By David Jenkin

What was the vision behind the founding of Ask Afrika?

I wanted to make a socio-economic contribution, by creating employment. I wanted to create social change by building benchmarks, which raise the social discourse and thus speed up change.

The creation of industry benchmarks in the form of brand indexes is a key part of what you do – what is the purpose/value of these benchmarks?

The key benefit of brand benchmarks is that brands benchmark themselves against peers and best practice in their industries, and with Orange Index in particular, which benchmarks services across other industries – as often the best practice lies outside your own industry.

Customer service executives, HR and training, heads of channels, and researchers that want a holistic framework from which to devise and control service strategies, make use of the benchmarks – as brand and service strategies can’t exist in isolation.

Benchmarks also provide service or brand driver importance and performance, it provides an external validation of service or brand performance, and service benchmarks look at service consistency across the value chain. The purpose of a benchmark is to determine which part of the service or brand strategy works. As strategies are often more than one component, with large time and budget investment, it is worth understanding what component of the strategy works and what doesn’t.

How has technology changed the way you work – is it making your lives easier?

We are regarded as one of the most high-tech companies. We use technology to collect higher integrity data and to control every part of the interviewing process, regardless of where it takes place geographically.

Surveys are programmed for electronic data collection upfront. Our field-force is enabled by 500 questionnaire triggers and skips are controlled by our advanced data collection software. Interviewer production, length of interviews, number of interviews per day, interviews per hour, and time of interviews are tracked by our reporting dashboards.

We also make use of advanced GIS spatial algorithms and software to track the interviewer’s whereabouts, place of interviews via a GPS coordinate, and to prevent interviewers from conducting interviews in incorrect areas (by making use of a geofence, we can control and prevent interviewers from conducting interviews in locations that are not approved as an interviewing point). Recently, we added covert recordings to our quality control criteria by randomly audio recording certain conversations between the interviewer and the respondents to verify that the questionnaire script was adhered to.

The research industry has experience a recent increase in video mystery shopping (VMS) projects. Ask Afrika has the capability of conducting VMS with the latest and best button cameras and spy glasses (HD 1080p video resolution).

What major obstacles do you face researching in South Africa and the rest of Africa?

When completing a survey for government or government affiliated clients, social/political unrest created by a lack of service delivery by the local municipality can sometimes create hostility towards our interviewers conducting interviews in these areas.

An example of an obstacle faced in foreign countries like Nigeria include variables like Boko Haram, which restricts teams from accessing certain regions or areas for interviewing.
Internet connectivity in African countries is sometimes an issue when completing computer-assisted personal interviews – the internet connections are not stable enough to ensure full time connectivity to our data collection software. Although our software does allow for offline interviewing which ensures that productivity is not hindered.

Specifically in South Africa, local security companies regularly stop our teams that are in field to question their activities. Even though Ask Afrika is experienced in dealing with these companies, they do sometimes stop our teams and request them to leave the area. This is generally due to a recent crime that has been committed in the area that creates a distrust towards people that are new in the area.

Security estates and gated communities also take some time to access when conducting face-to-face interviews. The general procedure is to gain permission from the body corporation before entry is granted.

In terms of general trends, how has the profile of the South African consumer (and the African consumer broadly) been changing?

Service expectations have changed significantly over the past five years in South Africa. Consumers are more sophisticated, they expect more, don’t give as much credit for hygiene factors anymore, and have expanded their list of expectations.

This is in conjunction with more choice, less ‘loyal’ consumers, more service channels and elevated access to information. This not only shapes what consumers know and expect from brands, but also how they engage with brands, how they judge performance, and how they evolve their relationship with brands.

However, great service is not sufficient for loyalty/commitment and a strong emotional satisfaction is becoming more imperative. Therefore, brands need to make an emotional connection with the consumers by leveraging the specific emotional trigger for their target market, not only through their product, but also through their service delivery.

Moreover, differentiating service experiences are now about customers expecting the unexpected. Customers expect the same innovation they experience on a product and marketing front to filter through to the service environment.

In short, South Africans are passionate, volatile, very open to change, very open to alternatives and very open to seductions from competitor brands. Therefore, the emotional brand experience becomes more critical.

What’s it like to be a researcher at Ask Afrika?

You are constantly exposed and challenged with new projects, ways of thinking and doing things. At times you do work outside your comfort zone, so it never gets boring, which keeps me motivated.

It is a constant learning experience as we are always learning how to better extract the best from each other in order to always learn how to better meet the objectives.

I can compare being a researcher to the tides of the ocean. It is always moving, evolving, and changing. As a researcher you have to adapt, learn, evolve, persist, and stretch yourself constantly through the stormy high seas and the low tides. You discover wondrous things about yourself and grow as a person, grow in your capabilities and confidence.

Please explain the statement that Ask Afrika fuses art with science.

Ask Afrika employs numerous statisticians and qualified research psychologists. This enables us to form a backbone of rigorous scientific experimentation through the application of methodological research techniques. However, our conceptual models are based on the art of psychology where we use our professional experience, empathic intuition, and judgment to understand the psychology behind consumer behaviour.

Moreover, our offices are enveloped in artistic masterpieces to inspire our left-brain thinking and balance the scientific mindset required for traditional research. This is not only visible in our customised conceptual models, but also through our brand, presentations, and the artistic delivery of results.

For more information, visit www.askafrika.co.za. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook, Twitter or on LinkedIn.