Picture this: You pick up your phone, ready to make that call, only to be greeted by a voice telling you that you have insufficient funds. Frustrating, isn’t it?

Then, you either have to purchase airtime, redeem Bonga Points, or quickly place a “Please call me” request.

All this feels like a journey to Timbuktu and back, even though it will take you less than two minutes.

As you think about how frustrating it can be to have limited airtime when you need to make a quick phone call, a team at Safaricom was also thinking about you.

Headed by Shiffira Gakenia, Product Manager, Airtime Credit and Call completion at Safaricom, the team had noticed a worrisome trend.

More than 10 million of the 110 million calls made on the Safaricom network per day were disconnected because of subscribers running out of airtime, with the affected callers getting a recorded message.

“The Interactive Voice Response (IVR) message response was long, and it was not working for most of our customers,” she said.

For Shiffira and her team, this was a puzzle that needed to be solved.

“We had to come up with a product that allows you to make a call without having airtime,” she recalled.

The solution had to be easy and quick to enable customers continue talking even when they had insufficient funds at the start of a call.

Safaricom had encountered the same problem before with M-PESA, where the Big Data team had noticed that of the numerous transactions that would get cancelled because of insufficient credit, 58 per cent would be completed within two days. The solution to this was the wildly successful Fuliza.

While there were options, such as Okoa Jahazi, Please Call Me, and reverse calls for those who know beforehand that they don’t have enough airtime, enabling a call to continue when airtime runs out did not exist.

“We tried to look everywhere in the world and could not find a similar product with negative billing, not even across other Vodacom markets,” she said.

In this case, Shiffira said, there were three key issues that needed to be addressed to create a good product: the customer needed to be on zero balance, there needed to be consent, and customers were being given a blank cheque.

Coincidentally, as her team was starting to develop Okoa Chap Chap, Safaricom was implementing the agile way of working, and this worked well for them.

In the agile approach, people from different teams are brought together to create solutions, whether they are new products or new services.

The agile methodology brings together diverse stakeholders, such as reporting personnel, architects, developers, legal experts, and regulatory bodies, ensuring that everyone involved in product delivery is present. This collaboration proved crucial during the discovery phase, as it revealed necessary product features that were initially overlooked.

During the discovery phase, the team encountered challenges with Safaricom’s systems not supporting the product. This necessitated a novel approach involving collaboration with vendors to recalibrate the billing system. A legal expert and the regulatory body (Communication Authority) were consulted to ensure compliance. Architects designed the product, considering its interaction with various systems, such as billing and reporting, as well as the IVR system.

The customer journey expert played a crucial role in assessing the product’s suitability for customers and advising on IVR implementation.

After working between May 2022 and June 2023, the eventual product was named Okoa Chap Chap, which is officially described as an overdraft facility that allows you to complete your calls when you have insufficient funds at the start of a call.

The product allows you to make a call even with zero airtime. At the end of the call, the cost is calculated based on the duration, and then it’s posted to you as a credit.

With Okoa Chap Chap, a customer with insufficient airtime initiates the call, and then the IVR prompts: “Your call is going to complete shortly using Okoa Chap Chap. You have up to Sh25 to complete your call. To continue, press zero.”

The amount to complete a call is not cast in stone; it is just supposed to allow you to complete a call. The maximum in a day is Sh250.

As the product was introduced, great attention and care went into its rollout, with the team monitoring its usage and performance hourly.

They analysed customer feedback from sources such as call centres and social media to understand how well it was being received. They also checked to see if users were satisfied with the product, if they understood the language, and how it was functioning. Finally, they were thrilled to see that the product was successful and well-received among our customers. This was the best possible outcome.

On the day of the launch, one million customers adopted the product, and currently, over two million use Okoa Chap Chap daily.

This has seen the gap of 10 million dropped calls per day reduce to six  million, a significant achievement for the business.

While Okoa Chap Chap has helped Safaricom avoid dropping calls, Shiffira sees the biggest benefit in allowing people to engage.

Almost nine months in, the product is doing well, with only two per cent of customers defaulting on payments.

For the future, Shiffira says there is a large space for call completion, and Safaricom is innovating to target the remaining dropping calls.

“We are looking at how to modify the product so that it can be used anytime, even in the middle of a call,” said Shiffira.