How Microcred’s new mobile application for loan officers impacts their daily activities.
In June 2015 Microcred deployed its first Android application designed for loan officers. This solution is the first component of a fully digital platform for our front-officers called “Baobab Tune”. The “Guestology” concept inspires this platform : we consider our customers as guests, and empower our front line staff to deliver excellent service through technology.
In december 2015, 565 loan officers have access to the application in 5 Microcred affiliates.
First benefits are starting to show up.
Accessing real time information improves working conditions and professionalism.
A loan officer spends most of his or her time outside the branch; prospecting customers, assessing their business, visiting them or performing loan recovery activities. Before using their mobile app, while interacting with customers in the field, he had to call the back officer of his branch to get client’s information or rely on his memory.
Now, this mobile app enables him to access and communicate real time data from our Core Banking Platform — such as client account balance, payment history, past dues fees, amount for early liquidation… All key information about our customer. This leads to a shift in customer relationship experience: more reactivity, proximity, transparency, and better service delivery. In fact, after 3 months of using the app, 72% of inquired loan officers acknowledge an improvement in their daily working conditions while 88% affirm that they have a more professional approach with their client.
Application usage correlates with performance
Accessing portfolio reports anywhere and anytime (lists of customers, monthly objectives, risky and past-dues loans, todo list) leads to significant gain of time and an increased capacity to prioritize daily tasks. Thanks to the application, Loan Officers develop a global and analytical view of their portfolio, and they better anticipate and manage risks.
Indeed 94% of inquired Loan officers feel that they can better manage their portfolio at risk and 68% that their productivity has improved already.
Metrics tend to confirm this statement. Every month since deployment, heavy users -identified by the number of activities in the app- perform at least 30% more disbursement per month than low users. Also, after 4 months of usage Loans officers accessing the app have a portfolio at risk twice lower than those not activated.
Users are our key stakeholders
Getting every user involved also means considering them as the key stakeholders: users belong to a social media group (Google+ community) and can vote on the next promising features to implement, satisfaction surveys are sent on a quarterly basis, application “champions” are identified and volunteer to train their peers, and games are organized to promote new features and foster app usage.
At early stage of deployment the first results are very promising and new features will be added soon: visit customers more easily with geolocalization, simulate a loan for sales purposes, create loan application, manage visits, … Meanwhile, our app will be deployed for all Loan officers (1500 users) and adapted to branch managers and loan supervisors profiles. For 2016 we think bigger.
Stay tuned,
Louis Bidou — Loan Experience project Manager
