Service and Experience with J. N. Halm: From Kasoa market to global market: What traditional traders know about customer-centricity that tech startups don’t

I am a typical village boy—and I am pretty proud about it. Having stayed with my grandmother (of blessed memory) in my early years in the village taught me so many valuable life lessons. One of those lessons has stayed with me the most.

Like many women of her day, my grandmother was both a farmer and a trader at the same time. This meant there were times when I had the privilege of accompanying her to the market for her rounds. Incidentally, the biggest market centre in our part of the country was at Odupong Kpehe, now known to all as Kasoa.

As I walked behind my grandmother through the bustling Kasoa Market, I would witness a Masterclass in customer understanding that many modern tech start-ups would pay millions to learn.

I did not know it at the time, but what I had was a front row seat in a practical course in customer relationships. The tomato seller who remembers that my grand mum prefers her tomatoes slightly firmer, the fabric seller who sets aside the Ankara print she knows my grand mum loves, the jewellery and beads dealer who extends credit because she knows my grandma—these were not just acts of good customer service. They represented a depth of customer knowledge that has sustained traditional African businesses for generations.

It is interesting, however, that in our rush to embrace digital transformation and technological innovation, many African entrepreneurs have abandoned these time-tested principles of customer engagement. The irony is stark. While tech start-ups spend fortunes on customer relationship management software and data analytics tools, traditional market traders have been practising sophisticated customer relationship management for decades—without a single app or algorithm.

The Wisdom That Built Commerce

Every successful market trader understands something fundamental about business that many modern entrepreneurs seem to have forgotten—that customers are not transactions, they are relationships. This is not mere sentiment. It is hard-nosed business sense that has kept traders in business through economic upheavals, political changes, and shifting market dynamics.

When a market trader greets you by name, asks about your family, and remembers your last purchase, she is not simply being friendly. She is building what researchers now call “customer equity”—the total lifetime value of a customer relationship. She knows that the tomatoes she sells you today are less important than ensuring you return tomorrow, next week, and next year. This long-term thinking is the bedrock of sustainable business.

The traditional trader also understands something that eludes many tech entrepreneurs—that people buy with their emotions and justify with logic. The market woman who compliments your choice, who makes you feel seen and valued, who creates a moment of human connection in the midst of a busy day, is leveraging emotional intelligence in ways that no chatbot can replicate. She knows that when you feel good about the interaction, you are more likely to return, more likely to buy, and more likely to recommend her to others.

The Technology Trap

In contrast, many modern tech start-ups have fallen into what can only be described as the technology trap. They believe that the right app, the perfect algorithm, or the most sophisticated software will solve their customers’ problems. The thinking goes something like this: if we can just get our technology right, customers will come. If we can just automate our processes, we will scale. If we can just build the perfect user interface, we will dominate the market.

This is fundamentally backwards thinking. Technology should serve customer understanding, not replace it. The most successful tech companies in the world—companies like Amazon, Apple, and Netflix—are not technology companies that happen to have customers. They are customer companies that happen to use technology. There is a profound difference.

Consider the typical journey of a tech start-up. Founders, often engineers or developers, build what they believe is a brilliant solution. They focus on features, on functionality, on the elegance of their code. They launch with great fanfare, expecting customers to immediately see the value they see. When customers do not materialise, or when those who do try the product do not stay, the response is predictable—we need better marketing, we need more features, we need a redesign.

What is missing from this equation? The customer. Not the abstract idea of a customer, not the persona written on a whiteboard, but real, breathing human beings with specific needs, fears, desires, and contexts. The market trader knows her customers as individuals. The tech start-up often knows its users as data points.

Lessons from the Market Stall

So what exactly do traditional traders know that tech start-ups need to learn? The lessons are as practical as they are profound.

First, traditional traders understand the power of attention. When you stop at a market stall, the trader gives you her full attention. She is not multitasking, not distracted, not thinking about her next customer. In that moment, you are the most important person in her world. This creates what psychologists call “felt” attention—the customer feels valued, seen, and respected. Many digital businesses, in their quest for efficiency and scale, have lost this. Automated responses, chatbots that cannot understand context, customer service representatives reading from scripts—all of these send the message that the customer is not truly important.

Second, traditional traders are masters of observation. They notice when you look at something twice. They see when you hesitate. They pick up on your mood, your urgency, and your budget constraints—often without you saying a word. This observational skill allows them to serve you better, to anticipate your needs, and to offer solutions before you even articulate the problem. Tech start-ups, drowning in data, often cannot see the forest for the trees. They track clicks and conversions but miss the human story behind the numbers.

Third, traditional traders understand the value of trust. In a market where there are hundreds of other stalls selling similar products, why did my grandma insist on returning to the same trader? Trust. Trust that is built transaction by transaction, interaction by interaction. Trust that comes from consistency, honesty, and genuine care for the customer’s welfare. Many tech start-ups try to engineer trust through security features, money-back guarantees, and testimonials. These have their place, but they cannot replace the trust that comes from an authentic relationship.

Fourth, traditional traders are flexible. If you cannot afford the full price today, the market trader will negotiate. If you need something slightly different from what she has, she will source it for you. If you want to pay in instalments, she will work out an arrangement. This flexibility is not weakness—it is customer-centricity in action. Too many tech start-ups are rigid. Their software can only do what it is programmed to do. Their business models cannot accommodate variations. Their processes cannot bend to customer needs. In trying to scale efficiently, they lose the adaptability that makes businesses truly customer-centric.

Bridging Two Worlds

The good news is that these two worlds—traditional wisdom and modern technology—need not be at odds. The best businesses of the future will be those that combine the customer insight of the market trader with the reach and efficiency of technology. This is not about abandoning innovation. It is about ensuring that innovation is rooted in genuine customer understanding.

What would this look like in practice? It would mean that before a single line of code is written, founders spend time with real potential customers. Not surveys, not focus groups, but actual time in the customer’s world, understanding their lives, their challenges, their context. It would mean that user experience design is driven not by what is technically possible or aesthetically pleasing, but by what genuinely serves the customer’s needs.

It would mean building technology that enhances human connection rather than replacing it. The goal should not be to automate away all human interaction, but to use technology to make those interactions richer, more meaningful, and more valuable for both the business and the customer.

The Path Forward

For African entrepreneurs looking to build sustainable businesses—whether tech start-ups or traditional enterprises—the path forward requires humility to learn from our commercial heritage. The market trader is not a relic of the past to be superseded by modern business practices. She is a repository of customer wisdom that has stood the test of time.

This does not mean rejecting technology or progress. It means understanding that technology is a tool, not a strategy. Customer understanding is the strategy. Everything else is execution.

The entrepreneurs who will win in the long run are those who can combine the customer insight that has sustained African commerce for generations with the tools and reach that modern technology provides. They will be the ones who understand that behind every click, every download, every transaction, there is a human being—someone with hopes and needs and contexts, someone who wants to feel valued, someone who remembers how you made them feel.

The question every entrepreneur must ask is not “What technology should I use?” but rather “Do I truly understand my customers?” Until you can answer that second question with the same confidence as the market trader who has served her community for decades, all the technology in the world will not save your business. As management guru Peter Drucker once said, “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” The market trader has always known this. It is time for the rest of us to catch up.

The post Service and Experience with J. N. Halm: From Kasoa market to global market: What traditional traders know about customer-centricity that tech startups don’t appeared first on The Business & Financial Times.

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