Discussions, Strategies and Client Visits: The Story of My Survey by Funke Aderonmu

It’s been two weeks into my time in Kenya and I’m still loving the cool Nairobi weather. What a relief from the Davis heat!

I started off my second week with a brainstorm session for the customer questionnaire at the office. It was an iterative discussion between Chebet and myself on what topics to address in the survey and how to go about framing the questions. Utilizing the business concepts of customer segmentation and targeting, we developed a list of characteristics for our product’s target users and their anticipated needs as relates to energy and cooking fuels. I was then able to synthesize this information with Bright Green’s own objectives for the briquettes into developing the first set of survey questions.

Following our brainstorming session, I led a discussion on strategies to avoid bias in our survey. Prior to starting the project, I had done some research on survey bias and learned about how aspects such as the structure of questions or environment where a survey is taken can affect an individual’s response to survey questions. This is important as it can potentially undermine the quality and validity of a person’s response and thus the results of a survey. With this in mind, Chebet and I developed strategies on how to avoid common biases as much as possible in our survey. We came up with approaches such as providing our clients privacy when they fill out the survey and paying attention to word choice as some words may have certain connotations. By the end of the day, we had written down four giant pages worth of ideas and had come up with the first draft of our product questionnaire.

After two days of revising and editing the survey, I set out on Thursday to meet our clients for the first time. I met with Rebecca, another staff member at Bright Green in the morning and we prepared for our meetings. We first met with three clients in downtown Nairobi where Bright Green has another branch office. During our meeting, we gave each of our clients a sample of the briquettes to test, and explained purpose of the survey which was to get their opinions on and capture their experiences with the product. Since most of our clients expressed themselves more easily in Swahili, the national language of Kenya, Rebecca was instrumental in helping me effectively understand and communicate with them through translation.  

                  

From downtown, Rebecca and I hopped into a matatu and headed to our second group of clients in the community of Umoja on the outskirts of Nairobi. The Matatu is one of Kenya’s signature forms of public transportation. These are small minivans or buses, each one uniquely decked out in bright colors with designs of everything from pop culture icons to political events and figures. As I sat in the matatu, afro beats music blasted through loud speakers as the entire bus pulsed along to the rhythm. I could barely hear myself think as the music overwhelmed my eardrums so I looked out the window and watched as we sped by the urban landscape of high rises, outdoor markets and frenzied activity.

When we got to Umoja, we waded through a maze of small streets and shop vendors to meet with three clients. All were small shop vendors who sold food items and as a result relied on charcoal as fuel for cooking the food. They were eager to test out the briquette samples which we explained burned for longer than regular charcoal as we handed them the questionnaires.


Not long after, we headed back to the city taking an even louder matatu on the way.  An hour later, we got off the matatu and into a sea of people rushing in every direction, heading home from a long day’s work. As I meandered through the people and traffic, I reflected on what had been accomplished this week; the discussions I’d had, the strategies that had been developed and the places I visited. My week had been nothing less than eventful and I eagerly looked forward to new adventures in the coming weeks.