Suss Ads bets on AI to transform customer service across Africa
Suss CX, an AI-powered customer-experience platform, brings conversations from across social media into a single system.
Nairobi-based advertising technology firm Suss Ads is venturing into enterprise customer-experience software, leveraging artificial intelligence to manage increasing volumes of customer conversations across digital platforms. The company has introduced Suss CX, an AI-driven customer-experience platform that consolidates conversations from WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram into a single system.
This strategic expansion aims to meet the growing demand for tools that can automate routine customer interactions while preserving human support for more complex enquiries. Suss CX offers a hybrid model, where AI handles routine inquiries while more intricate conversations are escalated to human agents. The platform provides real-time insights into customer interactions, including recurring questions, complaints, and service performance.
Suss Ads' founder and managing partner, Dennis Maina, emphasizes the importance of addressing the fragmentation caused by the proliferation of customer-interaction channels. "WhatsApp is becoming a core layer of customer-experience infrastructure for businesses," Maina noted. "Our goal with Suss CX is to provide businesses with a unified platform where AI and human teams can manage these conversations, regardless of where customers choose to engage."
This expansion marks a shift in Suss Ads' business model, transitioning from advertising technology to enterprise customer-experience solutions. The company initially developed its customer-experience technology around WhatsApp and piloted it with betting firm SportPesa. They have since expanded deployments to Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, targeting sectors such as banking, betting and gaming, telecommunications, retail, e-commerce, and travel.
By integrating these conversations, Suss Ads aims to provide businesses with a clearer understanding of customer-service performance and the cost of handling interactions across various platforms. The platform also supports WhatsApp Embedded Signup, allowing eligible businesses to connect their Meta business assets and phone numbers to Suss CX through Meta's Business Platform onboarding process, subject to Meta's verification requirements.
As businesses increasingly explore generative AI for cost-efficient customer service, Suss Ads sees an opportunity to balance automation with the human touch. A Gartner survey revealed that 50 percent of respondents found interactions easier when companies used generative AI, while 87 percent still desired human agent access. Suss Ads positions its platform to cater to this duality rather than replace customer-care teams.
By consolidating customer conversations into a single platform, Suss Ads aims to help companies navigate the tension between AI-driven automation and the need for human intervention, particularly in emerging markets where WhatsApp is a dominant communication channel.
Written by urgent.news from Capital FM Kenya's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
