Customer support of Nigerian companies

[Curious T]

Contrary to popular belief, Nigerian tech companies are doing very well. There are a lot of tech companies in Nigeria whose services are actually very good, but I feel the majority of them lack proper customer service representation. I have used some services that are actually very good, but it's very difficult to get proper customer service when you try to contact them. It is generally not like that with foreign companies. Recently, I started using an exchange platform to sell BTC for Naira, and it was a very smooth process. Everything was very good. One day, payment was delayed for about an hour, which is not normal at all because I usually get paid within 30 seconds. So I tried to reach out to the customer service channels they had on the app, but none of them responded to me. I messaged the in-app customer service, I messaged their support on X and even on Instagram, but no reply. I then sent a mail, and that is where I got a reply after about another hour, directing me to message them via live chat, which I have already done without any reply. They replied to me on Facebook, but it was after I received the money.

I have had this same issue with different tech companies in the country in the past 10 years, not just crypto companies. I want to understand: is it that I am the only one who sees this, or do they generally feel that side of the business is not important enough? Why have support channels if you're not going to use them to attend to people? Why say 24/7 support staff if you're not ready to do it? I asked business owners to let me know if that part of the business is so insignificant.

[osasshem]

Most times, those sayings are barely meet, because they want customers to hear good service conditions while using their services, but they most time finds it difficult to keep up with the services they claim they are rendering. Platforms that are not active on their social media handles will find it challenging to attend to immediate support when the need arises.

I don't use any Nigerian exchange companies for crypto transactions yet, therefore I may not have much to say about the those companies, but Fin-Techs like Opay, Moniepoint etc. renders a steady customer services with no much a stress, and the banks does the same, but will not be compared to the Fin-Techs.

[Su-asa]

I want to understand: is it that I am the only one who sees this,

The truth is, you are not alone; many people out there also have the same complaint about inactive customer support service at a few online companies/business.

or do they generally feel that side of the business is not important enough?

Speaking sincerely, the customer support service is also part of a product, and if there are a lot of complaints about the inactive customer support service, then the entire product or the brand isn't complete because without an active customer support service there's nowhere else someone will go to whenever there's a complaint or enquiry about the product or brand. So in that case, if business owners think it's not important, then there's a very big misunderstanding.

Why say 24/7 support staff if you're not ready to do it?

A lot of business people don't know the importance of honesty, and/or they can't afford to hire an active team to handle their support service for them.

I asked business owners to let me know if that part of the business is so insignificant.

Every part of a business is very important, unless a business owner doesn't know what they are doing and will not understand the disadvantage of inactive customer support service.

[Cryptomultiplier]

Most times, those sayings are barely meet, because they want customers to hear good service conditions while using their services, but they most time finds it difficult to keep up with the services they claim they are rendering. Platforms that are not active on their social media handles will find it challenging to attend to immediate support when the need arises.

I don't use any Nigerian exchange companies for crypto transactions yet, therefore I may not have much to say about the those companies, but Fin-Techs like Opay, Moniepoint etc. renders a steady customer services with no much a stress, and the banks does the same, but will not be compared to the Fin-Techs.

In my experience as regards customer service response on fintech banks or even for exchange or regular stock exchange platforms, their customer service response is mostly always automated. You can't actually talk or get a real response from a live person but from a bot that keeps asking questions for you to choose from options they present. Unless you have their email address and send them a direct message or call their lines directly, you get no response.

Funny enough is that the only customer service that's mostly active is those of loan apps that call you regularly and even insult you when you lag or default in your repayment plan. Besides this, any customer service these days is mostly automated and non responsive as it used to be. Just my observation though.

[Amphenomenon]

I have had this same issue with different tech companies in the country in the past 10 years, not just crypto companies. I want to understand: is it that I am the only one who sees this, or do they generally feel that side of the business is not important enough? Why have support channels if you're not going to use them to attend to people? Why say 24/7 support staff if you're not ready to do it? I asked business owners to let me know if that part of the business is so insignificant.

While it still occurs with other tech companies, for experience it's more common with crypto platforms and it's not just Nigeria.
Sometimes the approach used are not really secure which can put customers in the eyes of scammers and one easy example is them encouraging or directing customers to open complaints on social media comments or groups that is public.

Customer support is a big thing for top companies and they take things seriously knowing how much they might be losing from poor customer support but in regarding crypto platforms there is more to do especially in Nigeria.

[Nasdel4]

You're not the only one with such experience OP, I have equally noticed something similar with some fintech and crypto companies which I won't mention here. I'll say their product and services are not always the problem but their customer service. They need to pay more attention to their customers because they determine the growth of their businesses most times and I'm sure every customer will feel safer when they have access to live support and fast response.
Sometimes you can be using a certain platform for a long time without trouble but the moment you find something challenging you'll then discover how difficult it is to reach out to get help from their customer support. They probably spend more time trying to get new customers than attending to the already existing ones.

[Obim34]

I have had this same issue with different tech companies in the country in the past 10 years, not just crypto companies. I want to understand: is it that I am the only one who sees this, or do they generally feel that side of the business is not important enough? Why have support channels if you're not going to use them to attend to people? Why say 24/7 support staff if you're not ready to do it? I asked business owners to let me know if that part of the business is so insignificant.

Reason why i find it difficult to use any of Nigeria's known exchanges, simply not because of the rates, but because of what happens if, in between transactions, anything goes wrong. I've used foreign platforms, and I get instant responses from their Telegram channels, if it is a problem that will be solved immediately, it will be attended to. Good customer care is very essential for every online business.

[Churchillvv]

Basically I genuinely believe that the people who would have worked as customers support in most tech companies in Nigeria or especially in the crypto world, the platforms are not able to hire them because they do not pay enough to get the local customers support, when you go to freelance or fiverr you see that most of the people work with international clients and those international clients are mostly international crypto companies so instead of getting local issues solved fast you can get a higher level of response from international companies.

I may not put this words properly but what I’m saying is that we do not hire much customer support in Nigeria that part is always less focused on, because those who know how to handle it properly work for international clients and local clients can’t afford to hire them.

[promise444c5]

You didn’t mentioned the name of the exchange.. how do you expect us to tell you if we have experienced such or not .

You’ve answered the ‘general’ question, companies defer and the experience on this will be quite different from the one on another. But generally, my experience with different companies support in Nigeria has always been below average, even the ones that are into financial services, some of them sucks especially our commercial banks.

The ones with good support always have a high score of around 90% but we somehow have  more bad than the good… 

[Hypnotizer]

I have had this same issue with different tech companies in the country in the past 10 years, not just crypto companies. I want to understand: is it that I am the only one who sees this, or do they generally feel that side of the business is not important enough? Why have support channels if you're not going to use them to attend to people? Why say 24/7 support staff if you're not ready to do it? I asked business owners to let me know if that part of the business is so insignificant.

I’ve recently had an issue with a new fintech when registering an account and i message the support, created a ticket because the bot couldn’t help with a convincing answer and I got a human customer care response 12 hours later through email. So some of these companies do have support staffs but they’re likely not enough to or can’t work 24/7 to answer customers complaint.

Nigerian companies needs lots of improvements especially on this customer service, because how fast a customer can get a response when something goes south heavily influence his trust on the platform.

[Crypto_Timothy]

I have had this same issue with different tech companies in the country in the past 10 years, not just crypto companies. I want to understand: is it that I am the only one who sees this, or do they generally feel that side of the business is not important enough? Why have support channels if you're not going to use them to attend to people? Why say 24/7 support staff if you're not ready to do it? I asked business owners to let me know if that part of the business is so insignificant.

I think it is because of the kind of environment Nigeria is, we Nigerians most times, we focus on functionality and once that works, we really don't care too far how the business is going so long as money is being made, everywhere is good and also, most of these companies don't fear government in terms of like policies that would affect their business if for instance, their company was reported for bad customers service or something like that.
The other day I was buying fuel for the vehicle I was in and I told the girl that she should put 30k ... unfortunately I wasn't conscious and the lady who was very fast just finished and my driver drove off, only for us to reach certain distance and 30k worth of fuel had supposednly  finished, when we went back it turned out she only put 10k fuel. Now imagine the confrontation and representation of the customer support and the experience that gave me. The company still operates fine til today and if course everyone just moves like nothing big happened but let a fuel company try this outside Nigeria and see.

[Ever-young]

I have had this same issue with different tech companies in the country in the past 10 years, not just crypto companies. I want to understand: is it that I am the only one who sees this, or do they generally feel that side of the business is not important enough? Why have support channels if you're not going to use them to attend to people? Why say 24/7 support staff if you're not ready to do it? I asked business owners to let me know if that part of the business is so insignificant.

To answer your question, that part of the business is not insignificant, infact it is very significant. And incase you’re wondering what the problem really is, I’ll tell you, but two assurance I can give you right now is that you’re not alone, and it’s not just Nigeria.

Now let’s talk about it; I bring to you to same companies, when I say same, I mean they doing the same thing, same scale and in general very identical, assume this two companies are in different countries, one may be having 24 workers and the other 57. They cannot have same work ethics.

On some companies they hire an employee as customer support, while some assign it to an employee that already have existing duties that they were employed for. This is because greed has planted a seed that the job is too simple to be debiting the company monthly in the name of salary.

That part is significant, just that in some countries you have to work very hard to earn a salary, and they see this part as soft work. Most times they don’t even speak to you as a customer because that not what they’re paid for.