In March 2013, a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods were used to capture a snapshot of Handygo’s mKisan service 6 months after its launch in October 2012.  mKisan provides market prices, weather and agronomy information to a target market of smallholder farmers in rural India.  After a long wait, an executive summary of the baseline study for this agricultural VAS is now available to download!  You can find your copy at the new data & insights section of the mAgri website.

In a previous mAgri blog, my colleague Natalia identified a number of bottlenecks where customers get ‘stuck’ on the way to becoming ideal mKisan customers where they use multiple aspects of the service.  By looking at these customer segments in detail, we were able to make a number of recommendations based around the following areas:

Marketing: further above the line marketing efforts, like mass media campaigns or face-to-face promotion through agents, would help new and returning users to discover the more interactive content offered by the service and educate users about pricing models.  Our analysis revealed that although agronomy content was the least popular type on the service at this time, customers who accessed this content were more likely to return as repeat users of the service.  It was therefore recommended that marketing efforts sign-post this content.  A free trial period may encourage customers to find the value in the interactive services included in the package.

Introduce new channels: a truly interactive help-line channel would provide customised advice and increase the perceived value of the service.

Improve service design: perform user testing to discover how customers engage with the service.

Perhaps the most exciting outcome of this analysis, given the time which has passed since the data collection, is how it has changed the way we approach our monitoring and evaluation (M&E) process. We found ourselves forming hypotheses around these customer segments; we wanted to find out why each was engaging with the service differently.

Customers at the sign-up stage are passive users who only receive push content; they do not actively seek information through the IVR or helpline channels.  We want to know:

• How they learnt about the product, what they expect when they purchase a subscription package and whether below the line marketing has made them aware of the IVR service through SMS campaigns.
• Are their information needs being met by the SMS messages they receive or by other information sources?

One of the greatest bottlenecks exists at the trial stage; these customers are aware of the IVR service having used it once, but have not returned to use the service again.  We want to know:

• Was the content they found what they were expecting?
• Were they able to find the content they were looking for, and was it of sufficiently high quality?
• Were they able to find any content or did they get stuck on the menu?
• Do they remember the IVR number, or know how to find it?

Repeat users are our optimal customers, returning to access the IVR service on several days over a few months.  We want to understand:

• What causes people to become repeat users?  Are they in a crisis situation?  Or interested in broadening their knowledge more generally?  What access do they have to other sources of information compared to other users?
• Is mKisan leading to behaviour change in this segment?  How?
• What are the constraints that prevent applying/ using different types of content?
• Would these users benefit further from any additional content?

Data collection for the midline survey is now underway, using targeted surveys for each customer segment which aim to answer these questions and give us better insights into customer interaction with mKisan.  Results should be available in the near future, so watch this space for developments.