Firms in the world serve humanity to make profit, they find a need and meet it and run campaigns to help humanity but this is not always the case. As corporations grow, there have been complaints by customers and fans of how impersonal they become especially in customer care. The customer who used to be king becomes trash.
That’s what inspired 32-year-old Michael K. Ocansey to find Kuzima in Ghana.
Ocansey says Kuzima was coined from ‘Kusema’ in Swahili and it allows customers to help put an end to poor customer service by giving them an opportunity and channel to shame and praise companies that provide essential services to the people.
When was it launched and where?
Kuzima launched on the 26th of October at DEMO Africa in Nairobi
Who are its founders their age,education or firm behind it?
32 year old Ghanaian, Michael K. Ocansey founded the firm.
What inspired them to find it?
Inspired by the need to DO SOMETHING about the constant frustrations I experienced when dealing with customer service personnel and providers of services in general
How does it work?
Kuzima is both web and mobile based (www.kuzima.com) and available for Android (www.kuzima.com/Kuzima.apk). Users only to sign up with a nickname, email and password and immediately start shaming and praising companies. Users can also respond to other people’s comments. We send your comments to the company responsible for them to respond to you either via email, phone or post a response to your comment on the Kuzima website.
How many users on board now?
Slightly over 200
What is your business model?
Free to post comments and responses. Companies have the option to interact with customers at a more detailed level at a fee.
Competition?
www.hellopeter.com in South Africa, www.nevahold.com in Ghana
How unique are you from the competition?
Kuzima is very simple to use and allows users to post comments from both our website and on twitter with the #kuzimaweb hashtag
Any funding, awards yet?
None yet. We haven’t looked for any.
Partnerships?
Yes with SMSGH in ghana to build Kuzima 4 Business. This provides add-on services for corporates
Challenges?
Advertising and usage. A lot of people love the idea when we pitch but just feel reluctant to post their grievances
Future plans?
Build more mobile versions of the app for the different major mobile platforms (iOS, Blackberry, Windows mobile, Symbian, J2me etc)
