Customer Service Delivery in Africa: Consumer Perceptions of Quality in Selected African Countries

Customer service management is one of the key pillars of today’s business environment. Businesses operating in sub-Saharan Africa and other frontier markets have begun to embrace the concept of customer service management, with many incorporating the notion into their mission statements – with many forward-thinking companies transitioning from a transactional to a more strategic view of the customer. As customers have evolved and transformed from "passive audiences" to "active players" businesses are moving away from "the old industry model that sees value as created from goods and services to a new model where value is created by experiences".

Today, businesses and customers create value through customised, co-produced offerings. This co-creation of value helps firms highlight the customer’s or consumer’s point of view and improve the front-end process of identifying customers’ needs. Given the increasing recognition of the customer as a co-creator of value, perceptions of customer service quality during COVID-19 and afterwards matter to businesses in Africa looking to thrive in a new post-COVID era since customers increasingly face several choices in the bid to access consumer products and services.

This book consists of seven chapters beginning with an overview detailing the importance of customer service matters to Africa’s development and ending with a discussion of the future directions for enhanced customer service delivery in Africa. Each chapter in this book includes actual customer service and delivery practices from various countries on the African continent, including Egypt, Ghana, and South Africa, and uncovers the challenges, successes, and potential areas for improvement in delivering quality customer service.

Robert E. Hinson is currently the Pro Vice-Chancellor at the Ghana Communication Technology, having served previously as the Deputy Vice Chancellor – Academic at the University of Kigali with additional responsibility as Interim Vice Chancellor of the same University. His main research interests lie in the academic areas of marketing and communications, information and technology management, service management, and social responsibility and sustainability management. He has 33 monographs/Edited volumes and over 150 peer reviewed journal papers/book chapters to his credit. He was ranked by the 2021 and 2022 Alper-Doger (AD) Scientific Index as the #1 African Marketing Scholar and leading business and management scholar in Ghana. His book collection can be accessed at www.robertebohinsonbooks.com

Esi Akyere Mensah is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management with over 9 years of teaching and research experience in Ghanaian, British and Ivorian institutions. She has taught tourism and business management and sustainability courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her research areas cover a wide range of topics, including post-COVID-19 tourism recovery, sustainability, and leadership in higher education. She is interested in the intersections of migration, development and tourism. Her research in tourism focuses on niche tourism such volunteer tourism and host guest interactions in tourism. Her papers have been published in Tourism Management Perspectives, Journal of International Migration and Integration, International Journal of Tourism Cities and Anatolia. She is currently an editorial board member of the Tourism Planning and Development Journal, a copy editor and a reviewer for tourism journals and corporate institutions. Her social media handles include https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-esi-akyere-mensah-156bb0103 / and https://www.facebook.com/esiam).

Doreen Nyarko Anyamesem Odame is the examination officer in the Department of General Studies at the Ghana Communication Technology University and she can be reached on dodame@gctu.edu.gh. Doreen’s research interests lie at the intersection of African Business Management, African Developmental Issues and Public Sector Management in Africa. She is published in prestigious journals like the International Journal of Social Economics and has a forthcoming co-authored book titled "Social Media and Africa’s Public Sector: Perspectives on Contemporary Issues” ‘to be published by Springer in 2023.