The Price of Trust
A conversation on what it takes to build trust in your customer base
Trust is expensive. Ask anyone who’s ever run a business, been swindled, or had their heart broken.
This month, at The Africa Playbook, we’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes for businesses to build trust in a customer base, especially in the early days. Lewam Kefela had the pleasure of interviewing two amazing operators that have built strong brands in different industries, Babajide Duroshola and Odunayo Eweniyi. In this conversation, Babajide recalls what it took for customers to trust SafeBoda (a motorcycle taxi ride hailing platform) with their safety, and drivers to trust them with their income. While Odunayo recalls what it took for customers to trust Piggyvest (a savings and investment platform) with their financial future. They share lessons learned, mistakes made and advice they wish they had on day one.
If you prefer Apple Podcasts, find the episode here.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
People don’t trust brands, they trust people:
On day one, you’re the brand. Especially if you’re building a B2C company, you need to put yourself out there and be accessible to your users. If your users see someone they can hold accountable, for better or worse, they’re more likely to trust you. Odunayo discusses how her and her Piggyvest co-founders leveraged social media to be accessible to their users and create trust in their brand. Babajide recalls how he spent a lot of time with SafeBoda drivers to ensure they were comfortable using the platform, and had someone to turn to when issues arose.
Meet your customers where they are:
Understand your customer persona, their behavior, and how they engage. If your target customer is largely offline, you need to deploy offline customer acquisition strategies like SafeBoda did. If your target customer is online, use social media and digital content like Piggyvest did.
Leverage your network for early customers:
If people in your network fit your target customer profile, make them your first users. It’s an easy way to get detailed feedback early on that you can act on. Both Babajide and Odunayo onboarded their friends and family as their earliest users. They advise thick skin in this process - brace yourself for a lot of “no”s and high user attrition. “No”s are particularly painful when it comes from people close to us, but try to learn from them and keep growing your audience. Customer loyalty doesn’t come overnight - you have to earn it.
Referrals are everything:
Referrals allow you to leverage the trust of your existing users to recruit new ones. It’s particularly critical early on when you don’t have an established brand. But referrals can be a double edged sword - users can create trust by endorsing your product or destroy trust by renouncing it. Both Piggyvest and SafeBoda cite referrals as their most successful customer acquisition channel. So invest in your referral programs and in a seamless customer experience. Reviews can literally make or break your company.
Transparency and consistency:
Not everything will be perfect all the time. You’ll make mistakes and some things will be out of your control. The best thing to do in those instances is to be transparent, communicative and consistent. Babajide and Odunayo recount stories of how they managed to mitigate fallout by being transparent with their users in difficult times.
Show Notes:
2:40 - How did you know your product was solving a real customer need? (Odun)
3:23 - How did you navigate entering a new market with this product? (Babajide)
4:45 - How did you get your first few customers to trust you? (Odun)
7:20 - How did you get new users and new drivers to trust you? How did these processes differ? (Babajide)
11:22 - As your brands grew, how did your customer acquisition channels change? (both)
18:10 - What was the hardest thing when trying to attract your first users? (both)
23:43 - What measures do you think are critical to create trust long term? (both)
30:00 - How do your teams collect customer feedback and how do they use it to optimize product development? (both)
38:43 - As competitors enter the market, how do you set yourself apart? How do you build a long lasting brand? (both)
42:00 - What advice would you give someone that’s just launched a product? (both)
More about our guests:
Odunayo Eweniyi is the co-founder & Chief Operations Officer, PiggyVest, the largest digital savings and investment platform in Nigeria. She’s an award winning fintech entrepreneur who is working for diversity equity and inclusion in fintech and technology as a whole. And when she’s not doing that, she’s tweeting or watching TV shows. She is also a co-founder of the Africa Playbook.
Babajide Duroshola is a Business Management Executive with extensive expertise in startups, technology, banking and consulting. With over 10 years of extensive transnational experience across roles, he has developed comprehensive competence in business management, strategy, marketing, operations, community and ecosystem management and engagement. Babajide’s ability to proactively engage new information and catalyse growth has been one of the major mainstays of his professional advancement. His passion for knowledge exploration coupled with an adventurous appreciation for challenges uniquely positions him for impact within the startup ecosystem. Leveraging these, he has developed in-depth insight into the dynamics of business development, cross-functional team management, communications operations, business acumen, marketing automation and effective problem solving. Babajide is a General Manager at M-KOPA, and the former Country Director at SafeBoda.
Onwards, Africa!