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backThere is a distinct energy in Nairobi. The first week of February 2026 saw our customer experience research team in the “silicon savannah” as it is fondly known. We couldn’t help but notice how the city hummed with the same vibrancy and relentless drive for innovation that we feel every day back home in Lagos. It was the perfect backdrop for the ESOMAR Africa in Focus 2026 conference, where the global market research community gathered to discuss the future of insights.
I travelled there with my colleagues, Sophia and Fred, not just to attend, but to present a story that is deeply personal to us at Moniepoint. We went to share a case study on how our team fuels innovation through our customers' feedback.
Standing on that stage, presenting our research paper, "From NPS to Action", was a validation of a simple but radical truth we hold dear: If you aren't listening deeply to your customers, your business is not positioned for growth.
The global struggle: businesses are drowning in data, but starving for insight
We started our presentation with a statistic that usually makes executives uncomfortable. Globally, 80% of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience. Yet, only 8% of customers agree.
This is the "Insight-to-Action Gap." Companies are drowning in data (surveys, NPS scores, A/B tests, feedback forms), but they are starving for actual insights that drive operational change. Most organisations treat the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a vanity metric; a number to put on a slide to make the Board happy.
In Nairobi, we shared how Moniepoint breaks that mould. We shared the Q1 2025 story.
The vulnerability of listening
Transparency is uncomfortable, but it is the only pathway to trust. In our presentation, we were open about the fact that early 2025 was a challenging period for our customer experience. Our data showed that while our Personal Banking NPS was stable, the heartbeat of our operations, our Business Banking NPS, took a 12-point nosedive.
Merchants were frustrated. Network reliability wasn't where it needed to be. POS terminals were developing faults. The trust we had built was bleeding.
Simultaneously, we saw a rise in what we call "Product-Gap Churn" among personal users. These weren't customers leaving because we failed them; they were leaving because they had outgrown us. They wanted loans, savings tools, and credit features we hadn't built yet.
A traditional bank might have looked at the aggregate score, seen it was "okay," and moved on. But we don’t deal in averages. We had to dissect the noise.
Beyond the scorecard is a diagnostic machine
The core of our talk in Nairobi focused on the methodology we built to fix this. We explained to the audience that standard NPS—asking "How likely are you to recommend us?" followed by a "Why?"—is a dead end. It gives you vague sentiment with poor accountability or actionability within your organisation.
We introduced our improved diagnostic framework to the audience.
We don't just ask if you are happy. We use conditional logic to find out exactly what is wrong. If a merchant says they are unhappy, our survey doesn't just say "Sorry." We dig for more details and route that specific error code (whether it’s a terminal hardware fault or a settlement delay) directly to the engineering team responsible for fixing it.
We turned our research department from a passive reporting entity into an active "action engine." We stopped just reporting the weather and started helping to build the shelter.
Applying the "churn-as-a-catalyst" model
Perhaps the moment that resonated most with the ESOMAR audience was when we discussed our philosophy on churn.
In banking and financial services, customers rarely unsubscribe or close their accounts as they do with Netflix; they just go silent, stop signing in to your app, or simply let their cards expire without renewing. We define churn as 75 days of inactivity. Why 75 days? Because waiting for the industry-standard 90 days is an autopsy. At 90 days, the customer is gone. At 75 days, we still have a "save window."
We presented our churn-as-a-catalyst model, which reframes churn not as a failure, but as a free consultation. When a user leaves saying, "I need a loan, and you don't offer one," that is not a complaint. That is a roadmap.
By listening to the people leaving us, we identified the “Product Gap." And we didn't just try to win them back; we used their feedback to launch a formal discovery phase for our credit and savings products. We turned their departure signal into the foundation of our future product roadmap.
We turned this around from "fix it" to "build it"
The climax of our case study was the results. We didn't just share a theory; we showed the receipts.
By deploying this framework (and then taking action on the feedback), we achieved a V-shaped recovery. In just one quarter (Q2 2025), our Business NPS rebounded by 13 points, completely erasing the decline.
But more importantly, the conversation changed. In Q1, customers were shouting about hygiene factors: "Fix the network!" "Fix the terminal!" By Q2, the feedback had evolved to value factors: "Give me better interest rates," "Help me invest."
We had moved up the hierarchy of needs. We stopped putting out fires and started building the future.
Coming home
Returning from Nairobi, I am struck by the realisation that tech in Africa is no longer just "catching up." In many ways, we are leading. The complexities of our market, from the infrastructure challenges, the reliance on cash, to the absolute necessity of trust, force us to build listening mechanisms that are more robust and more reactive than those in established markets.
Presenting at ESOMAR was a proud moment for Sophia, Fred, and me, but it was also a reminder: the work of listening is never done. The market moves fast, and customer needs evolve faster. At Moniepoint, we don't listen so we can pat ourselves on the back. We listen so we can act. That is the difference between a metric and a movement.
