Number of Clients Served

The indicator is used to measure the average number of people purchasing or receiving goods / services from the supported sellers / service providers. It is an important aspect of their performance and suggests the extent to which they benefit the target population. Its limitation is that it does not consider the ‘weight’ of the service – e.g., how many times it was used, how much money was spent, what the extent of the service was, etc.

Collect the following data by conducting individual interviews with all or with a representative number of the targeted sellers:

RECOMMENDED SURVEY QUESTION (Q) AND POSSIBLE ANSWERS (A)

Q1: In the past [specify the time frame], how many people did you [specify the provided services for/ sell products to]?

A1: _

1) .... clients

2) does not remember

Alternatively, a more precise and recommended method is to ask the seller / service provider in advance to record all of her/his clients into a record form provided by your organization or by any other actor providing support to the service provider. Ideally, the form should be integrated into the sellers’ / service providers’ existing administrative system, so that it is easier for them to collect the required data. 

To calculate the indicator's value, sum up the number of clients served by the sellers / service providers and divide this by the number of interviewed service providers / sellers (exclude those whose reply was "does not remember").

Disaggregate the data by the location of the sellers / shops.

1) Keep seasonality in mind – the sale of thousands of products and services is prone to significant seasonal variations determined by people's needs, purchasing power, access and other factors. A shop that sells very few agricultural inputs can have hundreds of clients several months later. If the sales of the product or service you support are prone to seasonal variations, collect your baseline and endline data at the same time of year. If this is not possible, you will have to ask the respondent to recall the number of clients from a comparable period (never compare sales from two incomparable times of the year).

2) Stress to the respondents that they should count the same client only once (for example, if a person uses the service three times during the assessed period, s/he should be recorded once only).