Agent training is a powerful lever to drive agent performance. This week, MMU held a webinar to dialogue with mobile money managers about how to design and implement impactful and cost effective trainings. In the first section of the webinar, Yasmina and Gerry presented best practices identified in the recent publication:
- All members of the channel require training
- Offsite training course for new agents
- Agent training is not a onetime event
- Effective training is best done by dedicated trainers managed against clear KPIs
- Training must go beyond the practical “how to” and cover the business case
In the second part of the webinar, we discussed specific questions raised by the participants. In particular, we debated whether or not it was effective and advisable to use a dedicated resource for training mobile money agents. Some participants made the point that it would be convenient and cost-effective to use existing resources already working in mobile money such as master agents or agent network management teams. Unfortunately, this proves ineffective. The main reason for this is that their incentives and KPIs are ultimately to drive sales and transaction volumes. If they are tasked with training, they do not allocate adequate time to the activity and are not incentivised to push quality assurance or compliance. This is why MMU recommends using dedicated resources for training mobile money agents.
The following questions were also discussed:
- Why isn’t agent training at the shop adequate?
- How do I deal with issues of agent illiteracy?
- Which media do you find best for training? Role Play, flip charts, PowerPoint, group work etc…?
- Should agents be charged a fee for training?
- How often do I need to think about training the agents?
- Aside from outputs and outcomes what other KPIs can be used to manage an out-sourced company doing agent training?
If you couldn’t attend the webinar, you can review our slides (also available in French) as well as watch to the recording.