Community meeting video recording

DAY 1 - Tuesday November 20

Introductions

• Women currently in beauty services coop / SEWA members

• Other beauty workers just coming to see what it’s all about (first time at SEWA) and considering cooperatives

• Women shared name, where they are from, something they are good at, why they are interested in SEWA/being in a coop

• Dana and Michelle introduced the project

• Namya gave introduction to worker cooperatives and platform coop

Benefits of being in the coop

• Skills development

• Learn with each other

• Marketing power

• Security and safety

• Can cover the entire city

Journey Mapping / Needs & Challenges

Journey mapping outline - English / Gujarati

1st Group

Challenges

• Customer comes late

• Customer wants longer appointment than agreed

• Customer asks for extra things other than agreed

• Customer negotiates the price based on someone willing to do it cheaper

• Customer gives wrong location

• Customer is not ready for appoint

• Customer not there and doesn’t answer phone when they get there

• Not given proper address

• Location is often easier to find using a low tech strategy like asking a shopkeeper in the general area.

• Google maps often sends you to dead ends etc.

• Customer complains about service, including that it’s not hygienic

• Amount given to coop 15% is too much

• Customer wants them to use their product

• Traffic causes them to be late and appnt gets cancelled

• materials/kit are heavy - eg. for pedicure they cannot carry the machine - customer complains

• Customer wants to use good brand material but pay less

• They don’t get back their materials - for example hair pins

2nd Group

• 1st step is training

• Need information - where to go, finding the training, other?

• Goal: learn more and become more confident in what you do

• Challenges: hard to get info, costly, timing may not be convenient, distance to get there

• 2nd step is publicity

• Advertisements

• Goal: people should know you are doing something

• Pamphlets are easy, inexpensive

• Challenge: making higher quality pamphlets expensive (me - team up with other coop?)

• Easy: word of mouth

• Challenge - people don’t really look at your pamphlet they throw it away

• Dana - testimonials?

• Challenge: newspaper ads are expensive - especially for an individual

• Social media marketing

• Challenge: too much competition on social media

• How to spread the word of good service - FB, WhatsApp?

• Dana - have a “show”, live beauty services party?

• A lot of people have started to do it through “the web”

• Develop promotional packages - buy one get one free etc

• Promotional tree: Pass this message onto 5 people

• Points system - service with same person, points add up to reward/gift

• Dana: maybe they lose points if they aren’t ready for the appnt

• Journey

• Get call, get bag, traffic (challenge), customer changes mind when they get there (wants less services than agreed on)

• Security “always there in back of mind” - inside the house, the room, will it be ok - customers are strangers

• Competition in the market - beauty parlours - understand what they are doing so we know how to compete (me: skills trade?)

• Money - what we are giving - what extra the competition is doing so they can compete

• Technology - e.g. what Urban Clap is giving to client

• Worker needs to know how to communicate this to the customer

• E.g. customer wanted X service but worker did not know and did not know that the competition is offering this - how can they know all of what everyone is doing?

• Customer will order something on the phone then change it once worker is there

• Customer asks for less things than agreed

• Customer not there and doesn’t answer phone when they get there

• Customer says use my product

• Other women show up at customer house and say do me as well  

• bartering/bargaining for less

• Customer is not ready for appoint

General discussion

• Insist on 24 hours notice? But also want to be able to offer services on short notice

• Get tired of workers saying no to appointments regularly (because they are busy with other appointments?)

• Is there some way to allocate automatically?

3rd Group

• Customer cancels and then next day says come at another time (but that time is booked for her)

• Call comes and they learn of the location, they need to determine if they can get there in time, they might have a personal appointment beforehand

• How much work, how much expense - how to calculate is it worth it?

• Customer asks for less than agreed on (repeat)

• If they are 15 min late order is cancelled (repeat)

• Often they are late because the location is wrong

• They may also have cancelled a personal appointment to get there

• If customer cancelled previously, it’s always on their mind that they might cancel again - a tension for them

• Customer and worker should have a price list so it is clear - no negotiation!

• Personal vs coop work - how to juggle? Perhaps choose days of the week that you are working for the coop, and days you are doing personal work?

• Dana - can the personal be transferred over to coop?

• How to show availability clearly - green for available, red for not

• Area-wise - getting appointments in your area - a system to show location and take appointments in your area so you don’t have to travel far

• Wants certain type of facial but it’s not appropriate for her and worker needs to convince the customer to do something different

• E.g. lifting facial is 1 hour - fixed time - customer complains that they didn’t do it long enough, when it is in fact harmful to do it longer - customer doesn’t know this / believe them

• If travelling long distance need to charge a minimum treatment/cost

• What to say when customer complains - “next time I will do my best”

4th Group

• “All of our points have been covered”

• Want visits to big salons to see what they are doing (have an appointment there?)

• youtube videos how-tos?

• We have to do better than Urban Clap!

General Discussion (coop meeting)

• Have to be tough on prices because if you negotiate once that’s it

• Have to convince customer on quality - this is worth more than what you are paying

• Variable pricing based on where customers live?

What they like now and why

• Putting pictures of hair and makeup in whatsApp and facebook

• Big salons have Instagram accounts, they are edited nicely, searchable online

• Albums w pictures of the work they have done

• Some workers are keeping track in a daily planner/diary - appointments, what they did, what they got paid - some on mobile phone, some on paper

• How are appointments made now?

• A few women do the marketing and take the contact now and make phone calls to a list of women - mainly Stephyben

• How do they decide who to call first?

• 3 filters -

• 1. Type of Service (beauty/hair/makeup/mendhi) - depending on what the order is

• 2. Location

• 3. Equality of appointments - ensure that all workers are getting fair amount of work/pay

• E.g there are these 4 women - talk to them - give them the name, amount, location, mobile number, confirmation (phones client)

• Customers request a particular worker? Have decided that that is not possible

• Workers say - it might not be me (next time)

• Same worker if it is a multi-stage treatment

• Whatsapp groups that others have created with information about how to do things etc

• 7 people use google to find information, videos etc on new techniques

• 12/17 have smartphones, others have flip phones

• Flip phone users have access to computers?

• not everyone has access to a computer

• Now - marketing through pamphlets, WhatsApp, old clients from workers that they no longer personally service

• Can they transfer personal appointments to the coop?

• If there is more work at the coop will go to coop

• Don’t want to give up personal clients - lucrative

• The issue isn’t not enough customers, issue is marketing

• Even poor women want these services now - there is a trend

• Private clients would have to agree to use the coop and wouldn’t be guaranteed the service provider

• Want to offer training through SEWA - women want work - come and do training at SEWA and then join coop

• Retention ?

DAY 1 Summary

Categorized Challenges

• Customer not doing what was agreed upon

• Is late/not ready - makes worker wait

• Doesn’t answer phone when the worker gets there

• Wants more services/less services than booked

• Wants different services than booked

• Wants worker to spend more/less time than booked

• Wants lower price / negotiates price (compares price with other service providers)

• Wants worker to use customer’s own products (and wants to pay less as a result)

• Asks worker to go and purchase a product in the market

• Doesn’t return materials (e.g. hairpins) or damages them

• Cancels appointment / changes appointment time at last minute

• Asks for things that are unsafe, unhealthy (e.g. longer facial), or not appropriate (for customer’s skin type etc) - worker needs to convince her otherwise

• Additional women show up wanting treatment and expect worker to stay longer

• Complaints

• Services

• Can’t carry appropriate equipment because too heavy

• Hygiene

• How to respond?

• Location/Travel

• Addresses unclear

• Traffic causes them to be late and customer cancels

• Customer doesn’t respond when they get there

• Easier to just ask someone (shopkeeper) than use smartphone map

• Need to be able to determine if they can get there in time

• How much work, how much expense (for travel, other) - how to calculate: is it worth it?

• Safety

• Entering strange home

• Scheduling

• Offered an appointment at a time that doesn’t work because of scheduling conflicts

• Finding a co-op member who is available involves a lot of calling people

• Personal vs coop work - how to juggle? Perhaps choose days of the week that you are working for the coop, and days you are doing personal work?

• Wages

• 15% to SEWA is too much

• If travelling long distance need to charge a minimum treatment/cost

• How much work, how much expense - how to calculate: is it worth it?

• Training

• Hard to get info

• Want to visit big salons, know what is current

• Specifics of treatments being given

• costly

• timing may not be convenient

• distance to get there too far

• Members need knowledge about how to describe how they are different/better than UrbanClap, other competition

• How much work, how much expense - how to calculate: is it worth it?

• Youtube videos

• come and do training at SEWA and then join coop

• Marketing

• High-quality pamphlets are difficult and expensive

• Newspaper ads are expensive

• Pamphlets might not be effective - people just throw them away

• Alot of competition in social media

• Competition with UrbanClap and other salons

• Members need knowledge about how to describe how they are different/better than UrbanClap, competition in general

• There are plenty of customers, just need promotion - women might move to full coop work (let go of personal appointments) if there was enough work

Design Ideas

• Customers

• There should be a price list that both the customer and the beauty worker have

• Insist on 24 hours notice (for cancellation/booking)? But also want to be able to offer services on short notice

• Scheduling

• Get tired of workers saying no to appointments regularly (because they are busy with other appointments?)

• Is there some way to allocate automatically?

• want to be able to offer services on short notice

• How to show availability clearly - green for available, red for not

• Area-wise - getting appointments in your area - a system to show location and take appointments in your area so you don’t have to travel far

• Location

• Variable pricing based on where customers live?

• Training

• Sharing pictures of styles using Whatsapp

• Whatsapp training groups

• Marketing

• Rewards cards/points (to compete)

• Instagram account to show past work

• Whatsapp viral marketing (send to 5 people)

• Other options are social media and word of mouth

• before/after pictures

• Wages/pricing

• Variable pricing based on where customers live?

DAY 2 - Friday November 23

Small Groups

Group 1

Customer not doing what was agreed upon

Complaints

Group 2

Location/Travel

Wages

Safety

Group 3

Scheduling

Group 4

Training

Group 5

Marketing

Small Group Design Feedback

Group 1

Customer not doing what was agreed upon

• Worker needs to have customer phone number (SEWA didn’t agree to this request)

• This could be an issue because it is a coop and it would be better to go through a central switchboard (possible?) - UrbanClap does this

• Can we indirectly connect people without exposing phone numbers? Call goes to a central number and then redirects to the individual

• Worker needs to set a clear time of appointment beforehand

• Wait 10 minutes - penalty for customer - UrbanClap does not do this, it wouldn’t be a good idea now to do this since we are so new and trying to establish customer base

• What about limiting the number of services (i.e. appnt still ends at the same time)?

• Customer asks worker to go and purchase a product in the market - they don’t want to do this

• Customer wants extra treatments - call SEWA - then what? She will convince the customer otherwise?

• They can decide to do it or not - if they can’t, then call someone from the office to explain

• Minimum order must be set and communicated on site/pamphlet/to customer

• Customer wants only partial order from what was agreed - could set another appnt to do the rest

• Have a returnable deposit

• Have products listed on website - hygienic, good quality

• Feedback form, registration form - SEWA will decide ?

• Want easy way to calculate earnings (income less expenses)?

Dealing with Complaints

• Poor services

• Can’t carry appropriate equipment because too heavy

• Poor hygiene

• Workers want to know how to respond appropriately to complaints

Group 2

Location/Travel/Wages

• Now - client texts location (to SEWA?), or they use WhatsApp location

• Ask for landmarks

• Write it down (when talking to customer/scheduling appnt) is best because it will be correct

• Send a reminder with an extra ½ hour buffer - to get there on time

• Contact customer on the way if you are late

• Communicate that the worker might be ½ hour late and not to cancel

• How to appease the customer when they are late

• Offer free service

• Offer a product gift? (general disagreement to this idea) - maybe chocolate? :)

• Distance - Time calculation

• Travel further they want higher minimum (500?)

• Cooperative can compensate them for extra travel

• 15% taken by SEWA will be discussed by members

Safety

• Talk to woman before entering house - if only husband answers etc wait

• If woman never shows up leave and SEWA will pay for travel

• Get a call from SEWA 15 min later - checkin

• Or some kind of popup that says “are you ok?”

• Michelle - coop members partner up to check in with each other?

• Pepper spray

• Self-defence training - yes they are planning this

• Calling 181 - new initiative on violence against women - female police officers - very responsive

Group 3

Scheduling

• Conflict between personal and coop appointment

• Weekly chart (see drawing)

• name/area/availability(days)/location - customer/worker matching (SEWA)

• Eventually automate: 3 stages - availability / location / value of your appnts so far (person earned least so far will get appointment)

• Short-term bookings - SEWA scheduler can use the chart to make bookings

Group 4

Training

• Visit big salons

• Attend workshops in different areas

• Expensive training - one woman from SEWA can be paid to go and then teach the others

• Training as recruitment

• Fix training times that work for everyone

• Trainings in off-seasons (no festivals, no weddings)

• Soft-skill training and communication - they can organise it, women just need to make time for it

• Could make a video and distribute it but then there will still be questions for Stefy

• DA - remote training?

• How we are different from UrbanClap and others

Group 5

Marketing

• Worker login page (see sketch)

• Panic button (181)

• red/green button - availability indicator

• Integrated with weekly scheduling tool

• Profile with photo

• How much money they have earned/commission to coop

• Tracking orders - e.g. how many they have had this month

• Website!

• See sketches

• Join us - fill out a form

• Gallery

• Types of services (me - offer packages?)

• Our Team - photos? maybe

• Our Work

• Each one has a page - price, description, team members?,

• Testimonials (videos? quotes?)

• Contact info, social media, location head office etc

• Group photo at the bottom

• True case studeis / featured case study of woman’s story - photo

• Small videos of the women working - not with real clients, with each other

• Website look

• More images, less text

• Before and after photos

• Short videos about services - e.g. about hygiene

• Customer feedback - star system

• “Like” system

• LinkedIn FB Pinterest Snapchat Twitter Instagram

Scheduling tool sketch - Name / Area of Work / Availability(days) / Location

Worker Log-in and personal page

Website design sketch