South African businesses risk losing customers if they fail to modernise fragmented customer engagement systems and adopt AI-driven personalisation, speakers at the Infobip Leadership Soirée 2026 warned.
Speaking to ITWeb on the sidelines of the event, Lauren Potgieter, country manager at
InfobipSouth Africa, said many organisations struggle to deliver seamless customer journeys because systems and departments remain disconnected.
“Everybody’s talking omnichannel and connected experiences, but the data points of all those customer engagements are so fragmented,” he said.
Potgieter noted that customers are often forced to repeat information across different channels and departments. “What’s causing fragmented customer service is that customers need to phone multiple centres or divisions to resolve one issue,” he explained.
He said businesses need a single orchestration layer capable of consolidating interactions across WhatsApp, voice, e-mail and SMS into what he called a “single version of the truth”.
Potgieter added that AI should complement human agents, not replace them. “AI should take care of the mundane tasks and high-volume work that doesn’t require empathy. But you should never get rid of the human.”
WhatsApp-obsessed market
Julian Dawkins, principal product marketing manager at Infobip, described SA as a unique market for conversational commerce because of its young population, strong smartphone penetration and widespread use of messaging platforms.
“You guys love WhatsApp,” he told delegates. “South Africa is actually the second-highest WhatsApp user market in the world after Brazil.”
However, he said many organisations continue relying on rigid, rules-based chatbots that frustrate users instead of resolving problems efficiently.
“If the engagement isn’t personalised or relevant, they simply won’t respond,” he said of South African consumers.
Dawkins pointed to SA’s 12 official languages and diverse informal economy as important considerations for AI-driven CX systems. “You can’t just roll it out in English,” he said.
He added that businesses should prioritise mobile-first strategies and integrated payment experiences. "It’s no longer just desktop discovery. Consumers want to do it in a conversational way.”
Shift in expectations
According to Potgieter, customer expectations are shifting towards instant, accurate service on the customer’s preferred channel. “I want the answer right now, immediately, on the channel that I want, and it needs to be correct,” he said.
He added that organisations able to resolve issues during the first interaction will gain a significant competitive advantage. “That’s going to define how brands evolve.”
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