How do we call out problems with businesses, customer service interaction and lack of service? That’s what Mark Kaigwa and team are trying to answer in Kenya and East Africa. The header on the GotIssuez website states:

“The customer is always right. Gotissuez.com is a platform where customers exercise their right to expose product shortcomings, poor service delivery or suggest ways of improving the products or services.”

GotIssuez is an on-line market research company primarily concentrating on three areas: consumer research, product research and service delivery. Their website is a tool to address the real shortcomings that many in East Africa face when trying to deal with the unusually bad customer service that permeates most of the businesses that operate in the region.

Their tool is mainly focused on the younger generation, people who are web and mobile phone savvy and who aren’t hesitant to raise their voice in protest of bad customer service or bad experiences. At any given time you might see complaints on the “crappy YU (mobile) network”, “Ngong Hills – A poor welcome at the entrance” or griping about political issues. Other users can go in and agree, disagree or help solve the problem the stated problem.

It’s a play to the crowd, a home-brewed combination of what we see on sites like Digg married up with the functionality of sites like Dell’s IdeaStorm.

I was intrigued by the one above actually, as it’s a complaint over the campaign to save endangered lions in Kenya. It’s had a pretty big impact on a certain group of people, mainly businesses and the upper class (so the poster to GotIssuez states). It’s also a good reminder that one mans treasure is another mans trash… 🙂

The Business

GotIssuez is currently implementing a large research and development project called ‘Tangaza.’ With this they have already began looking and measuring high-end statistics and detailed metrics on trends, opinions, comparisons and key information relevant to brands. Their focus is to continue to work on this as their business model develops and evolves.

It’s important to note that their tool is not their only effort in the brand monitoring, consumer research and service delivery space. While that is a primary outreach and awareness tool, much of their business comes from the services that they offer to organizations offline.