Freecharge’s productivity leap with Slack
In the ever-evolving fintech landscape, Freecharge is a standout. The Axis Bank subsidiary is on a mission to redefine financial services in India with cutting-edge technology.
Known for its user-friendly payment app, Freecharge caters to more than 100 million users, offering a wide range of services – from simple bill payments to comprehensive investment and lending solutions.
Prior to Slack, Freecharge struggled with slow product development cycles. Each product took six to seven months to reach the market, posing a significant barrier to its goal of rapid innovation. This wasn’t fast enough in the swiftly evolving fintech sector.
One of the big problems slowing Freecharge down was fragmented communication across various platforms.
Sanjay Jain, Freecharge’s Chief Technology and Product Officer, Digital Business And Transformation (DBAT), tried using Microsoft Teams before Slack. ‘We tried to use Microsoft Teams for a month, but it just didn’t align with our need for rapid development and innovation’, says Sanjay.
Embracing Slack turned Freecharge into the efficient organisation it is today.
Supercharging product development with Slack
At Freecharge, moving to Slack wasn’t just about adopting a new tool. It was a strategic shift towards a more connected and efficient way of working, especially in a remote setup.
Rhea Jain, a product manager at Freecharge, shares how Slack has sped up its product development process.
Slack channels are now the central platform for collaboration on product development, bringing together developers, designers, product managers and QA teams.
‘Slack is our backbone when it comes to product releases, and it’s made our process 30 to 40% faster’, Rhea says.
Slack’s Figma integration has been particularly helpful, bringing real-time updates into Slack when somebody leaves a comment or shares a design file to streamline the feedback process.
The result? A significant reduction in product development times.
‘We moved from launching one product every six to seven months to now releasing three to five products every quarter. That’s the pace we have achieved using Slack’, says Sanjay. ‘I cannot think about doing any rapid product development without Slack’.
‘Slack is our backbone when it comes to product releases, and it’s made our process 30 to 40% faster’.
Speedy issue resolutions on Slack
In the fast-paced world of digital payments, Freecharge knows that every minute counts, especially when resolving issues that can disrupt the customer experience.
Thanks to Slack, what used to be a day-long headache of eight to nine hours for issue resolution has been trimmed down to just 15 to 20 minutes.
This leap in efficiency isn’t just about saving time. It’s about staying agile during critical moments like the Big Billion Days or festive seasons when there’s high traffic.
Instead of setting up formal meetings when an issue pops up, Sanjay’s team at Freecharge uses Slack huddles.
‘Slack huddles transform issue resolution at Freecharge. These quick informal chats have removed the need for internal meetings’, says Rhea.
Huddles make it easy to add multiple people to a call and share screens. Using the pencil feature on huddles, Rhea draws on the screen being shared and gives real-time feedback. As a result, problems are being solved on the spot, sometimes in mere minutes.
It’s this ability to have immediate discussions, make quick decisions and resolve issues instantly that keeps Freecharge ahead of the curve.
And this strategic approach has paid off with improved NPS scores.
‘Our resolution time has decreased quite significantly, and it helped us improve our NPS score’, says Sanjay.
Enhancing the employee onboarding experience with Slack
Before Slack stepped into the picture, Freecharge’s onboarding journey for new recruits would last for days. But now, the entire process has been trimmed down to just a few minutes thanks to the ease and intuitiveness of Slack.
‘We get people up and running in just about 10 minutes on Slack’, says Ridhima Verma, Senior HR Manager at Freecharge.
‘We get people up and running in just about 10 minutes on Slack’.
This shift has not only made life easier for the HR team but also for new joiners who can easily integrate into the company’s remote work culture. With Slack, the probation period for Freecharge’s new employees has been reduced from 90 days to just 30.
‘The reduction in the probation period at Freecharge shows how Slack simplifies communication and accelerates learning for our new joiners’, says Ridhima.
New hires are brought up to speed faster on Slack.
There’s continuity of work that minimises interruptions to projects, allowing new team members to reach their full potential in a shorter span.
‘Slack is like oxygen for us. We can’t live without Slack’, says Sanjay.
