Solving one problem exceptionally well
When we started Bunce, it was easy to look at what larger companies were building and think we needed to match everything they had. Businesses already had CRMs, messaging tools and other systems, so they were understandably skeptical about whether another customer engagement platform would make a difference.
The question wasn’t really, “Can you send messages?” It was, “Will this help me get more customers to activate, transact or come back?” That forced us to focus less on the number of messages we could send and more on the business outcome those messages created. That distinction has shaped how we sell and build Bunce.
We don’t need to build the biggest platform in the market. We just need to solve an important problem exceptionally well for the businesses we understand.
Our strongest insights have come from paying attention to our customers and asking what they actually need.
Building around how customers actually behave
Many businesses here operate with complexity that isn’t always visible from the outside. Customer behaviour can be very different from a textbook journey. Someone can have money in their account but still need several reasons to come back and use the product. Businesses communicate across multiple channels because no single channel works consistently for everyone. So we’ve learned to build around how customers actually behave, rather than how we think they should.
One of the biggest things we saw was that businesses had a lot of customer data but couldn’t turn it into action. They knew who had signed up, who had transacted, who had stopped using the product, sometimes even what customers had bought. Connecting that to the right message at the right time was still difficult.
Customer data should not just sit in a dashboard. It should help a business decide who to speak to, why, and what to say.
Proximity is not a shortcut
Being African gives us proximity. We understand the customers, the businesses and some of the realities of operating here because we experience them ourselves. But proximity doesn’t automatically make you better. The product still has to work. Customers still care about reliability, results and value. So being African is less a shortcut and more an advantage in understanding the problem deeply.
Earning trust when real money is moving
When a business moves real money through your platform, trust comes from doing the small things consistently.
Being responsive.
Understanding their business and protecting their data.
Being transparent when something goes wrong.
Most importantly, delivering what you said you would deliver.
In the beginning, customers are taking a chance on you, so you have to give them enough evidence, over time, that their decision was a good one. For us, that has meant starting with a real business problem, proving we can solve it, and then earning the right to become more deeply embedded in their operations.
We’ve had situations where a customer hit an issue and the natural temptation was to fix it quickly. But the customer also needed to know we understood the impact on their business. I’ve learned that communication is part of the solution. Even without an immediate answer, being honest about what happened, what you’re doing and when they can expect an update goes a long way.
Customers can forgive a problem. It’s much harder to recover from feeling ignored or misled.