Slow Social Media Responses on WhatsApp and Instagram Costing Nigerian SMEs Millions Daily in Unrealized Revenue

A new report has highlighted a major operational gap plaguing Nigeria’s digital economy, revealing that Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are losing millions of Naira in potential sales every day due to slow and inconsistent responses to customer inquiries on social media.

The warning was issued today, Wednesday, November 19, 2025, by PressOne Africa, a cloud communications company, which noted that platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram Direct Messages (DMs) have silently become the country’s largest retail marketplaces, making response time the single biggest determinant of a sale.

“A slow or unclear message on WhatsApp can stop a sale that should have happened,” the company noted in a statement. “Messages arrive unpredictably, customers expect instant responses, and inconsistent follow-ups lead to missed opportunities driving buyers straight to competitors.”

The AI Solution to Instant Customer Service

To help SMEs curb these chronic losses, PressOne Africa announced the launch of Juliet, an intelligent AI employee designed to professionalize chat-based customer service. Juliet provides instant, consistent, and on-brand replies across all major real-time messaging channels, effectively removing the human bottleneck that costs businesses significant revenue.

The financial upside of automation was underscored by the company’s CEO, Mayowa Okegbenle, who shared their internal experience: “We had budgeted millions this year to build a large customer service team. Juliet removed that need completely,” Okegbenle said. “She saved us significant operational costs, and we have shifted that money into marketing and growth.”

The report serves as a critical call to action for the millions of Nigerian entrepreneurs who rely on digital platforms, emphasizing that customer perception of an entire brand is now inextricably linked to the speed and quality of their social media interactions.