishability, to balance diminishing inventory and potential revenue, to guarantee bookings, High Demand vs. Low Demand – Revenue balancing and Automated Rules.

Automated responses can be set for web bookings, tour operators, loyalty, OTA/ID’s ( I have not friggin idea what that means but it was in the presentation), Corporate Rates, Early Bird, and Last Minute. Their CRM can also incentivise the bookers such that they can continue booking. Bookers does not mean the people travelling if they are not the ones doing the actual booking but rather the people who are actually booking. They get the rewards.

From the little bit that I got from this presentation, I can assure you that it is worth the investment. It makes a lot of economic sense.

If you need more info, the Kenyan contact for this is bernard@hti-systems.co.za.

Andrew Ardington from Smart Guide was the last speaker of the day

Smart Guide has been mapping accommodation points from South Africa to Kenya. He impressed me. For me, their map beats Google by a mile. It is simply awesome. If you are a Kenyan Hotel or Tourist destination, get yourself on there.

The smartest thing he said is that you first sell the destination, then the location in that destination, then your hotel. If you lose out as a destination, you have already lost out as a location and a hotel. So sell Kenya as a destination first, then sell Nakuru or South Coast as allocation, then sell Lake Nakuru Lodge or Diani as a Hotel. Simple logic really, just very well said.

Just check out the Smart Guide Map and tell me what you think.

The E Tourism East Africa Conference will be commencing on the 2^nd of September and I can’t wait.

The press release sent to me partly reads:

East African tourism industry stakeholders are set to benefit immensely from discourses on e tourism to be presented at a regional e tourism conference set for early next week. The conference, which will feature global online giants such as Trip Advisor and Expedia, will focus on how East Africa’s tourism sector can harness the potential of the web, especially following the enormous interest generated in Africa from the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Below is the gist of it all. I have written before that the Hotel and Tourism Industry in Kenya stands to benefit the most from the advent of social media. Allow me to reiterate that point.

In the past month, many of my friends have been writing on their Facebook walls and tweeting their experiences from how they have been able to purchase Air Tickets via MPESA, how they some have finally managed to book a flight online, how JKIA fairs when compared to other Airports, how they changed hotels because the one they were staying at did not iron clothes, which local flight operators were cheaper, to the prices one should expect to pay for a night’s stay in the various cities across Africa. Basically, from my Twitter and Facebook streams, I acquired information based on user experience on how to book my flights with ease via MPESA, which hotels not to stay in when I am in Uganda, how much I should carry when I travel to Angola (expensive) etc.

That is the reality today. With everybody today being a broadcaster thanks to social media, they are determining whether people will book a flight to your country, whether they will stay in your hotel, checking their wallets to see if they can afford you, and looking for alternatives if they don’t like what people have to say about you. It is that real.

It is with a deep appreciation of this reality that I feel the E Tourism East Africa Conference in Nairobi on the 2^nd and 3^rd of September is long overdue. As a Kenya business especially those in the Tourism, Hotel, and related industries, I believe that this conference is where you should be. I have looked at the invited list of speakers and I must agree that it is impressive.

The bottom line is that your bottom-line will in the future will increasingly be determined by how adept your company gets at integrating social media to your business strategy. People don’t care what you think about yourself, they care about what other users think and it is that information that they are using to make their booking decision from choosing getaway destination, booking flights to the hotel they are going to stay at. As a business, you need to know what people are saying about you, understand brand sentiment, learn to monitor this sentiment, and learn how to leverage the intelligence you gather to sway what people say in your favour.

Let me start by expressing my sincerest apologies to the attendees on the Maendeleo Speaker Series organized by the Bridging Staff. I was to speak there on August 25, 2010 (this past Wednesday) on How to Leverage Social Media for their Businesses. I received the invitation last month and had prepared quite the presentation for them but come yesterday, everything fell apart. The day I had marked on my Calendar was the 28^th, this coming Saturday, and I had organized everything around this particular date, including attending the burial ceremony of a friend who suddenly passed last week.

It was with this in mind that I traveled to Nakuru this Wednesday to pass my condolences to the wife and kids and I was to travel back either on Friday evening or Saturday morning, well in time to attend and present at the Maendeleo Speaker Series. But come this evening just an hour or so after I got here, Thomas called me telling me they are waiting for me and I was taken aback. I started telling him that I had already sent him my profile as requested thinking that was what he was calling me about. Then he told me no, they were waiting for me to speak. The date was not Saturday but today.

I was taken aback. I apologized profusely and Thomas was very modest in accepting my apology. But I am not sure he understands how bad I really felt. I am writing this today as a public apology. I am usually never late to appointments let alone miss them altogether. If I don’t come through on this, it will eat me up for a long time. I hope to find a way where I can make my presentation. The package I had prepared to present for the day was really quality with a lot of actionable tidbits that I am sure the listeners would have appreciated.

Again, my sincerest apologies… I hope we can amicably come to a resolution that will see me get to present this. It is not in me to simply walk away from a promise.

R.I.P Job, you will be dearly missed.

It is a fact that many Kenyans are in a love-hate relationship with Safaricom, myself included. My beef with Safaricom is on so many layers but I stay because of reasons I wrote in earlier post – Safaricom is the girl you marry. But it seems that the Safaricom marriage is on the rocks. The mistress has upped her game consequently forcing us to request for the divorce papers. Following the announcement that Zain had drastically slashed it prices, the Kenyan social media scene became abuzz with varied brand sentiments that both Safaricom and Zain would be stupid to ignore.

Ever since Zain started this coup, the puns have been relentless on Twitter and Facebook alike. “Suffericon is driving me inZain” is just one example. The Photoshop people have been ruthless in creating and remaking Safaricom or Michael Joseph images to reflect the emerging reality of a real competitor in Zain. I have been watching this unfold for a week now but one Facebook update today has just forced me to type up this up. Luka Wanjohi wrote the following on Facebook by way of Twitter.

It just cracked me up. The lesson here is that a majority of Kenyans on Twitter and Facebook have remarked and continue to do so about the Safaricom Zain price wars. Whatever it is they are saying is important even though some of it does not sound it. This is that age where every little thing gets broadcasted to everybody by everybody because social media has made all of us publishers. I called my girlfriend the other day and she asked me why I was calling using a Safaricom line. She ordered me to buy a Zain line to save money and I meekly said, Yes Dear. You can now imagine this being extrapolated and that is what social media does. If every Facebook and Twitter update or blog analysis I see is about how my friends have finally Vukad (shifted) to Zain, it is more than likely that I will as well shift Zain. This is how social media impacts your business’s bottom line. Welcome to consumer generated content.

I continue to stress more and more that social media is becoming the game-changer in how brands are perceived in Kenya. Social Media is shaping brand sentiment and companies that are slow in adopting social media and using it as a frontier to engage with their consumers is bound to lose out, big. With regard to social media, Safaricom has been the dominant player – becoming increasingly adept at using social media for customer care among other things. It has no close competitor here. I have not seen any comeback from them on the puns against them. But they could and mitigate the troubles that Zain is causing them through the various social media networks. Remember, this is a brand perception and sentiment challenge, where even though you cannot change what people write about you, you can mould it to mitigate the negative impact by how you well respond to it – with a sense of humour mostly.

On the part of Zain, they could do very well to ride this wave of positive sentiment about them in all these social networks. Having them in these social networks would allow people to address them directly like they do Safaricom and give Zain the platform to extend this positive sentiment a little bit longer. I can assure you now that if Zain got on Twitter, they would rival Safaricom’s followers and easily, what they tweet will hit record numbers of retweets. They can even start making sales via twitter to every negative tweet targeting Safaricom. There are countless ways in which Zain’s participation in social media especially now will work wonders for them. They can actively eat up Safaricom’s dominance by engaging the people who are already thinking about jumping ship as elaborated by their tweets. Zain’s work will be to nudge them on.

I have seen an army of Zain personnel flooding the streets and that’s all good. But given that they are all young people who definitely have Facebook and Twitter accounts, what stops them from taking their campaign to social networks. Granted, consumers have already fired the first shots by taking shots at Safaricom. Their work has already been made easier. Yesterday night, there was an announcement that Safaricom blinked. They decided to lower tariffs too but only for purchases of the 100/= credit. This has clearly proven to be counterproductive judging from the comments on Twitter and Facebook. People hate the idea that this is a one month offer and the 100 shilling condition. Again, Zain should really be capitalizing on this through social networks.

There is a lot that can be done. I am pretty excited about this J. If you know someone at Zain/Bharti management, please email this to them and tell them I can develop for them a killer social media strategy and implementation document that will see them become the darling of Kenyans especially in social networks. The opportunity is too great to miss.

The comment section is yours. Hit me!

Update:

There is already a YouTube Video with over 2400 views of a Zain promotional truck playing the bend-over song outside the Safaricom HQ.

This tweet by @gmeltdown caught my attention a fortnight ago.

TEAMS, SEACOM and EASSY are great; but am not convinced we needed international bandwidth to grow e-commerce in Kenya

It really got me thinking…

Then that Saturday, I caught up with Joshua Mwaniki at iHub during the World Cyber Games which Kalahari had sponsored. Mwaniki is the country director of Mocality and is currently doubling up as the acting manager for Kalahari. I was curious why Kalahari decided to sponsor the WCG Games and when I put the question to Mwaniki, he had a smart answer…

Online shopping is here with us now. Some of the most Tech Savvy people in Kenya are the gaming people and that is why we are here – to showcase what we have and to learn…

And showcase they did as every other screen that was not used for gaming was running Kalahari this and Kalahari that. On learning, I sought to learn more about e-commerce in Kenya and Kalahari’s role in it. Kalahari is an online shop which has been quite successful in South Africa and looking to replicate the same success here in Kenya. They have over 3 million products on the site and primarily cater for niche products that cannot be easily found here…

E-commerce

E-commerce is currently not as big as it could be in Kenya. Compared to South Africa, not enough people are buying products online in Kenya hence the big discrepancy in online shopping between Kenya and South Africa. But this discrepancy (on the face of it at least) can be easily explained with the economic difference between Kenya and South Africa. Note however that there are far more issues at play here and hence the reason I sought Mwaniki’s insight on why the discrepancy?

His answers while outlining the discrepancies also delved into factors inhabiting e-commerce in Kenya.

Buying and Stocking of local goods…

People do not go online to buy local goods… Kalahari’s stocks niche products that people have difficulty finding locally because people do not buy local products online. If we are in Mombasa and want to buy an electronic that we cannot find in Mombasa, we take a flight or travel by road to Nairobi and go shopping. People usually ask me when I will travel to a certain place so that I can buy something for them. If you are in Nairobi and are looking for something, you don’t even go online but rather head over to the CBD and start searching. I guess it boils down to convenience and perceptions. And if that is the reason, are Kenyans willing to test the convenience of online versus route 11 type physical shopping? What do you think would be more convenient?

When it comes to stocking and buying online, we must also delve into perennial question of which came first, the egg or the chicken? In the same way Kenyans do not shop online for local goods, Kenyan businesses as well have not shown initiative by placing their goods online for sale. Quite a number of them now do but if you ask me, not enough. Would Kenyans shop more online if there were more local products online or would businesses start stocking more products if more Kenyans started shopping online? Who will follow who online? Is it economically viable to place local products for sale online? What will it take for people and businesses to embrace e-commerce if international bandwidth is merely an issue?

Mwaniki pointed me to three fundamental issues, internet penetration levels, trust and education.

Internet Penetration Levels

He points out that in South Africa, internet is used so much and that makes it easier to sell online. Let’s face it, before any of us made any purchase online, we were quite internet savvy and therefore could find our way around the net more easily without getting scammed. We could spot a Nigerian prank from a server away. For e-commerce to really pick up in Kenya, internet penetration levels in Kenya need to improve therefore allowing more Kenyans to develop the comfort levels needed to spur online purchase. High internet penetration levels may also be the thing that will get companies fighting to get their products online. The international bandwidth in this case may become important not so much because of the speed of the internet but rather in terms of access. Getting every corner of Kenya wired up and bringing more people online will increasingly make it easier or even compulsory for Kenyan businesses to sell online.

Trust

Trust is another big factor when it comes to e-commerce. Remember, our first money encounter online were probably the scams ran by West Africans. I remember many first timers including two of my brothers’ almost falling victim to these scams before I slapped some sense into their heads. It is a “traumatic” experience that will have you questioning any other online transaction you make. So how do you get Kenyans to trust online transactions? How do you make them comfortable to use credit cards? How do you assure them that once they buy something, it will be delivered to them? At the end of the day, even for the tech savvy, we will only do our online transactions over platforms and payment gateways that we trust and have read positive reviews about. According to Mwaniki, protection of both consumers and merchants through legislation will also go a long way in establishing this trust by giving people a legal recourse in case of a breach of trust.

Payment Gateways and Secure Transactions

There are many horror stories involving credit cards and online transactions. Credit cards will definitely not fly for a majority of Kenyans. Even for Visa Cards, I know of a number of very tech savvy friends who have separate accounts which they only load with money when they need to make online transactions and even then, they load the exact amount of money needed for those transactions. And let’s face it; fear is a big aspect when it comes to making online transactions. Trusting is letting go of this fear. A big part of making this happen is through providing payment gateways that offer secure transactions. While PayPal is cool, you cannot receive money with it from Kenya. I like the fact MPESA is now integrated into these sites and now online transactions can be handled via MPESA. There are other local payment gateways like PesaPal and Mobipay that let people make online transactions from their phones with relative ease and most importantly, securely. The people at Symbiotic have released theirs too called Pay.Zunguka. Mwaniki believes number portability will be a game changer for online payment once it is implemented.

Education

Education plays a big part in online shopping… Educating people that they can shop online safely, educating them that it is more convenient and even cheaper to shop online, educating people on the various payments gateways at their disposal, educating people on the range of goods that they can find online, and educating businesses that it is in their interest to have their products online. Education is central in earning people’s trust and getting them shopping. For Kalahari, Mwaniki informs me that participating in events such as WCG allows them to mingle, show case what they do and educate people while learning too.

The best way for people to learn is through user experience and part of this education for Kalahari also involves giving people free trial vouchers. At iHub, I remember asking Nathan, the organizer for WCG games in Kenya where the prices were and he told me that winners will be given vouchers and redeem the prices through the Kalahari website – official sponsors. Do you see the genius in that? USER EXPERIENCE… The winners will go through the motions just like any other person purchasing products online. In doing that, they get to experience the whole process from purchase to delivery and they might even become evangelists of not only Kalahari but e-commerce in general.

Reviews

I mentioned that reviews might go a long way in getting people shopping online. He agreed but to get people to review products is quite the task. He understood that people usually write reviews in cases where they have had bad experiences. This is true! Chris Brogan put it really nicely when he said that “The percentage of people who read the manual is a lot lower than the percentage of people who get frustrated fast and complain even faster.” Mwaniki however said that the numbers of reviews will pick up with more users and that they will work on getting more people to write reviews. I think they should even incentivize reviews.

Competition

Competition for online shopping platforms is heating up. In addition to Kalahari, there is Online Duka, Bagalicious, Maduqa, and I was this past Saturday informed that BidorBuy is coming to Kenya soon, Totally Toto, Mama Mikes, and a host of other online shops. When I asked Mwaniki about this competition, he said that in a virgin market, competition is always good since it reaffirms the market potential. It means they are not backing a losing horse, a dud venture.

Let’s see how this plays off. What I am really interested in now are the numbers. How much is e-commerce in Kenya worth today? What has been its growth path since 2008? How much are we spending online in comparison with other African countries? I am curious at what the preferred payment gateways for Kenyans shopping online are and the works.

I am really interested in hearing your thoughts on this…

If you doubt that social media has already become an indispensable tool for communication and customer care here in Kenya, Safaricom’s recent activities on twitter should convince you otherwise especially as a business owner… Their official twitter account is @SafaricomLtd.

Customer care is where most companies get it wrong. Twitter and the various social networks is where aggrieved Kenyans take their complaints. The public timeline where these complaints appear and get played out, and SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) where their impact is seen and felt is what you need to worry about. Consequently, these social networks are the places to be. This will enable you to listen better, respond, mitigate potentially explosive situations and win over people. Customer care is about finding where people are already talking about you and responding to them there, at their convenience. Social Media is therefore the place to be given the number of Kenyans on social networks today.

So what does customer care in social media networks entail? Allow me to elaborate using Safaricom and their twitter presence.

First, Safaricom does not boast the biggest following on twitter with just under 1000 followers. I however expect this number to rise exponentially as more and more Kenyans discover Safaricom is on twitter or join twitter and use it as much as they do Facebook. That said, even with their modest following on twitter, they have recognized it as a place where Kenyans are actively participating and they have now made it very convenient for Kenyans on Twitter to circumvent the annoying customer care calls and still get their issues resolved.

Just from a glance of its Twitter wall, you will see that Safaricom is using Twitter in the following ways.

Twitter Invasion

Customer Care

By design, twitter lends itself to customer care use by companies. When Safaricom first got on Twitter, this was the development I expected to see and I am positively surprised to see how well they have taken to it. Like most companies on twitter, they started with pushing content out but soon enough, demands and requests by Kenyans on twitter forced a change in strategy to that of customer care. Most people hate calling customer care because of how long it takes to get through among other dreaded customer care encounters. Twitter has now emerged as the preferred platform for Kenyans on Twitter to seek customer care assistance from Safaricom. How? Well, the following are examples of tweets people send to Safaricom?

FayBabyN @SafaricomLtd Im talking about the 8Mb 10sh offer. Ive even tried subscribing again to no avail. And have the charges increased?

Lungati @SafaricomLtd Getting through to customer care is my main issue.. I had an urgent issue yesterday and i couldn’t get thru after an hour?!

distantspectatr @SafaricomLtd i’m confused about why my supaongea tariff says Ksh3 but *155# says Ksh7 /minute.I get this alot so which one is right?

feelme @SafaricomLtd Got a txt jana asking 4 sum details incl. phy. address. What’s that all about? Why phy. address?

Chiira @SafaricomLTD How much more waiting can a man take? A week is too long. Please have the BlackBerry APN sorted out before day end.

These are cases of people needing various issues sorted out and who have turned to Safaricom via twitter for help. The reason they are using twitter is because it is the most convenient platform for them to use. In response, Safaricom sends tweets such as these…

SafaricomLtd @Lungati Hi Samuel, We apologize for the inconvenience caused, please DM us your number and problem you are facing. Thanks!

SafaricomLtd @Kimash007 Appreciate your feedback, pls let us know the know your exact location or where you have experienced difficulty. However, (cont.)

SafaricomLtd @HendrikaW Please give us the number which you are trying to call from so we can check what the issue is

SafaricomLtd @kmbuto Hey! this is a permanent product, you may use it whenever you want. All you have to do is -> Dial *544# to subscribe.

Lungati @SafaricomLtd it’s ok.. the problem was sorted #NoThanxToCustomerCare but if i have any other problem,i’ll jus use twitter #CustomerCareFAIL

Online Reputation Management

This is one of the more important reasons why businesses need to be present in social media networks. A bad reputation spreads like wildfire in social media, ask KPLC. If you are not present to mitigate it, it may be too late especially with the sharing aspect of twitter. In the case of Safaricom, not everybody who contacts them via twitter is happy or civil for that matter. People may really be disappointed with their service or pricing or lack of access to their customer care and they may rant about this on twitter. And depending on how you handle them, you may either have a PR crisis on your hands or a great customer care story if you can turn it. Some of the tweets of this nature include:

SirLV #NowHeading out to disconnect my @SafaricomLtd PostPaid Account!

TChenya @SafaricomLtd More details is that all the numbers on your website do not work. Period. Get em working and I can provide the other details.

mungei @SafaricomLtd dont patronize me…the nxt time u talk 2 me, u better allow me 2 surf using the #okoaJahazi credits av PAID for! #fb

Lungati @SafaricomLtd Getting through to customer care is my main issue.. I had an urgent issue yesterday and i couldn’t get thru after an hour?!

There are occasions where companies do us wrong, again, ask KPLC as they have perfected the art. Based on our past experiences with the company and/or our personalities, we will pass our judgments in these social networks either mildly with measured tones or outrageously with censored words. For companies, this presents a tricky encounter because whereas the problem might be a simple one, how people present it and given their influence in these social networks, they might create a whirlwind of problems for you – just ask Kenya Data Networks. Also, when and how you respond to any accusations raised against you will determine how well your things will turn out. If an issue is raised, check it and then respond. Engaging in a pissing contest is never the best way to go and it seems the people at Safaricom have nailed it on the head given their responses…

SafaricomLtd @SirLV We would like to sort out your PostPay issue, please give us details

SafaricomLtd @TChenya Thanks for sharing this with us, could you please provide some more details on this.

SafaricomLtd @TChenya We have counterchecked and all 3 numbers provided are working. Kindly let us know if you still cant get through

SafaricomLtd @njesh316 Hi!, are you facing some trouble with Internet? Please let us know your number through DM.

Customer Feedback

While the above represent potentially explosive issues if they are not resolved, consumer feedback is people telling you things about you both good and bad which enable you to understand consumer sentiment. For Safaricom, there is a lot of sentiment that is directed their way and quite a number of them are absolutely absurd while the rest are genuine and weighty sentiment worth taking note of.

mole_a: @safaricomltd are downest. They shd have m-kura or kura pap or something. <#kenyadecides

roomthinker @safaricomltd massive fail on innovation board http://bit.ly/9N8CyW http://yfrog.com/gijfazj

magicalnoob @safaricomltd ur skiza tunes website is useless. I’m trying to browse for songs but it only shows me the top ten list!

Of course Safaricom have a lot of discretion in choosing what to listen to and I know they must appreciate some feedback more than other for instance the massive fail on their innovation board. That is not a light issue. But whichever the case, acknowledging the feedback goes a long way even when the feedback is absurd like the Kura Pap suggestions. Responding to feedback show people that you are listening and sometimes that is all we need to know, that you are listening. And the truth is, if the issue is weighty and you don’t respond to it; understand that people will call you out, harshly. That is the reason you will find response tweets of the following nature on the Safaricom wall….

@magicalnoob We appreciate the feedback, we are in the process of revamping the page

@roomthinker We are reviewing how we engage on our innovation forum and that is why we want people who have shown ICT leadership on board

@sideword Appreciate your suggestion, Thanks!

@HendrikaW Thank you for the feedback, much appreciated

We appreciate the feedback & suggestions http://bit.ly/aWFOb5 @michellemartins @angiecentra @ronaldomo @mole_a @kenyansontwitter #M-Kura

@Reumac Appreciate this!!, happy to have you back…

I am not sure thought that Safaricom are listening to tweets beyond the @safaricomltd that directly show up on their public timeline. There are many Kenyans on Twitter who use Safaricom or #Safaricom in their tweets because they have no idea Safaricom is on Twitter. Safaricom needs to listen and where necessary respond to those tweets too because they are addressing them as well.

Inquiries

Sometimes, people just need info or clarification and send an inquiry tweet seeking insight or clarification. There are many of those tweets for instance.

iamterence @SafaricomLtd When one buys the Nokia E63 at your retail centres they don’t get A memory card and the package says that it comes with one?

jambaziSugu @SafaricomLtd are you guys planning to roll out 4G anytime soon? Just a thought.

rasmengesha23 when is @SafaricomLtd bringing us the iPhone? @bobcollymore

feelme @SafaricomLtd Got a txt jana asking 4 sum details incl. phy. address. What’s that all about? Why phy. address?

Safaricom people have done a good job of replying to a majority of these.

@iamterencePlease give us details of which Safaricom Shop and date of purchase as well as a number which we can reach you for more details

@jambaziSugu We are keen to introduce 4G subject to regulator go ahead

@kmbuto Hey! this is a permanent product, you may use it whenever you want. All you have to do is -> Dial *544# to subscribe.

Kimash007 @SafaricomLtd thanks again for replying. The place is Juja where JKUAT main campus is located… thanks again.

@feelme This is for the Sim Registration process, we need to update these details to complete the process

@FayBabyN We are looking into your issue, we will keep you posted

Just by responding to people’s inquiries, you leave very satisfied customers and this leads me to the next topic…

Happy Customers

The beauty of this is that it is on a public timeline where people can see whether you are resolving issues or not and if you are, you get people giving you just as public praises which consolidate your customer care credentials. When you have people appreciating your help and praising you, you are doing something right. And making a tech savvy crowd happy goes a long way today…

kmbuto @SafaricomLtd That’s great, thank you.

rosesinboots @SafaricomLtd is on twitter?! I’m impressed….

chepkwonyr Yesterday Maryanne of @safaricomltd called & assisted me with an issue! Big up customer care & thanks Maryanne call again

SafaricomLtd RT @jusblackman Now I’m back online thanks to George at @SafaricomLtd Customer Care who has fixed my modem problems & in record time too!

Reumac RT @SafaricomLtd: @Reumac Appreciate this!!, happy to have you back… <- Thanks for welcoming me back.

Legal Liability

One thing I must mention is the Legal Liability issue that may arise as a result of social media. The reason you do not let interns run your social media initiatives is that they may open you up to legal problems by making careless statements. This is also the reason the legal department must be included in the social media strategy development. In the case of Safaricom, I saw a couple of tweets where, having understood the above – Safaricom tried as much as possible to clarify a point and therefore absolve themselves in case of a legal reproach from the named parties. These comments were over three different tweets which I compress into one here for easy flow…

SafaricomLtd @roomthinker Dear Roomthinker, this is to clarify that we did not say that it is Cellulan or Virtual Mobile or any other specific PRS that sent the SPAM messages. All we said is that it came from our of the PRSs, who have an existing database of customers. These two were examples of some of the existing PRSs. I hope this clarifies.

From this response, you will notice that if the impression which had been created that it is Cellulant or Virtual Mobile that were spamming people was left to stand without clarification, the mentioned companies might have a case and may taken a legal recourse against Safaricom or worse.

In the end, what wins people over in social media is being helpful. From the tweets that are crowding the Safaricom wall, Safaricom is being as helpful as possible and therefore giving value to people. This is one more reason why people will find it hard to leave Safaricom elaborated by this tweet to sent by one tweep to another who had tweeted he was leaving Safaricom for Orange.

natekev @SirLV Hmm, ok. I’m sure though that one thng u will miss about @safaricomltd is unrivalled customer care

You know you have done a good job in social media when your followers do your work for you.

I expect to see Safaricom employing an army of people to handle their twitter account because soon enough as more and more Kenyans join twitter or discover Safaricom’s presence on twitter, the amount of tweets streaming their way will rival the calls to their customer care and hence require teams of people to respond adequately. As things stand though, Safaricom are trailblazing on this end leaving their competitors kwa mataa.

For other Kenyan businesses, if you can get on Twitter and just be helpful, you will see the benefits of social media accrue to your business.

Your thoughts…

I wrote on why you need a Corporate Blog but for some reason I feel the need to reiterate the point once more but with a focus on the Banking sector.

Finance has always been very close to my heart. Economics was my favourite course at the University, closely rivaled by sociology. I have read books upon books on Economics, loved studying the Economic models, examined the trail of Economic crises from Chile, Mexico, Poland, Turkey to Brazil and recently globally by reading World Banks featuring the likes of Lawrence Summers and the Finance ministers of all these countries. I was a de-facto financial advisor for a couple of people at the University especially during the various IPO’s and the interesting rallies that were happening at NSE back then. My experiences back then and even today revealed such a big knowledge gap in people’s comprehension of the financial sector. And this extended from the very basic things like how to buy shares to the complex issues of mortgage financing, futures and hedge fund management.

It is not once that I found myself explaining one financial concept or another. And to date, questions still abound. It is interesting that when you Google quite a number of financial terminologies here in Kenya, the best you can find in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is the name quoted as a service in a Financial Institution’s website without any explanation of what these entail. Most of time, we only get is some general information on a term like mortgage financing. But that is not what we are looking for when we search for these terms. We are looking for information that is presented in a way that will leave us more informed and enable us to make decisions or inquire further without booking an appointment with you only to find you are not what I am looking for.

There is a real need for people to find financial information on whatever financial solutions they seek to learn more about and few are better equipped to explain these concepts than experts working in our financial institutions. When I was studying CFA, I flirted with the idea of writing a strictly Financial Blog that elaborated further the Financial Investment Terms. Reading the massive volumes of the CFA books exposed me so much to the inner workings of the Financial Markets which I thought I had already figured out. This information was so potent that it kills me it is not out there for people to synthesize as they make financial decisions on their kids college education, on their mortgage financing, and even on Financial Ethics.

There are financial bloggers out there with the most prominent financial bloggers in Kenya among them being Bankelele, Kainvestor, The Way I see it and SokoAnalyst . But I still hope to see more bloggers on the financial sector front given the vast amount of information Kenyans need but cannot find in search engines. For instance, depending on what financial institutions specialize in, they can develop blogs in-house where they comprehensively answer the FAQ’s, where they demonstrate authority, and allow us from the comforts of our homes or offices to inquire further via the comments sections and make decisions.

I would like to see a Kenyan blog on unit trusts, on hedge funding, on futures and options, on mortgage financing and how not to buy a house on a road reserve, on banking in general, on the NSE and CMA, on financial ethics, on insurance – all types of insurance, on financial advice, on how-to’s like how to choose one bank over another based on your financial needs and how to make online transactions safely etc. A blog taking apart the accounts being ran by the various banks – the charges, hidden charges, benefits, loopholes etc, basically, a blog on everything finance – from simple to complex concepts. In the end, we will have a financially savvy nation where any information needed is a search engine away. Obviously, the best people to do this are those already working within these financial sectors. For financial institutions, I have a feeling that depending on how best they utilize social networks, some will better authority rankings and win over customers than others.

Do you see a bank near you being open to blogging? Would you like to see that? Your thoughts…

Update: I merely mentioned hedge funds in this post yet I am already ranking on the first page on Google for “Hedge Fund Kenya”. This just reiterates my point on  how little financial info is out there.

Just made it to world cyber games here at iHub and I love the environment already. are quite a number of gamers who have made it here and I thought I’d share some pictures with you as the event moves along…

Update: The games are well under way with semifinals in some like FIFA 2010 kicking off a few minutes ago. The prices for the winners are as follows;

1. Starcraft winner – Original Version of Starcraft II
2. FIFA 2010 – This Samsung LCD Monitor Courtesy of Kalahari
3. Tekken -  This Samsung LCD Monitor Courtesy of Kalahari

Images Update:

Lovely Ladies from Tasteful Treasures - Catering

I will stay around for the rest of the day and will write more on this as it goes on. An in-depth coverage of what this portends for Kenyan Gamers will be for later. For now, just enjoy the pics and I will upload more…

For a long time, mainstream media viewed social media with skepticism as journalists took shots at bloggers for all manner of reasons. But increasingly, social media and especially blogging has already claimed its place and now Twitter (over 20 billion tweets so far) and Facebook (over 500 million users) are flexing their muscles. In Kenya, mainstream media has just recently publicly acknowledged social media. By acknowledge, I mean not treating it as a side project for interns but rather integrating it into their daily schedules. This acknowledgement can be seen with their coverage of bloggers in the papers, their now active and vocal community building as they call on people to become fans on Facebook or to follow them on Twitter, their reading of commentary to their status updates and tweets and also with individual personalities and programs building their presence in these social networks.

Months ago here in Kenya, it was only international media houses like CNN and Aljazeera that openly called for their viewers to connect with them on their Facebook Pages, on their twitter accounts and in the comments section of their blogs. This mash-up of mainstream and new media was proving very successful and popular as it allowed for insight from all over the world and interaction on a whole new level. It was specific programs that actually ran away with it like The Listening Post on Aljazeera, Back Story on CNN, the hilarious The Daily Show and soon even dinosaurs the likes of Larry King and Wolf Blitzer were in on it too. On both CNN and Aljazeera, journalists have their own blogs where they express their thoughts on stories that are running. In recent weeks, Kenya’s mainstream media started making inroads in social media and this became quite evident during the referendum vote casting yesterday.

Just recently, you would see only a few mainstream journalists in their capacities as journalists on Twitter. Only @Larrymadowo and by extension @ktnkenya had a strong presence on Twitter, @jbonyo too. But today, there has been quite the influx by both mainstream media and their respective journalists on Twitter. As of yesterday, you could see @ntvkenya @citizentvkenya

(IMPORTANT TO NOTE: I have mentioned brandjacking before and the reason people and brands sh0uld claim their usernames across social networks even if they do not plan to use them at the moment. @citizentv has been jacked and someone is asking for ransom from royal media)

and @ktnkenya all on Twitter and Facebook trying to match their updates on these social platforms with updates they had on TV. It was interesting watching @johnallannamu with his tech un-savvy-ness try to balance his on screen appearance and reading feedback from both Facebook and Twitter without appearing awkward. It was not flawless but we credit him for trying. Larry Madowo who you can say is the unofficial KTN PR guy in social networks was faultless in his marrying of both News and social media updates. He has after all been doing that for quite a while. It is always interesting to see people correcting mispronunciations or faulty statements by KTN anchors on Twitter and always tagging Larry.

The emerging reality is that most Kenyans primarily with advent of mobile internet are now constantly online and specifically on these social networks. And given this reality coupled with how cheap it is, feedback is readily offered on status updates on these popular mainstream media fanpages whether they like it or not. But now that these media houses are actively asking their followers and fans to response with their views, what you can now see is a two way conversations that social media is all about. Earlier, mainstream media were push media who just pushed content to us without a care on what we thought. But having recognized that engagement is key they are now calling for feedback and reading this feedback on air. This does two things. First, the person whose feedback or question is read is usually so excited that they spread the message to all their friends – which contributes to greater reach of the content. Second, it shows you value people’s insight and that is a sure way to win over fans.

More than just delivering content, mainstream media is now increasingly digging into social networks for content. It was interesting to note that quite a number of the information shown on TV emanated from Twitter. Additionally, the people at Ushahidi had done a great job of organizing this referendum information with their designated referendum Hashtag #kenyadecides. They were crowd sourcing and mapping this information on www.uchaguzi.co.ke. I remember a tweet by @WSJAfrica asking Kenyan tweeps for more info on the referendum to which we guided them to the designated Hashtag. There were tweet saying that yesterday was big day for citizen journalism given the flurry of information that was flowing on twitter around the referendum.

Whatever the case, we should expect a meaningful marriage between traditional and new media in Kenya because the future of the former will over time depend on how adept they get in the latter.