CX Research Team Lead at Moniepoint Inc.

The CX Research Team Lead will lead a dedicated research team focused on deeply understanding the unique experiences, motivations, and operational challenges of Moniepoint customers (particularly POS agents and business owners). This role is crucial for optimizing our personal and business banking products (including our agent network), enhancing their experience, and identifying opportunities to expand and improve financial services across communities.

Responsibilities:

• Strategic Research Leadership:
  • Translate strategic business objectives into focused research plans and projects for consumers, business owners and agency banking segments.
  • Oversee the full research cycle, from understanding onboarding processes to analyzing daily behavioural and operational flows and pain points.
  • Conduct competitor and market studies specific to agency banking, analyzing competitor agent network models, commission structures, and agent support mechanisms to identify best practices and competitive advantages.
• Research Operations & Data Management:
  • Manage the research repository for all customer insights, raw data, and finalized reports, ensuring proper organization, accessibility, and version control.
  • Oversee the recruitment, maintenance, and engagement of the research participants' panel, ensuring a diverse and readily available pool for research studies.
  • Maintain comprehensive findings on competitor agent offerings, commission rates, and network strategies, providing insights to optimize Moniepoint's agent value proposition.
• Team Management & Development:
  • Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Customer Experience Researchers, Research Analysts, and Customer Research Associates.
  • Prioritize research projects and allocate team resources effectively to support agent network growth and efficiency initiatives.
  • Assess the quality and practical applicability of research deliverables for the agency banking domain.
• Stakeholder Collaboration & Advocacy:
  • Collaborate closely with product teams, sales teams, operations, customer support, and regional teams to identify key research needs related to the agent network.
  • Be a passionate advocate for the customer's voice within Moniepoint, ensuring their unique perspective informs product and operational decisions.
  • Present actionable research findings and recommendations to stakeholders, highlighting opportunities to enhance agent productivity and satisfaction.
• Customer Understanding & Prioritization:
  • Lead the development and ongoing refinement of detailed personas and journey maps specific to our various customer segments.
  • Maintain a prioritized list of improvements to existing products, particularly agency banking tools and processes, and new features for agent platforms, based on qualitative feedback, NPS, CSAT, and agent complaint data.
• Feedback Integration:
  • Implement and manage continuous feedback mechanisms for both qualitative and quantitative insights.
  • Work with relevant teams to ensure NPS and CSAT feedback is translated into actionable improvements for the customer experience.
  • Close the feedback loop with customers, particularly those who complete feedback surveys (CSAT, NPS), communicating actions taken based on their input.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Social Sciences, Business, Marketing, Logistics, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience in customer research, market research, operational research, field research, or a related insights role, with at least 2 years in a leadership or managerial capacity.
• Proven experience in conducting research within distributed networks, B2B2C models, or with field agents will make a candidate stand out.
• Strong understanding of agency banking operations, mobile money, and the financial inclusion landscape.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to connect with and understand diverse customer profiles and articulate their needs to internal teams.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex research projects in a dynamic operational environment.

Preferred Qualifications and Experience

• Master's degree in a relevant field.
• Experience with ethnography or contextual inquiry in underserved or rural communities.
• Familiarity with agent management platforms and data analytics specific to agent networks.
• Experience working with large-scale survey data.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Impact of research insights on customer experience, retention, and transaction volumes.
• Efficiency and quality of research project execution.
• Effectiveness of stakeholder collaboration and integration of insights.
• Contribution to improvements in agent NPS and CSAT scores.
• Team performance, growth, and operational effectiveness.
• Accuracy and completeness of persona-specific prioritized improvement lists.
• Organization and accessibility of the research repository and health of the participant panel.
• Accuracy and strategic value of competitor and market intelligence.
• Effectiveness in closing the feedback loop with customers and demonstrating impact of their feedback