I just wrapped up my first Immersion trip to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, with Wave. It was an incredible experience. I’m leaving the country energized and excited to continue serving our mission of making Africa the first cashless continent.
Immersion trips are part of the onboarding experience for new employees at Wave. As the name implies, we’re sent to one of our markets for a week to learn about our customers, their culture, and experience Wave firsthand. I was sent to Côte d’Ivoire with four other employees. Three of them are from Barcelona and the other from the United States. They were great company to have along and I enjoyed getting to know them. It helped that two of the colleagues from Barcelona were Italian expats so that was extra fun for me.
The trip itself is well organized and spaced out. There’s a good mix of work, fun, and downtime. I also had a lot of opportunities to sample the local food which I loved! You can tell a lot of thought has gone into planning these trips. This is how they were broken down:
Day 1: understanding Wave from the inside
Our first day started at the Wave head-office in Abidjan. We were shuttled from our hotel to the office and were warmly greeted by our colleagues on the people team. They set us up in a boardroom for the week as our base of operations at the office.
Once we were settled, we got our devices set up with SIM cards, local phone numbers, and our Wave accounts. This allowed us to later make payments and send money like the locals do.
The phone setup was followed by an office tour. One of our colleagues took us floor by floor through our seven-storey building to meet folks from the various departments. At every stop, we all introduced ourselves to each other and then the team we were meeting presented their area of expertise. Everyone was so nice.
It was incredible to see how big and complex Wave is. We have many different teams taking care of really complex problems. The ingenuity and ownership was inspiring. After we concluded our tour, we made our way back to our boardroom to eat lunch and take a break.
After our break, we participated in an engaging values workshop. It started with a discussion about our values and what they meant to each of us. How we interpret them. We then got into some role-playing. Our facilitator presented us with some challenges, tailored to the members of the group, and asked us how we might use our values to solve them. It was very hands-on and practical.
We wrapped up the day with a social event in the parking lot. There were drinks. There was food. And there was music! It was a very lively atmosphere. I enjoyed meeting our colleagues and learning about them beyond work.
Day 2: seeing the agent and merchant network
Our second day took us to the lively Adjamé Market. Abidjan’s biggest market. The atmosphere was electric and full of life. The purpose of the trip was to see how money gets in and out of Wave. It’s facilitated by a network of operators we call Agents. The Agents are located in buildings, shops, and stalls of all shapes and sizes. People go there to withdraw and deposit cash.
We visited a handful of locations. Big and small. One of them had us standing in a vault-like room surrounded by mountains of money. It was incredible to see the scale we’re operating at. I had no idea before this.
After visiting the agents, we popped over to a few merchant stalls to see how they interact with customers. I made my first purchase with Wave and got a coffee soda. It was delicious!
Later that night, I put my Wave account to use again paying for dinner at a restaurant. After completing the payment, the waiter went on to mention how life-changing Wave has been for him and other Ivorians.
Day 3: experiencing distribution and customer support
We kicked off our third day visiting a bank and mall to meet with our distributors. People working on behalf of Wave to help customers start using Wave, especially for payments.
Distributors position themselves in high-traffic areas, where they answer questions and help people learn how to use Wave. They wear bright blue Wave-branded clothing, making them easy to spot, and proactively approach people passing by.
Over the years, we’ve been able to measure their impact and see a direct correlation to customers onboarding and using Wave regularly. We actively monitor traffic and usage in these locations so that we can tell when we’ve reached a point of saturation and move the distributors around to new locations.
After our distributor visit, we made our way to our support office. We ate lunch and then began our tour of the support office.
Like our head-office tour on Day One, we visited several departments and learned how they support customers. The biggest difference was seeing the work in action: phone reps handling back-to-back calls and digital reps responding to chats and social-media messages within a one-minute SLA.
After our tour, we shadowed our support colleagues to get a taste for the kinds of challenges they face.
We started with the digital support team. I was impressed by the team’s pace, judgment, and emotional stamina.
They use a mix of company-supplied templates, with personally generated ones for their own voice, and handcrafted messages to stay on top of that. Additionally, they sometimes field voice messages, which they then have to answer with voice replies. Like I said, very impressed! I can’t imagine what my brain would feel like after a full day of doing that.
We concluded the day shadowing an inbound support rep. They were equally impressive for the volume of calls they handle in a day. They masterfully handled the calls back-to-back with little time in between. All the while taking moments to mute the call and tell us what was going on in English.
I once again left this building feeling inspired. Not only by how hard our support colleagues work but also the operational excellence at play. Managing a team as big as that and delivering those kinds of results is no small feat.
Day 4: learning about Ivorian culture and history
Day four was our culture day. We left Abidjan and made our way to the historic town of Grand-Bassam.
Along the way, we stopped at a cocoa farm which also doubled up as a teaching farm. Our visit started with a fun tour of the grounds. We got to see all the produce they grow and animals they raise on the land.
Starting with the cocoa tree, I checked off a bucket list item and tasted fresh cocoa right off the tree. It was more citrusy than I was expecting but otherwise good. They also grew coffee, grapefruit, bananas, miracle fruit, and star fruit.
As far as animals go, they had chickens, pigs, tilapia, and flies (for the tilapia to eat).
After the tour, we got to work and made our own chocolate. The process started with sorting and grinding roasted cocoa beans. We then took them into a facility where they were ground down, mixed with other ingredients, cooled down, and poured into molds. As someone who loves chocolate, this was a real treat for me.
Once we were done, we made our way to lunch. We drove to a restaurant in Grand-Bassam on the beach and enjoyed some great food. The sound and smell of the ocean were incredible. The lunch was great too.
After lunch, we made our way to the Musée National du Costume de Grand-Bassam. Our tour guide showed us around. He taught us about the local tribes, their clothes and customs, as well as the types of houses they lived in.
The tour then turned to the more difficult history of colonialism. We learned how the French established their presence, built settlements, and subjugated the local population. Côte d’Ivoire gained independence in 1960, formally ending French colonial rule.
Our day ran a little longer than initially planned, so we took a quick tour of the town by car. We drove by the first houses, schools, and hospitals built in Côte d’Ivoire. Some of them in ruins. Some of them still in use today.
Day 5: testing product concepts with customers
On our last day, we were free to plan our own adventure with a full day of coworking. I decided to partner up with Jordy, one of our local product ops analyst, who conducts our in-field user testing.
I had some illustrations I’d worked on for one of our products and wanted to see how well people understood them. Not the most complicated thing to test. I was more interested in the process.
Jordy picked us up from the hotel that morning. From there we made our way to another market. The Samsung market. A place where people sell all kinds of tech and accessories.
Once we got there, we parked the car and jumped right in. We approached a group of people and introduced ourselves. They were happy to speak with us. Since this was all in French, Jordy did all the speaking. It was great to see him do his thing. I was picking up bits and pieces and then Jordy filled the gaps by translating. I’m glad I made an effort to brush up on my French before coming. It was helpful.
After we spoke to one participant, we moved on and talked to another. Then a few more. Along the way, people saw our Wave gear and greeted us with big smiles and thumbs up. I also picked up some street coffee with some kind of spice in it. It tasted like cinnamon, with a hint of cardamom. I’m not sure what it was, but it tasted good.
It was great getting so close to customers and seeing them react to our work in real time. The illustrations worked well, but conceptually there was a disconnect with one of the screens they appeared in. I’m glad we tested them so that we can clear that up.
Wrap-up
I returned home with a deeper understanding of both Côte d’Ivoire and Wave. Before the trip, my understanding of our work was mostly theoretical. Seeing our agents, distributors, support teams, merchants, and customers in person made it tangible. More than anything, I came away reminded that the work we do affects real people in meaningful ways—and I’m excited to keep contributing.