Credit Associate - MARCH 2024

Fresh Life is an award-winning social venture based in Nairobi, Kenya. We undertake two exciting lines of work:

• We provide safe, sustainable sanitation services to residents living in informal urban settlements of Nairobi and Kisumu using end-to-end non-sewered sanitation solutions. Watch here!

• We partner with cities to develop and deliver safe sanitation and waste management for urban residents. Using a systematic methodology, we match cities’ sanitation and waste management needs with technology and service delivery models, and then offer clear guidance on the steps that governments, funders, service providers and technology developers can take to develop and implement integrated service delivery systems.

Operational since 2011, the Sanergy group serves over 150,000 urban residents with safe sanitation services every day and safely removes nearly 20,000T of sanitation waste per year. We have built a team of more than 400 workers from diverse backgrounds who all embody the drive, creativity, teamwork, and passion that make us achieve our goals. For our work, we have been recognized by the Gates Foundation as part of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals accelerator and by Fast Company as one of the 10 most innovative companies in the world doing social good and one of the 10 best companies in Africa.

This job entails managing the assigned customer portfolio: Ensuring as an organization, we provide the best service to FLOs (FLT repairs, timely collections, and tackling any issues they raise within specified timelines) and documenting/keeping important customer information and documents. It also ensures customers maintain sanitation and hygiene standards and pay their monthly service fee.

• Customers Onboarding

• Onboard quality customers through executing customer vetting.

• Clearly set customer expectations, their role and the organization’s role before they are fully onboarded.

• Conduct customer training on our mission and vision, how to maintain sanitation and hygiene standards, the process of issues escalation and making payments.

• Manage credit/Debt collection

• Visit,call or use any other acceptable strategy to ensure the assigned customer portfolio pays their invoices.

• Strategically engage,plan with customers with arrears on how the arrears will be paid and document the customer payment plans.

• Conduct checks and scrutiny on the customer balances to ensure they are correct and in case there are issues to escalate the same to supervisors and follow through to ensure they are corrected.

• Engage customers in the most effective way through deploying CLEAR conversations with FLOs.

• Always ensure your toilet portfolio’s operational status in the field matches what is in the system at all times to ensure invoices are correctly generated and provide a true picture of retention numbers.

• Employ simple problem-solving techniques to tackle payment-related issues.

• Management of issues/Cases

• Manage escalation of customer complaints and issues by ensuring all are escalated within the right time frame.

• Collaborate with relevant team members and departments to ensure customer issues and complaints are resolved in a timely manner.

• Conduct problem-solving techniques i.e 5 whys to establish preventive measures to issues occurring within your customer portfolio.

• Issues that commonly happen are maintenance/Repair issues, late/missed collections, payment issues and other issues raised by customers.

• Customer Data/Documentation.

• Manage customer information by ensuring customer details are correctly captured in the system and any errors are corrected timely.

• Verify customer documentation after launch to ensure franchise agreements Land approvals document, government approval forms and any other documents are available and information is well captured and signed correctly.

• Ensure the operational status of the FLTs in the field reflects the odoo status all times.

• Document all customer issues.

• Standards

• Train, coach customers on how to maintain quality sanitation and hygiene standards and monitor progress to ensure they are adhered to.

• Conduct refresher training to all customers and users on sanitation and hygiene.

• Execute corrective measures on cases related to poor sanitation and hygiene standards and ensure they improve.

• After the QuaC (hygiene and standards survey) ensure all customers get feedback and those below standards are trained and cautioned in order to improve.

• Retention.

• Engage customers with closed FLTs to handle issues at hand in order to reopen the FLTs.

• Prevent closures by working to tackle issues that might lead to closures

• Ensure the operational status in the field reflects the same in the CRM (Odoo) and any disparities are corrected immediately.

• Diploma or Degree in business management/ credit/debt management

• Previous experience in debt collection, credit control, field-based sales (FMCG) is preferred

• Good communication skills, customer handling/management skills, problem-solving skills, customer service

• Customer-centric - employs diplomacy and firmness to build win-win partnerships with customers.

• Ability to collect customer data and generate reports

• Computer literate with basic, MS Excel skills

• Confident, assertive and persuasive - ability to handle difficult customers

Physically fit - this role will involve walking daily, in informal settlements