Infobip, a global cloud communication company for businesses and a leader in omnichannel customer engagement, has deployed an omnichannel platform for Stima Sacco, the second-biggest saving and credit cooperative in Africa. This platform enables the organisation to enhance customer engagement and thus improve customer experience.
Client Background
Stima DT Savings and Credit Cooperative Society Limited (Stima Sacco) is a licensed deposit-taking saving and credit cooperative (SACCO), based in Kenya. The company has a network of nine branches across the country, coupled with agency banking partners known as Stima Sacco Mlangoni, offering financial services to Kenyans both within the country and in the diaspora. The organisation is currently ranked the second largest SACCO in Kenya, according to its asset base.
Established in 1974, to serve employees of the then East African Power & Lighting Company, Stima Sacco has since evolved into a deposit-taking SACCO, with open membership to all Kenyans. Stima Sacco currently draws its membership from individuals employed across all economic sectors, business people, groups and corporations. Its objective is to provide members with a safe haven for savings, allowing them to access fairly-priced credit and to make a good return on investment. The organisation has grown into a leading financial partner in Kenya, with a huge asset base, massive membership, dynamic products and impressive dividends.
The Challenge
Despite its strong position in the market, Stima Sacco realised that it would need to adopt an omnichannel communication approach to effectively engage with its customer base of over 150,000 members. The company recognised that it needed to improve the Customer Experience (CX) across its touch points. The legacy contact centre relied mainly on voice, leaving customers – including those in the diaspora – with no option but to call into the contact centre to engage with the company. At the same time, the high volume of voice traffic meant that contact centre agents would be overburdened. This led to long waiting times for customers and poor efficiency by the contact centre agents, who were often tied up attending to basic and repetitive queries.
Secondly, Stima Sacco wanted to leverage its email platform for Communication and education purposes but realised it needed a robust email solution and to clean up its database, which contained historical data and email addresses that could not be validated. In addition, the company wanted to implement targeted communication and campaigns that would enable it to meaningfully engage with its customers. Targeted campaigns would allow it to communicate offers and products to specific subsets of the population.
The Solution
Stima Sacco has had a relationship with Infobip since 2018, when Infobip provided it with one way SMS platform. In 2020 Infobip implemented its moments solutions which Stima Sacco leveraged on to have targeted conversations with its customers. Hosting targeted campaigns and communication ensured that the organisation could reach the relevant subset of its customer base with discounts, offers and new products and services. After exploring which solutions would work for its customer segment, Infobip in 2021 deployed its Conversations Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) contact centre platform, underpinned by a WhatsApp-based chatbot. As part of an omnichannel approach, the Conversations platform also integrated and enabled several other channels, aside from WhatsApp, including email and two-way SMS.
The email solution enabled the cleaning of Stima Sacco’s email database and validation of email addresses as active or inactive. Members linked to invalid email addresses were contacted via other channels to update their information.
The Result
The Infobip omnichannel platform is key for the company, as it enables Stima Sacco to manage customer engagements via a single interface. Currently, it is using the Conversations module to run two-way SMS, email and WhatsApp conversations. The platform is also used for bulk email and SMS communication for marketing campaigns and member education. The company is now able to measure the throughput of its staff and also mine valuable customer data to build effective customer profiles. This, coupled with leveraging opportunities for automation and using chatbots to enhance the CX, is a key driver of operational efficiencies and streamlining costs. The use of SMS and WhatsApp messaging also reduced foot traffic by 11% at Stima Sacco’s Customer Experience Centre, which has enabled it to utilise its resources for other campaigns and projects.
Quotes
“The Infobip team aligns perfectly with customer needs and strategy. They are always ready to give recommendations on areas that you are not optimising as a user. With Infobip, you throw away the box and focus on continuous improvement,” according to Gloria Chaponda, Customer Experience Manager at Stima Sacco.
“Stima Sacco has become a leader in the SACCO industry in terms of digitisation and providing superior CX. We can already see the positive results achieved through its abilities to leverage Infobip’s solutions to enhance CX through an omnichannel approach,” James Gachie, Partner Development Manager at Infobip said.
