Digital transformation has made it easier for customers to contact companies. But adding more channels does not automatically create a better customer experience. In fact, if those channels are not connected, they can create more fragmentation.
One customer complains about a service delay today. Another complains about parts availability tomorrow. A third says they could not get an update the following week. Each complaint may be handled correctly on its own. What happens though, if all three are pointing to the same underlying problem?
The organization sees three complaints. The customer sees a company that is consistently difficult to deal with. This is where customer feedback becomes much more useful than simply looking at a score.
We have become very good at measuring customer experience. We measure NPS, CSAT, response time, complaint volumes, call duration and ticket closure rates. These measures are useful. But numbers can also give us a false sense that we understand the customer.
Consider two companies with the same NPS. Their scores may be identical, but their problems could be completely different. One may have customers who are unhappy with product quality. The other may have customers who are happy with the product but frustrated by delays, parts availability or poor communication.
The number tells us what happened. The customer ' s story tells us why. This is becoming increasingly important in African markets.
According to the Communications Authority of Kenya, 670 consumer complaints were escalated to the regulator between April and June 2026 after customers were unable to obtain satisfactory resolution from their service providers. The Authority resolved 548 of those cases, or 82 per cent, while 122 remained under follow-up.
The important point is not only the number. It is what the number represents. These customers had already tried to resolve their problems with their service providers. They had reached the point where they felt they needed someone outside the organization to listen. When a customer has to leave the organization to get the organization to listen, something has gone wrong in the customer journey.
The same lesson can be seen in South Africa, but from a different angle. The PwC South Africa Telecommunications Sentiment Index, produced with DataEQ, analyzed more than 1.3 million public social-media mentions about the country ' s telecommunications industry. The overall industry recorded a Net Sentiment score of
Digital transformation has made it easier for customers to contact companies. But adding more channels does not automatically create a better customer experience. In fact, if those channels are not connected, they can create more fragmentation.
-25 per cent. The research also highlighted problems around connectivity, customer support and digital service.
What I find interesting about this is not just the score. It is the reminder that not everything a customer says happens inside our CRM. Customers talk on social media. They talk in WhatsApp groups. They leave reviews. They talk to colleagues and friends. They share experiences with other customers. The formal CRM may tell us one thing while the wider customer conversation tells us something else.
This does not mean that every company needs to monitor every conversation happening online. That is neither practical nor necessary. The bigger issue is whether we are able to recognize patterns.
If several customers keep complaining about waiting, perhaps the problem is not simply individual employees. If several customers mention the same missing part, perhaps the problem is bigger than one order. If customers repeatedly say that nobody gives them an update, perhaps the problem is not that employees are poor communicators. Perhaps nobody clearly owns the communication.
The customer is often giving us the diagnosis. We just don ' t always connect the symptoms.
There is another customer we need to think about: the customer who stops complaining.
In some ways, this is more dangerous, because a customer who complains is still giving us an opportunity to fix the problem. A complaint is still a conversation. Silence may be a decision.
The 2026 South African Customer Experience Report, based on research among 2,000 consumers and 56 business executives, found that 81 per cent of consumers had experienced a negative customer experience in the previous year. Yet only 24 per cent said they post about poor experiences on social media or review platforms, compared with 50 per cent in 2023. The researchers specifically warned that silence should not be mistaken for satisfaction. That should make us think.
A customer who complains is giving the organization an opportunity to fix something. A customer who quietly stops buying may never tell us what went wrong. This is why I don ' t think complaint volumes alone tell us enough about customer health. Fewer complaints do not necessarily mean happier customers. Sometimes they mean customers have simply stopped believing that complaining will make a difference.
So, what should we do differently?
I don ' t think the answer is simply to buy another CRM system or add another digital channel. The first step is to change the way we use the information we already have.
Instead of asking only, " How many complaints did we receive?", we should ask, " What are customers repeatedly trying to tell us?"
Instead of asking, " How quickly are we closing tickets?", we should ask, " How much effort is the customer having to make before the problem is actually resolved?"
Instead of asking only, " What is our NPS?", we should ask, " Why are our detractors unhappy, and are the same reasons appearing repeatedly?"
And instead of asking, " Did we respond?", we should ask, " Did the customer get what they needed?"
These may sound like small changes, but they lead to very different conversations in management meetings.
There is also a simple test that any organization can try. Take a customer who has contacted the business several times. Give their history to an employee who has never spoken to that customer before. Then ask: " Can you understand this customer ' s story
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