Think you can outrun a robot? Well, here’s your chance to prove it: In April, Beijing hosts the world’s first human-robot marathon. So far, 12’000 humans have enrolled to battle it out against the fastest creations from 20 robotics and AI companies — who will win? 👟🦾

In this Open Letter:

• Business sense: Helping companies turn frowns into advocates.

• SA’s dirtiest TikToks, China’s dirt-cheap AI & humanoid robot armies.

• Moving fast: How to get max tax-free benefits before tax year-end.

• Did you know this local AI car diagnostics startup? The results are in.

• Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.

Together with:

TRENDING NOW

Helping Companies Turn Churn to Retention

In today’s Tuesday Deep Dive, we explore one of the sagest truisms in business: Great customer service is both expensive AND absolutely free. It’s free because delighting a customer with an issue is the single cheapest way to keep their business and turn them into an advocating superfan.

But support becomes really expensive when you mess it up… and that’s why we want to tell you about this SA startup doing exciting things in this space…

Great service is a strategy

If there’s one business function that’s become substantially more complex in the last 20 years, it’s customer support. 

Pre-internet, you had a call centre that serviced people and that was it. Train those people, manage them well and good luck to your poor customers being in that queue for hours. 

As a customer, it sucked a bit. And when social media came along, so did the customers publicly voicing their opinions about you. As many as 97% of consumers check out online reviews (at least occasionally), with a single bad review reducing purchase intent in consumers by up to 42%.

The thing is, customer issues are unavoidable and when they inevitably happen, you want to be able to deal with them so quickly there’s not even time for that customer to tweet about it.

And doing that fast means meeting the customer where they’re at.

Get it right and you win…

Investing in great support is like eating healthily and getting loads of exercise – either it’s part of your strategy or you're paying for your mistakes (later on). Because cracking the customer service/support code could have a healthy impact on a company’s bottom line.

89% of customers who have a positive customer service experience are more likely to do business with that company again, with as many as 78% being willing to do so even after a mistake has been made, but still received great customer service. 

And it makes sense to keep an existing customer happy.

It costs between 5 and 25x more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one, with profits seeing a rise of 25%+ by simply increasing a company’s customer retention by 5%.  

So it makes sense to invest in a solid customer service/support strategy. 

The local player improving customer service

Local customer service platform Cue is stepping in to tackle the scattered nature of customer service with a two-pronged approach:

1. Meet customers where they are with tools like chatbots, live chat ticketing and AI agents running across platforms like WhatsApp, Web and Facebook Messenger.

2. Keep support teams on top of things by funnelling all those conversations into a centralised inbox and helping them create faster solutions for clients.

Cue’s AI Agents are also making waves. For example, they supplied the AI for Payflex which managed to resolve 82% of queries successfully. Pretty solid numbers, especially for something that AI sceptics often side-eye.

On top of that, Cue not only integrates with popular business tools like Slack, Hubspot and many other third-party apps and CRMs to keep everything connected and help you stay on top of customer conversations. And for customisation lovers, it features a drag-and-drop workflow builder that’s tailored to your unique needs, industry, and team structure.

Not stopping there, they recently added a WhatsApp Business broadcast feature that lets businesses send updates on everything from promos and sales to last-mile delivery updates and payment reminders.

Serving customers well will most definitely mean including humans somewhere in the loop, but AI, smart tech and valuable features could help lower service costs while still creating great experiences. We are watching this space…

CHECK THIS OUT

Max Your TFSA Before Tax Year-End

Secure better returns, pay less in fees, and start saving smarter right now…

With the 28 February tax deadline looming, now is the perfect time to take full advantage of your Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA). 

But not all TFSAs are created equal — so Fynbos Money steps in to help you save smarter and grow wealth faster.

Why choose Fynbos?

• Lowest fees: Keep more of your money working for you.

• Market-based growth: Unlike fixed-interest TFSAs at banks, which offer limited returns, Fynbos gives you access to top-tier funds from 10x, Satrix, and Sygnia.

• Easy and fast setup: Open your account in under 3 minutes and automate your savings journey with zero hassle.

• Smarter savings strategy: Fynbos helps you build an emergency fund first, then grow your TFSA to maximise your tax-free benefits.

Only 6% of South Africans can afford to retire comfortably — Fynbos Money is on a mission to change that. With its innovative platform, investing becomes simple, transparent, and effective.

How? By helping you take small steps that will max your returns – through insights like these…

Don’t wait to secure your financial future. Max out your TFSA contributions before 28 February and start growing your wealth today.

IN SHORT

Say something sensational…

🪡 Stitching Together. Local Payments infrastructure company Stitch is expanding to in-person payments thanks to its first major acquisition: payments provider ExiPay. The move will let enterprise businesses use Stitch to accept in-person payments via card and offer customers the option to pay with alternative digital payment methods. Congrats team Stitch…

🐳 The One You Seek? Chinese AI company DeepSeek launched an open version of its R1 reason model last week. And it’s got the tech world’s tongues wagging with claims it performs just as well — or better — than Open AI’s o1, trained at a fraction of the price of its American counterparts. Hitting no. 1 on iPhone’s download charts, it’s impacting (among others) Nvidia’s share price — down 16%. Here’s a super informative thread on why this AI’s causing such a stir, shared in our Open Collab community yesterday.

🤖 RoboTraining. China has unveiled its new humanoid robot training ground, the first of its kind, in Pudong District, Shanghai. The initiative by the Chinese Government can train over 100 robots at a time, with a vision to bump that up to 1’000 by 2027. And again we ask, what could go wrong?

⛔️ Naughty Naughty. In Q3 nearly a million videos from South Africa were removed by TikTok for violating the video platform’s Community Guidelines. TikTok’s impressive technology capabilities helped it remove 97.9% of content before a community member reported it. This is why we can't have nice things.

😎 The Stack. Founders need tools and suppliers they can trust. Check out our Founder’s Stack with super-easy low-code integrations with Make, all your accounting sorted with Xero and 12 more vital startup tools & services.

HATE GETTING STUFF SIGNED?

Sign On The Go - 100% Free

One of the most painstaking aspects of running a small business or startup is negotiating agreements with customers and/or suppliers, getting them signed, and paying them. But it doesn’t have to be a pain…

Free E-signature for Everyone

E-signature is stuck in the past—Agree changes that. Sign and get paid in one sleek platform. Use templates or your own, edit easily, and skip the fees. No clunky workflows, just faster deals and fewer headaches. Finally, a better way.

Join Agree for Free

BUILDING TOGETHER

Happening over at The Open Collab

In the last few days alone, in our online community, we…

• Helped Piet find a solid SQL database consultant 👨🏼‍💻.

• Discussed DeepSeek and how it’s playing right into Apple’s hands with affordable on-device computing — and watching Nvidia’s share price slide…

• Noted that crypto markets seem to be dropping in sympathy with Nvidia…??? Discussing whether it’s politics and a general pullback in Feb 🤷🏽‍♂️

• Helped Laurie find a good doctor in his new neighbourhood — plus online medical help and referrals.

• Helped Timo find a data scientist who can code in R.

• Celebrated Enrico’s intelligent bike-safety product collab with a security company.

• Had an awesome chat roulette session with the entire collab on Friday ☕.

Thinking about joining The Open Collab?

• Supercharge your network in the SA startup landscape — get that introduction, get that customer, or meet that partner.

• Get feedback on your products, services and/or offers from others who have built and are building their own products right now.

• Join all our online and in-person events for free!

• Exclusive 1-on-1 sessions with startup consultants.

SA’s only dedicated tech startup and scale-up founder community.

HAPPENING SOON

Upcoming Events

31 January 2025 — Fundraising 101 — AMA: We’ve invited founders and teams who’ve recently raised funding to give you the ins and outs of securing investment —exclusive to members of The Open Collab community.

4 February 2025 — Cape Town Coffee Meetup — In-person: Come hang out with the Open Collab community, meet new faces, and chat about what you’re working on — exclusive to members of The Open Collab community.

7 February 2025 — Avoiding the Scale-Up Trap — AMA: Sometimes what you think is “normal” when scaling is a trap: Here’s how to escape it — exclusive to members of The Open Collab community.

View all our upcoming events here.

WHAT YOU SAID

Keep rollin’, rollin’…

We gave you a riddle last Friday and asked if you recognised the AI vehicle diagnostics startup — and, yeah, quite a few of us recognised them…

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Scanmoto (46%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ LookBot (4%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Carscan (50%)

ICYMI — we did a feature on Carscan a little while ago.