Monday, the 19 November, 2018 may have come and gone like most other weekdays but to the online shopping lot in Nigeria, the day marked a liberation of some kind. It was a day the WePay Nigeria Limited, an e-commerce operator launched its portal, signifying the commencement of its operations in Nigeria.

At a modest event hosted at its corporate office located in the highbrow Foreshore Estate Ikoyi, the guests were taken on a tour of the e-commerce portal, www.WePayNg.com where prospective shoppers would be doing the shopping for most of their needs, especially their mobile devices. Watching as the event went on and listening to the eggheads who run the company, one would be convinced that this new portal is in for a serious business. And it is looking like the online shoppers in Nigeria are about to experience a new lease of life.

It began with Akin Kehinde, the Managing Consultant of the company, promising, in his welcome remarks, that the company will offer unmatchable sales deals and amazing after-sales services to its customers to ensure that they have the best customer experience.

According to him, “We pride ourselves as a platform that offers the widest range of products including the latest of the mobile devices. It is our focus on driving the best customer experience that informed our play in the after sales end of the business also. As a matter of fact, the purchase of a mobile device from our platform marks the beginning of a rewarding journey with us.”

Kehinde listed some of the various value-added services (VAS) that come with the WePay e-commerce platform to include repairs and maintenance of customers’ devices, free accessories like battery chargers, Bluetooth ear pieces, hands-free cords, beautiful device casings, external speakers, pouches, table holders etc.

“Our platform also offers the customers extended warranties of three to six months beyond the manufacturer’s warranty, screen protection insurance, opportunities for device upgrade as well as trade-in programs where they can exchange their old devices either for new ones or for cash,” he continued.

All these sounded pretty much familiar, as many e-commerce/online trading operators in Nigeria had at their respective inceptions, promised to revolutionize the Nigerian e-commerce platform. As a matter of fact, many of them had actually set out delivering on their promises to the delight of online shoppers, only to fall short of these promises a short while later. Once their clientele grew, their service delivery went down. This has been the life cycle of e-commerce operators in Nigeria, all without exception.

In fact there was a roused applause when one of the guests told a joke of how e-commerce operators promise lions but only deliver cats, showing the disparity between what they have on their sites and what they deliver after payment. He asked to know the measures WePay have in place to ensure that the confidence customers will repose in the platform is not eroded.

Responding, Kehinde informed the guests that the Wepay e-commerce platform is created to deliver to Nigerians the same world-class services their counterparts in the developed countries of the world enjoy in the area of online shopping saying that, “we have benchmarked our services in line with the likes of Amazon as a world class leader in the e-commerce space.”

On the usual frustrations they experience while shopping online, the Chief of Client Services of the company, Martina Medac, told the guests that the usual logistic issues that online shoppers experience in their day-to-day interaction with other e-commerce platforms are non-existent on the WePay platform.

According to him, “The WePay platform offers shoppers on its platform the options of either picking up their purchases at any of its various pickup locations most convenient to them, or wait for any of the company’s dispatch personnel to deliver these purchases to their various locations within the shortest time possible.”

He informed that the company has put in place a robust customer care system driven by the best technology to ensure timely resolutions and effective tracking of results and customer feedback. What this means is that a “prompt attention is given to customers’ inquiries and complaints.”It also means that, unlike what obtains in other service providers where operators’ phone lines are perpetually engaged or where they keep customers on hold for too long before their customer care personnel even get to hear customers’ complaints, the shoppers on the WePay platform would be attended to within the shortest time possible.

Also, the company has solutions to some of the internet hitches online shoppers experience, as it offers them the opportunity to shop on their platform with or without internet access. Ravi Narain, General Manager, Technical, further informed that the platform offers its customers the opportunity to use non-smart phones or ‘palasa phones’ in local parlance, to shop for all their needs with the same ease they buy airtime from their respective networks.

He assured their prospective customers of the safety of their funds as the company has in place measures to protect them from cyber criminals. He said that the platform has ensured that several measures towards security and cybercrime issues are put in place and apply on all transactions. “Apart from the multilevel authentication, keeping data encrypted, secure and safe, we also insist that our customers have long passwords,” he continued.

From the interaction that the guests had with the managers of the platform, it was obvious that, like Akin Kehinde, the Managing Consultant of the company said, the company has a sound knowledge of the Nigerian market and has come with cutting-edge technological solutions to address all the challenges of the Nigerian online shoppers face daily as they shop on the various online platforms in the country.

The coming on board of WePay e-commerce platform is a heart-warming news but the icing on the cake is that their operations, as the managers have outlined would not only bring about ease in shopping for customers on its platform, but will also serve as a benchmark for other e-commerce operators in Nigeria.