Booming African mobile markets to get boost from Nordic expertise

SUBTONOMY (https://www.Subtonomy.com/), the Nordic Network Experience Platform provider, has announced that it will attend AfricaCom in South Africa (8-10 November 2022) to bring its world-class digital customer support offering to the continent.

The African digital revolution

It is time to reconsider Africa’s position in the global digital market. Long hampered by affordability and availability issues, the introduction of lower-cost smartphones and ubiquitous, higher-capacity mobile networks has provided a huge boost to growth. Young, internet-savvy Africans are optimistic and opportunistic about technology, using it to express their creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and thirst for knowledge. Africa, already the world leader in mobile money, is poised to leap forward, free of legacy technologies and processes and fueled by youthful demographics. Because of the continent’s rapid transition to a mobile-first, digital economy, it already has more smartphone users than North America, and Sub-Saharan Africa will have 474 million internet users (39% of the population) by 2025.

New demands on the network, new customer expectations

Young Africans have moved far beyond their parents’ expectations of mobile services, whether it’s for banking, finding work, shopping, creating, listening to music, or watching their favorite shows. While the future of the African mobile market appears bright, it is not without challenges. African operators will have to deal with large numbers of new customers and find cost-effective ways to support them as they transition from 3G to 4G, from feature phones to smartphones, and from simple to complex service offerings in the coming years.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, African Gen Z customers’ expectations are skyrocketing. They, like their social media friends around the world, expect high-quality, continuous services backed up by world-class, 24/7 customer support when things go wrong. If they don’t get it, they’re more willing to walk away than ever before.

And it is precisely in this area that African operators can learn from the experience of other mobile-first markets, such as the Nordics. For many years, Nordic operators have been at the forefront of efficient and cost-effective digital customer care. Customers of Subtonomy, for example, can already automate 75% of customer support in digital channels and improve contact center efficiency to deliver 60% fewer escalations and 47% faster call handling.