Kojo Hayford: 0:00

If there's any continent in this world that has a demographic dividend is African period, nowhere else.

Rick Denton: 0:09

Customer Experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk, we've been cleared for takeoff. The best meals are served outside and require passport. A new country for today's episode. I love getting new perspectives. I am thrilled to introduce our first guest from Ghana. Kojo Hayford Kojo is the founder and CEO of E Sal LLC, leading the charge and business process outsourcing and customer experience transformation in Africa. with over three decades of experience Cojo has built and nurtured technology enabled startups across industries like energy distribution, digital health and financial services, his mission to open new frontiers for global brands in Africa and empower the youth of his vibrant continent. He describes himself to me as quote, an evangelist of a new sub Saharan destinations for business. I am so excited to get a CX perspective from a new country Kojo, welcome to CX passport.

Kojo Hayford: 1:16

Thanks a lot, Rick. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Rick Denton: 1:22

I am deeply looking forward to this as the smile on my face shows I do want to start with a wide lens. What do you see? What's the current state of customer experience in Ghana? What are trends now? And what you're seeing on the horizon, I

Kojo Hayford: 1:37

have a Pan African perspective. So I'd really talk about, you know, the Pan African as a destination of Pan Africa is a destination of choice. Ghana is just one piece of that puzzle. And typically, and I will look at two locations that are gaining a lot of attention globally, you know, as Indian Philippines become mature, and on the African continent where you have North Africa, which is basically Morocco, and Egypt and South Africa become really not mature destinations. global brands and their service providers are beginning to look at new frontiers, new destinations. COVID has probably been accelerated that. And, you know, Africa is now on the map. What is more interesting is that global brands are tiptoeing into Africa, some of the more aggressive ones have already set foot. So if you look at Summit, a very big tier one companies have already established a footprint, some acquisitions recently, as position the likes of concentrics and TP in locations like Ghana, and Kenya now. And I look at Africa, basically as two regions, West Africa, which is close to 1617 countries that has both English, French and Spanish. And then East Africa that I would say the center of gravity is in Kenya, that has predominantly English as well. What I see is just global brands are looking for Global English, you know, that standard labor arbitrage. But what I see as an imagined trend is that global brands are also looking at, for example, in these two regions, you've got 974 million population, let's take 30% of them as an addressable market. That's a huge market for global brands to sell into what global brands are going to realize is to sell into these markets, you have to have some cultural alignment and you will be faced with language barriers because now you're selling to customers who are not speaking your language, but you need to sell to them and therefore from a C aspects perspective, you need to be able to connect with them in the language of their choice or in the language, the dominant languages and I think sometimes we in the West, or the West basically paints Africa with one brush, okay? To say, hey, you've got 1000s of languages. No, most of them Most of Africa can be broken into dominant ethnic groups and dominant languages. And therefore, you should be able to with a few, a few languages in specific regions, you should have that rich.

Rick Denton: 5:16

That's, you know, that's something that is not intuitive to me. One, I am one of those that can find myself guilty of painting Africa as just as a singular entity, right? It's just Africa when we're talking about an incredibly diverse, geographically diverse, culturally diverse, linguistically diverse continent. And so in the West, we can be guilty of that. And you're also saying, though, that actually, there's ways to segment Africa in a way that makes it simpler to understand how, how have you helped brands, or individuals, even like me, from the West, understand both that wide spectrum of cultural differences and how to operate in some of the segments that you're describing?

Kojo Hayford: 6:06

Look, you can work 50 to 62 countries were borders that were created in 1870. In Berlin, in Europe, okay. So you would have, you know, an ethnic group that has a border in between, or a line drawn in between, and they speak the same language, they are the same set of people. So if you take those barriers away, you can begin to it's almost like going back and saying these large tribal groupings, or large ethnic groupings should be really what were the borders should be. So if you did it that way to begin to, and I'm not I'm not by any stretch, saying that you don't have pockets of minor and minor languages, like it's happening in Europe, certain languages have died in Europe, because, you know, the dominant ethnic group, and I want to use ethnic groups globally, have superimposed their languages, you know, some speaking German today. If you look at what is happening in Ukraine, you know, you have ethnic Russian saying, hey, this part is also ours. So yeah, this is real. So when you look at it that way, and I give a good use case, BBC has World Service has a language component. And then they've recognized this a long time ago, if they had to communicate to Africans, then they're going to communicate in some of those dominant languages. So you have BBC in Swahili, that probably covers close to two to 300 million people who are speaking the same language. You have BBC Hausa, BBC, Hausa basically says, the Sahel region of West Africa is predominantly speaking, how's the house or language? And then when you come to the south, I'll call the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, you'll see three or four dominant languages, two of them a few of them in Nigeria, a couple of them in Ghana, and a couple of them in Senegal.

Rick Denton: 8:37

i So, go ahead, go ahead. No, go ahead. We do

Kojo Hayford: 8:42

it if you want to, to be relevant to these cultural, you know, in terms of selling products and services. Those you have to do the math and do the metric and, for example, in Ghana, yeah. Their English is the official languages. QI or a Khan is the most prevalently spoken language, because the largest ethnic group language has held sway. Okay. It is what it is. We don't call it the national language. But practically everybody can speak and even if it's broken.

Rick Denton: 9:27

Normally, this is where you would hear the CX passport captain, but today, I want to give you a little something different. I'm going to be taking a couple of weeks away from CX passport, got some vacation coming up, got a kid to move back into university. And so we're going to take a little break here. There are plenty of episodes for you to peruse from before if you haven't had a chance to listen or see those. I'll be back in a couple of weeks. Until then enjoy some of those old episodes or take a break yourself. And we'll be back together traveling on the next CX passport flight here in just a few short weeks. Yeah, I think that's that's the lesson that I'm taking away from just this little portion of our conversation. And that is an outsider looking at the region, someone who's not well versed, and it might look at things like you're describing official language or something along those lines. But it's getting down. It's getting deep. It's getting to understanding the cultural realities that span borders, that span cities, span governments, and really understanding if you're trying to be a business operating in there. That's a question that I did want to ask you about. Because a lot of times when folks are thinking about the work overseas, and in the context of your if they are your us, or European country, and you're working in Africa, you're thinking, Okay, it's outsourcing. You, though have talked to me a little bit about, it's not just how these businesses in Africa can serve the West, this is about selling into Africa, are you seeing more of that, rather than just using the region as a way for cost arbitrage, but rather, a market for goods and services of countries of companies outside of the region?

Kojo Hayford: 11:09

Okay, today, everybody talks about Africa as the destination, the next frontier. And it's not just the next frontier for resources, and extractive industry is the next frontier for markets to sell into. Because the demographics are clear. If there's any continent in this world that has a demographic dividend is African period. Nowhere else. That's it.

Rick Denton: 11:42

I almost feel like there's way too many other things that I want to ask you about. But wouldn't it be like just in right there, boom? What a What an absolute nail it of that. I do want to? And I think that's an important point of understanding. Look, there is an a rich opportunity that you're describing. That's part of why I love having voices like yours on the show to help teach me about those opportunities, and the listeners and viewers as well. I want to get a little more specific about Ghana, specifically something that you had talked to me, and whether it's gone or beyond, you had mentioned that content management and content moderation are an area of opportunity, why is this important to the Ghana region. Okay,

Kojo Hayford: 12:26

I mean, and to Ghana, and to and to the wider African context. Content today is being generated not just in English, or European languages. So if you have a tick tock content, and those who are generating that content, want to reach their audience in that country of origin, they're going to deliver that content in the language of their audience, period. Now, if it's on a platform, like tick tock, it is a global platform, and therefore tick tock is now mindful of the kind of content that is being delivered on their platform. And therefore, they need to be moderated and managed, and who else is going to be able to do it? It's not gonna be done in China. It's gonna be done on the continent. And it's got to be dealt with. Yeah, who actually understand not only the language, but the nuances.

Rick Denton: 13:33

Great point there, right? Because going back to that comment about the official illness versus the reality, even when I and I speak very, very limited Spanish, but I'm speaking textbook Spanish. And that's why when I'm in in Puerto Vallarta, when I'm in Mexico City, I have trouble understanding because I only know the textbook language, you'd have to have someone local who read especially in a context of tick tock, right. People aren't speaking formal language and tick tock. They're speaking.

Kojo Hayford: 14:06

Yeah, precisely. And then throw that in the fact that now they're speaking in their own language, or dialect, or slang or whatever it is. You

Rick Denton: 14:19

know, there's folks that joke that they can't understand the way that folks speak in my state, Texas. So it's even inside the language itself. So I'll

Kojo Hayford: 14:28

give you a word. You know, when we started this business, we used to say look, we're getting ready for primetime. Now prime time is when the phone is picked up, or you pick up a phone or call and it's a text and you're trying to speak this British English and he's going to tell you that speak English goddamnit. Dangerous speaking pristine English.

Rick Denton: 15:02

Now Kojo, I don't think I would be so

Kojo Hayford: 15:04

easy english.

Rick Denton: 15:06

I don't think I would be so impolite. I do have my politeness. But yes, I absolutely. You. Okay, so let's talk about that for a little bit. Because the BPO industry in general, whether it's context center, or just process outsourcing or technology outsourcing, we've seen it continue to migrate across the globe, a particular region will be in favor, and then it'll fall out of favor as another grows in interest. How can Ghana where you are right now, how can gun a position itself to be a region of choice not just for now, but for a long term future?

Kojo Hayford: 15:41

Well, let's look at a few of the attributes that we have. The attributes are our location, okay. Latitude zero, longitude zero, we own the Greenwich Meridian right smack here. So we are in longitude zero, and just 15 degrees above zero. So really, technically, we are in the center of the world. Okay. Okay. So we are five hours, was about four to five hours, depending on one of these days, they have to cancel this business of daylight savings, but four hours from New York. Okay. I'm sorry, you know, it's,

Rick Denton: 16:27

we're getting real now.

Kojo Hayford: 16:31

For you, were the ones who changed his airway was from New York. So you can pretty much manage continental US and let's be clear, the market is in North America. We are we are basically real time Europe, that no question about that, you know, real time, one hour, two hours max. I'm not counting the Soviet Union, because you know, they've got 12 time zones, because that's a different story. And we don't have a history of Russian speaking. So that's not a market we're ever going to play in yet. That you can never tell. So that's it. Also, because of how we position we have multilingual capabilities. West Africa is predominantly French. Apart from Ghana and Nigeria, Gambia is predominantly French. So in Ghana, you speak French as a third language in school. first language is English as the official language. So we can deliver multilingual now because of movement of, of young people, because it's a young people's business across borders, you know, we can pick up some Spanish as well, because you have countries like Equatorial Guinea, that speak Spanish, as well. So, multilingual, if you go to East West, so that's gonna, we can scale both English and French without button ally. So those are the attributes look, I mean, in terms of we're still, it's still an imagined destination. But at least I think the jury is out in terms of the fact that once you have some of the tier one buyers of services, big tech, for example, and the tier one service providers, establishing a delivery footprint, what it means is, okay, it's been greenlit by the by the bias and their service providers have said set shop. What we need to do as a country for the long term is for our governments to embrace it, you know, very similar to what India has done and the Philippines have done very successfully now, and Ghana will also want to position ourselves as a hub in West Africa.

Rick Denton: 19:19

We joked about the Daylight Savings aspect of it, and thinking about New York and I know that you do plenty of flying around the globe, both for fun but also clearly for business as as well. And when you're flying like that, it's nice to take a little break in the lounge and that's what I want to invite you to do today. I want you to join me here in the first class lounge we'll move quickly here have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location of yours from the past?

Kojo Hayford: 19:48

Dream travel occasion from the past is Malaysia but not just Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. who ruled Malaysia?

Rick Denton: 20:03

Okay. Right,

Kojo Hayford: 20:05

because I saw the commonalities of what I saw in rural Malaysia to rural Ghana. Okay. I was fascinated because Malaysia grows palm oil. I think they are the world's largest palm oil producer. Well, guess what? The story goes that the palm oil was picked up in Ghana, or in West Africa, hundreds of years ago. And it was fascinating traveling rural Malaysia and just seeing all these plantations.

Rick Denton: 20:42

Oh, that's kind of cool.

Kojo Hayford: 20:44

It left an indelible mark. Yeah.

Rick Denton: 20:47

You know, like the connection point there. That's that's a lot of fun. What going forward? What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Kojo Hayford: 20:56

Oh, Japan and rural Japan as well. Yeah.

Rick Denton: 21:01

Boy, I'm hearing Japan a lot and full recommend great place to go. I didn't do as much of the rural my son did because he stayed there. Sorry listeners and viewers. I know you're tired of hearing that. But he studied abroad there and got much more of that cultural exposure. Even there's a bit of a story that he stayed with a elderly couple when he was unable to stay in his college dorm there. So there's a story there. So he definitely got the real experience. And so I definitely encourage you to get over there to Japan for short, is what is a favorite thing of yours to eat? Okay,

Kojo Hayford: 21:37

now, this is a difficult one and I'll tell you why. Because I'm not going to mention a food it's I have a adventurous and explorative palette. So any day fusion Okay, anytime fusion I would you know tell me that I'm going to eat Japanese African Afro Japanese fusion I'm there

Rick Denton: 22:05

and I can't wait to see you open that restaurant or tell me where to find one because Afro Japanese might be kind of cool. All right, I'm done with that. Let

Kojo Hayford: 22:12

me tell you that we already have the name is called ko Gog.

Rick Denton: 22:16

Oh man, the one with kajo G we may have our title here folks. What is I gotta go the other direction with your koja What is one thing your parents one thing that you were forced to eat growing up that you hated as a kid?

Kojo Hayford: 22:34

Okay, so I come from you know, fairly religious, you know, when I say religious religious in the Christian sense of the word. And therefore every Friday was fish. I I hated it. I hated Fridays. So bad fast forward to today fish is my favorite. Yeah.

Rick Denton: 23:03

It's kind of funny that there would be a food that created you disliking your particular day of the week that is often the most favored day of the week. But you were dreading that Friday. I love it.

Kojo Hayford: 23:16

Brother Friday

Rick Denton: 23:18

we're gonna have to get back on the plane and start traveling here again. So what is one travel item not including your phone and not including your passport that you will not leave home without

Kojo Hayford: 23:34

so I guess it is still the phone related but anything that will allow me to listen to music

Rick Denton: 23:49

Kojo, I'm the same way. I've got to have my music. Absolutely. And it takes you away, it brings you in. It's absolutely a required element to a trip. So I'm totally with you there. I want to go back. And you alluded to this a little bit. So frequently, if we think back like kind of the decades and the origin of the BPO world, it often starts with IT services or you know, historically has started that way. So how can the BPO industry continue to grow from IT services further into a customer experience play? Well,

Kojo Hayford: 24:27

you know, I think at the end of the day, somewhere in this you know, you said it services so at the end of the day, there is a customer at the end of the sales you can do all of those back office thinks you're trying to help the end customer and, and I think if we see the industry as a peep Paul scented industry, because that's what it is, you know, this this bull from India to the Philippines and now to Africa. Unfortunately, we talk about labor arbitrage is kind of has a bad connotation, but it is what it is. At the end of the day, it's about people, young people. And I think the industry offers an opportunity for young people to have either their first experience of real work, and hopefully, to, to transform their capabilities for other pieces of work everywhere, everywhere else, because I think, you know, it will start as it but ultimately, it underpins the service that we provide. And, you know, when the rubber hits the pavement is about people. And it's not just that you're talking to pick somebody, if I'm, if I'm moderating content as a human being behind. And, you know, today we are hearing ai ai ai, I think AI itself is generating more demand for people to actually what we are saying that now we are getting we are teaching AI bots to be able to, you know, we are teaching them to take over our jobs.

Rick Denton: 26:26

We certainly say that we do you know, Coach, one, I'm not convinced that well, who knows, maybe it will end up being the Yeah, maybe the apocalypse, I don't know. But right now, I'm not convinced there yet, I know that it is certainly something that is assisted Heck, it exists me. And I know it's a system, a lot of businesses, I'd like your your, the way you brought that perspective of hey, it's, it's not a matter of evolving from IT services to the customer experience, it's, it's understanding that at the end of all of these services, whatever the label that there's a customer involved, and having that as a mindset, rather than necessarily an industry or a skilled niche, and how that can launch someone's career starting in this BPO space, as a young person moving into it, and then moving ultimately on into other elements of a career. I want to close out with you Kojo talking about not just gone and not just Sub Saharan not even just Africa, you have this global awareness, global customers, global employees, how are you driving that understanding and cultural alignment when you're talking about a global customer and global employee?

Kojo Hayford: 27:41

If I understand the question, what we we start off with these young people that we bring into an environment and essentially we tell them you are in competition with everybody else in the world, you are in a global environment. And therefore, your outlook has to be global. Okay, and keep on saying things like we want, nothing will, nothing will please be more than to see a young person that has comes through our our guest transforming this business, jumps on a plane gets to New York, and hits the ground running in any job. Well, obviously, with a subject matter that is already been skilled him and hit the ground running in any place, you know, and I'm using New York's is just an example. Sure. So from what go, you are in a global environment with standards that are global and globally defined. And therefore, by virtue of the location you you are operating in. You're not giving substandard even if you are delivering service to a local company. You have to give them global service delivery. And I think that's very important.

Rick Denton: 29:15

Okay, I really liked that. That's not, that's not where I thought this question would go. And I like Oreo. instead. No, I really like that Kojo, because it fits it what even at a customer experience level, what folks will say is, look, hey, look, don't compare yourself to other quick service restaurants. Compare yourself to the best customer experiences that are out there because that's what your customer is doing. They aren't comparing Wendy's McDonald's, they're comparing Wendy's to some other experience that they have with Zappos or something along those lines. Are you picking picking a brand that isn't kind of the old tired cliche, and your point of it doesn't matter if you are in Ghana, or if you're In Kenya, or if you're in Argentina, or if you're in Ukraine, you are a member of a global community, with global customers with global expectations. And the need is to deliver on those global expectations. And I find that statement particularly brilliant Kosho.

Kojo Hayford: 30:17

No. Plus. And that has been our mantra. I mean, we keep on saying, Look, consider yourself as a global employee, you want to be able to be anywhere. Look, I mean, I'll give you an example. You know, there's there's this sort of terminology in the industry that says, staff augmentation, what does staff augmentation means? I'm sitting in Ghana, but I'm part of the team in you know, Peoria, Texas, is there a place like

Rick Denton: 30:55

that? No, it's Illinois. Right, but is Illinois still?

Kojo Hayford: 31:01

I've just shown my ignorance, but it's okay. Well, actually,

Rick Denton: 31:05

there might be a Peoria Texas. I don't know. There might be

Kojo Hayford: 31:10

that, yeah. You know, so. So to be able to play as a team there. It's not just your skills that you have. You are working a team of people that come from different backgrounds. I

Rick Denton: 31:29

love it. You know, we're gonna end it right there. Kojo, that is I love I love that we're kind of closing on that local reality global experience. That's the reality of the world in which we live right now, Kojo, if folks wanted to get to know a little bit more about you, or about E, Sal, what's the best way for them to come to know more about you or your company?

Kojo Hayford: 31:52

So at ESA actually means EA services Africa limited. Okay, that's the original LLC. So you can find this on my LinkedIn page. And maybe we can, I'll share that with you. And it will be www e sales solutions.com.

Rick Denton: 32:15

Awesome. I will get that both co Joe's LinkedIn URL and E sales URL into the shownotes. Coach. Oh, it's been a fun ride here I've enjoyed. Really, as I said at the beginning, I just was excited to get a new perspective from a new country. I liked that you took me beyond the country and you took me into the region into the continent, and also helped me understand that even something as wide as a continent like Africa can find ways of segmentation that help it be better understood by folks that are looking to operate in this as you said, incredibly rich opportunity region of the world. It was a delight today, Kojo, thank you for being on CX passport.

Kojo Hayford: 32:57

Thank you very much for having me.

Rick Denton: 33:04

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.