NAIROBI, Kenya, May 6 – For many local businesses, and especially the small and mid-sized enterprises, getting good software to manage things such as customer feedback can be a daunting affair.
Part of the reason for this is that a lot of the customer support and data analytics software marketed locally is produced by foreign companies.
And while the purchasing power of local SMEs may differ from that of their international counterparts, the foreign developers tend to sell their support software at standard rates without taking into account the varying economic capabilities.
When mandated with getting support software to manage feedback from customers of a local betting company he worked for as an IT manager, Japheth Dibo, faced a similar challenge.
Most of the companies able to supply this kind of software were foreign companies, but these, he says, would charge them millions of shillings to deploy the software. Even then, implementation was slow, taking a month for it to become operational.
“A normal phone can handle two calls at a time. We needed software that could manage up to 1,000 calls coming in at the same time. Traditionally, this kind of software has mostly been developed by foreign companies, who are expensive,” notes Dibo, co-founder of Dial Afrika.
This is what motivated him to leverage on his background in software development and build customer support tools that would enable companies to communicate with their customers affordably either via voice or written text.
He partnered with Ben Gavana, a commercial operations and analysis expert, and together, the duo launched Dial Afrika.
Primarily, the firm would develop call management software to help mid-sized companies with between 20-50 employees manage phone calls coming in from their customers at the same time.
They would also create ticketing software to enable companies to manage customer feedback on their social media platforms. Integrating feedback from various digital channels be it Facebook, websites or WhatsApp onto one software would enable companies to respond quickly to queries.
“It does not matter which platform a customer gives their feedback or query from. Once the company responds through the software, from the other end, the customer may think they are receiving the feedback from the platform they used to send their queries,” notes Ben Gavana.
The duo had everything figured out, but like many other start-ups, access to adequate capital to enable them acquire the right technical talent for instance, to assist them in developing the software was a challenge.
They reached out to several investors in vain, until finally, venture capital firm Oak Capital agreed to support them.
They also received some funding from Expert Dojo, an American investor, Metis Capital from Nigeria, and a private Kenyan angel investor, who helped them to complete their products.
“Local companies have the capability to create products which rival those produced by international companies, the only difference is that they do not have adequate resources to effectively implement their ideas,” noted Olukayode Olusanya, the Managing Partner of Oak Capital.
“We chose to support Dial Afrika because of their ability to leverage on technology to solve critical problems facing organisations, especially the SMEs,” he added.
Fast forward to the year 2023, Dial Afrika currently has a footprint in five African countries including Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Their biggest selling point has been that they can offer competitive pricing of their products.
“If you look at the software that is in the market, we are about 25-65 per cent cheaper than the most affordable and most expensive competing products respectively,” notes Gavana.
“This is not because we are trying to reach more people, or be competitive, but because most of our competitors’ pricings are structured to the foreign market.”
The firm also develops artificial intelligence software which assists SMEs to analyse data coming in and make informed decisions without having to employ data scientists which may be an expensive asset to SMEs.
The software can also help analyse positive, neutral or negative comments to enable companies to respond accordingly.
“It is mostly big companies that use these kinds of software because they are very expensive. If you are an e-commerce startup, how can you compete with established companies, which, besides using the software, have the capability of hiring several data scientists?” argues Dibo.
