1000 and 1 days at Cowrywise
One fine day in March 2017, I was assigned to ward rounds for sample collection. What that entails is that I’d go to all the wards to collect blood samples of patients who couldn’t come to the laboratory for testing. I entered a particular children’s ward, D1 and I almost passed out. There were crying children in pain on every bed surrounded by their loved ones suffering alongside them. I rushed out as casually as I strolled in, found a place to throw up and sobbed like a baby. It was my first time in that ward. There and then, I realized I had chosen the wrong profession. I wasn’t cut out for all that emotional drain. To think that I was devastated when I wasn’t able to study Medicine (smh).
A quick trip down my memory lane; I had graduated from studying Medical Biochemistry and Genetics at Delta State, University in August 2015 and in March 2017, I was serving my fatherland in a General Hospital somewhere in Minna, Northern Nigeria. This was where the eureka moment happened for me.
Fast forward to December 2017, I had completed my NYSC program. I’m here, a confused graduate totally uninterested in pursuing a career in her field of study. On one of those confusing days, I decided to have a conversation with a senior friend where I ranted about how I needed to get a job, any job but nothing related to healthcare. He asked me to take a personality test and send him back the results.
The results opened my eyes to some of the innate abilities that I had overlooked, I was exposed to other career paths I’d excel at based on my personality.
With that knowledge, I started to look for opportunities to intern in a customer or general people relations role. I didn’t get anything exciting until one morning in February 2018 as I scrolled through my timeline on Twitter, I saw this tweet by Cowrywise.
It was exactly what I was looking for and the caption locked me in. Next thing I know is I’m on cowrywise.com looking at what they do. Finance and maths was a no go area for me, I never liked the topic but my curious self kept scrolling through the website and I was just interested in what looked like a 3-man company at the time. So I sat down, revamped my CV to fit the role and wrote what I thought to myself was a good application letter. Weeks later, I’m called for an interview (insert dancer emoji). I immediately get to reading blogs with tips to ace this interview.
On the 28th of March 2018, I’m sitting across one of the most ambitious guys I had ever met, Razaq Ahmed — Cowrywise’ CEO, discussing the scope of the job. My supposed interview became a passionate conversation about how important financial planning is, though underestimated and how Cowrywise wants to solve that problem.
I was awestruck and sold to the brand immediately. My fear of math quickly grew into a longing to understand basic financial and investment processes. You won’t blame my excitement when I got an offer, I got to the office before 7 am on my first day.
I started at Cowrywise in April 2018 as the only customer relations person. Then, I was saddled with the responsibility to make sure our 3k customers were happy and satisfied with whatever interaction they made with us. From the use of our app to the service we render to reaching us for support or clarification, every interaction had to be memorable.
Before joining Cowrywise, I knew very little about investments, finance and even tech. I had to learn while on the job, thanks to supportive colleagues and managers it wasn’t as overwhelming as I’d imagined.
At the time, Fintechs were not as popular as they are now and so people had very little trust in tech companies especially when it meant putting in their money. We were in a delicate industry at a delicate time, I remember always running to Razaq’s or Ed’s DM on Slack to get clarity on any and everything. I literally learned from Cowrywise customers how to serve them.
In less than 1 year, I grew from being the sole customer relations person to managing the customer experience team at Cowrywise. With the team, we have set up processes to ensure exceptional experiences for our customers.
Today, we have about 220k customers and together with a team of talented Product Specialists, we are creating the best experiences for all our customers. I and the team have grown from just providing reactive support solutions to Cowrywise customers to working with every unit of the Cowrywise team as well as 3rd party partners to make sure our customers get the best service from Cowrywise. It is absolutely exciting.
It’s been a whopping 1000 days working at this phenomenal company and I’m grateful for the growth and super amazing people. Working at Cowrywise in the past 2+ years has easily been the most daunting yet most interesting time of my life so far.
I’ve learnt so much in investments, customer relations, conflict resolution, people management, internal operations, negotiation, data management and tech processes (PS, I can’t write the simplest line of code).
I’m not sure what to expect in the next 1000 days but I look forward to it with excitement and anticipation, the experiences of the last have set the pace for greater responsibilities and more growth for me and for Cowrywise.
Here’s to a bigger next x number of days!
