“First of all, I want to thank you for calling me to ask me questions. Secondly the company has saved many expenses. My wife is very happy and my neighbors even came to ask about the product.” –a customer of an Acumen investee

It’s easy for companies to talk in generalities about “hearing from the customer,” but what happens when these customers are poor, live in remote areas, and have had limited exposure to modern products and services to improve their lives? When we finally get a chance to hear from those customers, what will they say?

Many express surprise and gratitude at being asked for their opinion. For customers like the man quoted above, it’s not often that a company takes the time to hear from them. As we roll out Acumen’s Lean Data work, we are committed to making every survey experience meaningful, engaging and respectful. As important, when we open this dialogue, we capture feedback that enables our investees to make better business decisions and helps Acumen make smarter investments.

Getting regular feedback from these customers used to be a burdensome process, often costing companies and organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars and lasting months or years. But the landscape has changed. Though Acumen’s customers are some of the poorest on the planet, typically earning less than $2.50 a day, most have mobile phones or access to a shared phone.

We’re often asked how far Lean Data can go: how fast, at what cost and with what level of quality data?

Late last year, we decided to push our limits to answer these questions. We wanted to see if we could introduce Lean Data across our portfolio and get meaningful customer data back to the majority of our companies in a matter of weeks.

There was a lot we didn’t know going in, including how our companies would react. Up until this point, we had only targeted companies in Acumen’s portfolio on a project-by-project basis. What would happen when we made a broader ask? Would there be interest?

It was time to find out, so we launched our Lean Data Sprint.

As a starting point, we knew we needed a standard survey for all of our companies that would be quick and easy for customers to complete. It also had to work over the phone and SMS.

Starting with two of our most popular question sets from the 15 Lean Data projects we’d already completed, we crafted a 7-minute customer survey with tested questions, specifically designed to deliver insights from a customer’s perspective.

Our short but powerful survey is a mix of both open and close-ended questions such as “Have there been changes in your life due to [product/service]?” The questions cover a range of topics including perceived change in well-being, customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth referrals.

The survey script was ready but we needed a way to deliver it across all of our regions. We started to line up remote survey providers in India, Pakistan, East Africa, West Africa, and Latin America. We formed new partnerships with, and signed contracts with, multiple SMS survey platforms and trained new researchers and call center employees to conduct these surveys.

With all our bases covered, we sent an email to more than 50 companies in Acumen’s portfolio to gauge their interest in the Lean Data sprint. Our proposition was simple: provide 500 customer phone numbers and permission to contact them. Our promise was to handle the rest — and to deliver customer feedback in less than four weeks.

Within five days, 18 companies working across six sectors and seven countries signed on to the sprint. The demand was there. The companies were quick to send us their customers’ numbers and some sent us a few questions to add to the survey. Where there was room to add these questions, we had brief conversations with companies to talk about their priorities and goals to inform how we tailored the questions.

We let all 18 companies know that data collection would start in January and results would come within four weeks of the survey completion date.

Within just a few weeks of launching the sprint, we’d received our first responses from SolarNow’s customers. Based in Uganda, SolarNow is one of Acumen’s energy investments committed to making high-quality solar systems accessible and affordable to low-income customers across sub-Saharan Africa.

“I want to thank you for coming to rescue us from darkness and poverty.”

“I have a better life without smoke in my home and I can proudly say my life is better now.”

“It has helped us to remain united in the evening because with the lights we gather to gather and stay as a family.”

The responses confirmed the enormous impact that access to energy can have. Roughly 62 percent of customers experienced savings on kerosene expenditure and 45 percent reported access to additional hours of light, allowing them extra time for reading and family activities as well as a sense of security.

We also heard affirmation that a solar home system provides much more than light. Forty percent of customers listed “phone charging” as a primary benefit of their system and a third of customers reported using their solar home system to generate extra monthly income by charging other people’s phones.

Customers also had feedback for SolarNow on how the company can improve its service. When asked “Is there anything else you’d like to share?,” 41 percent provided a specific complaint or a useful suggestion for improvement.

Like many social enterprises, SolarNow is having a positive impact on people’s lives, but it’s by no means perfect. This feedback is helping the company prioritize service improvements, become more customer-centric, and ultimately stay competitive in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Ten days later, we received SMS survey results from customers of Juhudi Kilimo, an Acumen investee that provides loans to Kenyan smallholder farmers to purchase agricultural assets like cows.

When we asked customers to describe whether they had experienced changes in their lives from their loans, we were surprised that almost all of them took this as an opportunity to share the impact in their own words:

“I have a source of income, which has changed my life.”

“At least for now I have something I can call mine.”

“It has enriched my life as a woman.”

To ensure the text message responses were accurate and to get a deeper level of qualitative insight, we followed up with a small set of those respondents via phone interviews. We hired two trained researchers in Kenya to conduct these interviews.

As with Solar Now, a significant portion of customers also chose to provide constructive feedback to the company.

“Add the number of officers in your office so that you are able to serve many clients at once.”

“Produce booklets that educate farmers so that we share with our friends.”

As of this week, we have met our target and received data from 4,600 customers of 18 companies working across six sectors and seven countries. What’s next? Our five-person team is now embarking upon the big task of diving in and analyzing all of this data and digesting the 4,600+ qualitative responses to get this information to our companies as soon as possible.

We’ve experienced the power of communicating directly with our customers in a quick and easy way and have successfully dispelled the myth that hearing from these hard-to-reach customers is too burdensome and time-intensive.

Thanks to this near constant flow of information from customers, we’re beginning to spot patterns and trends about these low-income consumers and their aspirations. Our goal is to use these insights to ultimately inform how we deploy capital to have the most impact.

And with 45 weeks left in the year, we’re excited to see what else we can learn.