Esi Akyere Mensah – författare

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.

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.

Hospitality and Tourism Marketing: Building Customer Driven Hospitality and Tourism Organizations is an absolutely crucial book in light of the world post COVID-19. Following the pandemic, big hotel chains like the Accor Group and Marriot closed outlets, but post COVID-19, the global hospitality and tourism sector is bouncing back. In bouncing back though, the pandemic brought to the fore the absolute need for high levels of customer centricity in a world that was gripped by fear. This new Hospitality and Tourism (H&T) Marketing book takes a customer-oriented approach to discussing marketing discipline in the global H&T sector. With chapters spanning topics like service characteristics of hospitality and tourism marketing, people management strategies for service businesses, consumer behaviour, designing and building brands, electronic marketing, internet marketing, database marketing, and direct marketing and relationship marketing, this book has the right balance of technology and consumer-oriented topics to provide the right balance for tourism marketing practitioners post pandemic.

Hospitality and Tourism Marketing: Building Customer Driven Hospitality and Tourism Organizations is an absolutely crucial book in light of the world post COVID-19. Following the pandemic, big hotel chains like the Accor Group and Marriot closed outlets, but post COVID-19, the global hospitality and tourism sector is bouncing back. In bouncing back though, the pandemic brought to the fore the absolute need for high levels of customer centricity in a world that was gripped by fear. This new Hospitality and Tourism (H&T) Marketing book takes a customer-oriented approach to discussing marketing discipline in the global H&T sector. With chapters spanning topics like service characteristics of hospitality and tourism marketing, people management strategies for service businesses, consumer behaviour, designing and building brands, electronic marketing, internet marketing, database marketing, and direct marketing and relationship marketing, this book has the right balance of technology and consumer-oriented topics to provide the right balance for tourism marketing practitioners post pandemic.