From customer acquisition to support, WeLight uses Upya to provide electrify-as-a-service to its customer base. Thanks to a ticketing system and workflow automation it ensures the successful coordination of customer requests, teams, and field operations.
Upya is not just a CRM for WeLight, it’s the backbone of our business. It has empowered us to manage our sales, operations, and customer quality with a level of precision and efficiency that was previously unimaginable.”
Alexandre Castel
CCO at WeLight
As a mini-grid developer providing electricity to over 50+ villages across Madagascar and Mali, WeLight is driving the clean energy field enabling households and businesses to be fully independent in their energy consumption. Mini-grids have the advantage of being able to power any type of appliance and entire villages that are off-grid. However, mini-grid developers like WeLight require an in-depth understanding of village surroundings and energy demand, quality mini-grid installations, deployment and high customer relationships. WeLight’s ambition is to replicate its approach in over 200 new sites by the end of 2024.
Field: Mini-grids
Markets: Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria
Clients: Households and businesses in rural areas
Joined Upya: November’21
As Welight was implementing an increasing number of mini-grids and had a full pipeline, it was looking for a solution that could digitise its current operations, teams and processes while working with some of its existing digital tools. The CRM would need to support extensive data collection through field surveys and also manage customer onboarding and more general field and customer-related activities.
To identify adequate sites for future mini-grids, WeLight runs extensive surveys whereby agents are sent to the field to assess the critical site and village parameters. The information collected includes flooding risks, economic activity, the potential electricity consumption of households etc. Until recently most of the data was collected through a series of sophisticated Google Sheets. However, as the company continued to grow, the need for a better, more accurate and time-saving solution was a must.
As Welight was implementing an increasing number of mini-grids and had a full pipeline, it was looking for a solution that could digitise its current operations, teams and processes while working with some of its existing digital tools. The CRM would need to support extensive data collection through field surveys and also manage customer onboarding and more general field and customer-related activities.
Drop-down lists
Predefined answers
Creation of any type of Q
Collection of any type of data
Works offline
Building and managing a sales funnel has been a priority for WeLight. Having agents talking to numerous potential customers on the ground, WeLight saw an opportunity to start building a sales funnel that would later increase overall customer acquisition and village penetration.
As information is collected on a prospect, Upya allows flagging a prospect’s interest based on any internal qualifications (e.g. hot, warm, cold etc.). Through questionnaire templates, WeLight first collects critical Know Your Customer (KYC) data, and further down asks the agent to qualify a lead based on interest level. When customer lists are compiled and viewed, Welight can then assess the overall strength of its sales funnel, per agent and region.
Prospecting flagging
Know your customer data
Sales funnel assessment
Being a mini-grid company, WeLight’s teams manage countless daily processes such as connecting and managing metres or answering customer calls and requests. The latter requires constant coordination and reminders of who should do what, when, and also involves status reports and information sharing. WeLight needed a solution to digitise and implement these workflows at scale.
Upya has worked with WeLight to replicate specific workflows that include tickets to be resolved by admins or tasks to be performed by teams on the ground.
E.g. The installation team receives a pop-up notification on the Upya mobile app that they need to connect a meter at location X. Included in the task to perform is a report that the on-the-ground personnel needs to fill in or pictures of the installation they need to include to complete the task. Since the app works offline all the required information can be collected while an agent is in a remote area.
WeLight also leverages automation by which different actions are linked and automatically triggered based on a variety of scenarios or rules. Find below an example of a potential scenario.
For WeLight, automating specific processes on Upya has allowed to improve team coordination, from HQ to the field, increase speed of execution, and clarify steps to follow and ownership while also minimising mistakes.
As WeLight continues its impressive growth across Africa it looks to Upya to further digitise its processes and improve the overall efficiency of operations. Also, WeLight wants to further impact the lives of its existing customer base by providing through Upya other life-changing products and services.
