Piloting Better Fintech Products for Informal Retailers

We were interested in two questions:

We launched a prepayment product on Sokowatch that enabled retailers in Rwanda to make prepayments into Sokocash, which functioned like a pre-loaded gift card which they could then redeem for products on the Sokowatch platform to sell to customers. We explored incentives, including bonuses in Sokocash for prepayments that retailers made, which were funded by a DeFi treasury backed by Terra and staked in the Anchor protocol.

Building a new fintech product during a pandemic was sometimes challenging, but with the support of a stellar, collaborative, and fun team we learned a lot. We were able to do so because of our spectacular team on the ground, who cared deeply about informal retailers’ livelihoods and were dedicated to getting the service right and building retailers’ trust. Our trust in them led us to listen deeper, escalate the issues they raised, and ensure we were collaboratively building solutions.

We learned a ton and made a ton of mistakes. For better or worse, we were working under the classic challenge of ‘building the plane as you’re flying it’; we were trying to build thoughtful tools that integrated with existing systems to deliver a seamless customer experience, while also exploring what it would take to make this product desirable for end users. Below, we’ve shared key learnings on how we structured the project and team — insights that can support others running pilots or building new fintech products.

→ Trust the team on the ground.

Three Community Support Associates oversaw the entire end-to-end customer experience, which enabled our process to work. They paid close attention to accounts, recruitment, and on boarding — and quickly flagged discrepancies or problems in the customer experience.

They managed a scrappy approach, constantly iterating based on retailer feedback. They approached the work with immense diligence, attention to detail, and deep admiration for retailers — read more about their approach here.

At the same time, aligned incentives made a world of difference. Sokowatch recruited Community Support Associates that cared deeply about improving informal retailers’ lives, not just recruiting another customer. And since the associates weren’t working on commission, they could take the time and effort needed to make every retailers feel valued, and make sure that we could set things right when issues arose with the new tech we were building.

→ Iterate as you go.

Our team on the ground was constantly collecting formal and informal feedback from retailers and Sokowatch’s Delivery Agents during rollout via weekly calls, pre-scheduled SMS’s, and Whatsapp messages. Establishing open communication channels was critical to modifying the product and learning best methods for improving customer experience.

Reaching out when we saw behavior we didn’t understand gave us immediate insight into how retailers used, valued, and struggled with the pilot. For instance, when we noticed that some retailers had signed up but hadn’t started making prepayments, we reached out for feedback to better understand why, and were able to learn a ton about their cash flows and mental models of savings.

→ Start with scrappy, no-code solutions.

Ultimately, our reconciliation process was time consuming and done mostly on Excel. It wasn’t scalable and wouldn’t have been possible without a trusted team on the ground that was rigorous about accounting. However, it helped us stay nimble and change directions when needed.

We pulled reports from mobile money accounts and used Excel to manage our retailers’ Sokowallets. We sent retailers SMS via telerivet to update them on their balance and various nudges to prepay. We communicated with our retailers frequently through Whatsapp, calling, and in-person visits. We used Sokowatch’s ordering app to place orders and make payments.

Because most of our processes were manual, we had the flexibility to change pieces of the customer experience and evolve the product as new learnings or needs came up. The downside is it took a lot of time to double check accounting and ensure we were managing accounts accurately.

Consider:

​​​​✅ How will you recruit a team on the ground that you can trust, and empower them with a flexible process?

What are a few ways that you can demonstrate that you trust your team? (e.g., implementing / integrating feedback and make them co-designers in the process)

​​​​✅ How can you establish open, bidirectional communication with end users?

How are you gathering insights from users? (e.g. Frequently interviewing users, asking them questions throughout the process, providing avenues for feedback)

✅ What are the pros and cons of building tech while you are piloting a new product?

Are there products available that can help you manage a process without coding? What are the drawbacks of that process? Building a car while you are driving can have its own benefits and drawbacks. How can you keep your processes and tech flexible, so that you can integrate feedback as it comes in?

​​​​✅ Can you align around a clear learning goal, and define what success looks like?

Agreeing on a learning goal takes pressure off of getting everything perfect, especially if the goal is to learn, iterate, and improve along the way. If there are multiple stakeholders, what does individual and shared success look like? Does this align with your end users’ best interests?

Stayed tuned for the next post in this series, where we’ll go into more detail around how we make prepayment desirable for retailers.

This post was written in conjunction with Eva Hoffmann and Becca Carroll.

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