The mobile financial services space is exploding

A good indicator for an industry is the number of job it requires to fill. In recent years the mobile financial services space has seen tremendous growth as you can see from the increase in the number of job postings with the words mobile financial services. From indeed.com we can see an amazingly good upward trend.

mobile financial services Job Trends

Mobile Financial Services jobs

This is good news for the financially underserved as they will certainly benefit from some well thought out services. MFS companies have their work cut out for them as they are creating a new space and as usual a lot of them will choose the wrong business model. Some of the biggest concerns for these type of services are:

• Legislation - In LATAM countries like Peru are issuing a whole new set of regulations regarding emoney and the type of companies that can provide services. In others, like Argentina, this is a grey area and in others there is no regulation.
• Adoption - making services that people use is difficult. Earning the trust of the consumer, being user friendly- and fast- enough to be practical. Having the right product mix, etc. etc.
• Competitors - everybody and their uncle is getting in on the action. Although, the primary entrants are the incumbent financial industry and the MNOs legislation may open the door to new entrants (like in Peru where MNOs are by law required to open their USSD channels).
• Competing technologies - USSD, SMS, apps, email. There are plenty of technologies to choose from and not a single one is a clear winner.
• Price - this one seems like an easy one, but remember that you are competing with cash so the price of the primary competitor is zero. Pricing a P2P under these conditions is hard. At the end of the day somebody has to pay for the service (infrastructure, commissions, etc.)

In any case, this is an interesting time to be in this space and the company that gather momentum and volume (like MPesa in Kenia) can reap the benefits or dominating this market.

Don't let Customer Service ruin your customer's experience

There doesn't seem to be a customer service bone in some companies this day. I sent a scathing letter to an airline after five consecutive trips where every trip was either delayed or canceled – Their response was that they didn’t have time to answer my letter because they have received so many complaints lately that they couldn’t respond to them all.
After the initial shock was a sense that the company was no longer interested in customer service. The text of the response was neither apologetic nor palliative. It was matter of fact with no promise to address issues in the future. It was a customer’s dead end.

I have to wonder where does Customer Service at this airline sits with Product Development and Marketing – Is Customer Service even present when the company is addressing service problems. My guess is no. The communication showed no interest in their product, no Product Manager that I know of would sent that letter; and no rational Marketing person would sent such a diminishing communication. Their customer service board must have been asleep at the wheel on this one.

Product Management & its strategic implications

Product management is a market-driven approach to develop and manage products or services:

• Defines what the product should be – is accountable to users for feature sets, navigation, quality, and overall experience

• Is a cross-functional discipline: involves strategy, product development and marketing

• Is accountable for overall product direction, key decisions, including in some cases full P&L control or at least budget control
  

• Ensures that the final product meets specifications

• Evangelizes product to internal and external stakeholders

The strategic implications of a robust Product Management function are many: from increasing the value of the company, understanding the customer today and in the future, ensuring that all possible revenue is being captured, guiding future product investments and controlling the current cost structure of the products, to name a few. For any organization, it is imperative that these and other issues are being taking care of in the Product Management function.