Flutterwave:
Scaling Customer Experience Across Africa
Moving voice to the cloud enables seamless scalability
Solution Areas
Transition Voice to the Cloud
Industry
FinTech
Company Size
Mid-Size
Region
Global
Flutterwave is a payment technology company headquartered in San Francisco, California, built on the goal of empowering African businesses within and outside the continent to make and receive payments seamlessly. As a leading payment processor addressing the historically fractured payment landscape in Africa, Flutterwave has established itself as the only payment company operating at scale across the continent.
The Challenge: Evolving from B2B to Omnichannel Customer Experience
Business Model Evolution
Founded in 2016, Flutterwave initially focused exclusively on enterprise businesses with a B2B customer experience model.
As the company expanded into small and medium businesses (SMBs) around 2020 and subsequently moved into the retail/consumer space with remittance services, their customer experience strategy required fundamental transformation.
Operational Chaos
The Customer Experience Shift
The expansion into B2C markets created new challenges:
- Channel Proliferation: Need to support email, voice, social media, and chat channels
- Scale Requirements: Managing thousands of consumer interactions versus hundreds of enterprise accounts
- Metric Evolution: Shift from relationship-based metrics to operational metrics like response time, resolution time, and CSAT
- Trust Building: African consumers' preference for human interaction due to trust considerations in financial services
- Regulatory Compliance: Requirements for local phone numbers across multiple African countries
The Solution: Cloud-Based Voice Infrastructure with AVOXI
Flutterwave partnered with AVOXI to implement a comprehensive cloud voice solution addressing three core use cases:
Inbound Customer Support
- Robust IVR system routing customers to agents with appropriate language skills and expertise
- Trust-building through human interaction is critical in African financial services
- Skills-based routing ensures customers reach qualified specialists
Outbound Revenue Generation
- Proactive campaigns for upselling and cross-selling
- Customer reactivation initiatives
- Account recovery and retention programs
- Transforming CX from a cost center to a revenue generator
Omnichannel Integration
- Unified view of customer interactions across all channels
- Complete customer journey visibility for agents
- Seamless integration with CRM systems
"Africans are big on 'I want to talk to somebody,' because of the trust deficits... The fact that you can call into a number, you can hear 'welcome, thank you for calling Flutterwave'... gives you some level of trust."
— Oluwaseun Olatunde, CX Manager, Flutterwave
Key Selection Criteria for AVOXI
Service Reliability: Minimal downtime, ensuring seamless communication between support teams and customers
Omnichannel Capabilities: Single-view customer management regardless of interaction channel, providing agents with complete history and context
Regional Coverage: Local phone numbers across multiple African countries to meet regulatory requirements and establish local presence
The Impact: Operational Excellence and Strategic Advantages
Centralized Operations Management
Unified Monitoring: Centralized oversight of all phone numbers across 34+ countries, enabling data-driven resource allocation and regional support planning
Streamlined Administration: Easy setup and management of new numbers, users, and regional expansions through a cloud-based platform
Scalability: Flexible licensing allowing rapid scaling up or down based on business needs, with immediate cost optimization
Enhanced Customer Experience
Multi-generational Support: Accommodating preferences across different customer segments, from millennials preferring chat to traditional customers requiring voice interaction
Trust Building: Establishing credibility through local phone numbers and human interaction, crucial for financial services adoption in African markets
Reduced Customer Effort: Streamlined support processes with complete interaction history available to agents
Operational Benefits vs. Legacy Systems
Cloud Advantages Over Traditional Telecom:
- Scalability: Dynamic license management based on actual usage
- Accessibility: Internet-based access enabling remote work capabilities
- Real-time Analytics: Instant visibility into call data, abandonment rates, and agent performance
- Integration: Seamless omnichannel capabilities versus siloed legacy systems
So those were the major things for us...service reliability, omni-channel capabilities, and...local numbers across various regions.
Oluwaseun Olatunde
CX Manager, Flutterwave
Looking Forward: AI-Powered Customer Experience
2025 Strategic Initiatives
Customer Effort Reduction: Implementing AI capabilities to enable faster issue resolution and reduce customer friction
Support Automation: Doubling down on automation for routine customer tasks, following the principle that "anything a support agent can do with a click, customers should be able to do themselves."
Dual AI Strategy:
- Customer-facing AI: Already implemented and continuously improving for direct customer support
- Agent-assist AI: Emerging focus on helping agents provide faster, more accurate responses
Continuous Evolution Philosophy
"This industry is like a 100-meter dash - it's fast and moves at an incredibly rapid pace. Between the time we started this call and now, there have probably been changes in the fintech industry."
— Oluwaseun Olatunde, CX Manager, Flutterwave
Ready to transform your global voice infrastructure? Contact AVOXI to discover how your organization can achieve similar results and build a foundation for scalable growth.
