Why static CX playbooks are no match for fintech disruptors

As established brick-and-mortar banks left themselves exposed through unwieldy digital customer experiences, fintechs have seized the opportunity to differentiate through outstanding CX.

But at the same time, it’s hard to pull customers away from long-established institutions because, well, they’re institutions.

They’re known. Even if they’re no longer the best option, 100+ years of brand equity counts for a lot. It means fintechs need to choose their battlegrounds carefully when going head-to-head with their more established competitors.

And one of the key frontiers for building customer loyalty is customer experience. Successful fintech disruptors have made a point of putting better customer experiences at the heart of their proposition to new customers.

It’s not uncommon to hear someone you know complaining about spending umpteen minutes (or hours) on hold with their bank. And when they get through to the service agent, the experience is slow, stilted and impersonal—it sucks.

Why?

More often than not, the person on the other side of the phone is working from a stiff playbook.

Playbooks are a bible for known scenarios. And for embedded behemoths who’ve been around the block a few times, that’s enough. The status quo works just fine.

But increasingly, it’s not enough for customers whose expectations break from the status quo. Customers with new, elevated expectations—whether that’s wanting more seamless journeys, unintrusive interactions or empathetic conversations in convenient channels.

Whether you run CX through an in-house team or an outsourcing specialist, that’s a lot of new, uncharted territory that’s difficult to cover solely in scripts.

That’s why you, as a growing fintech—an ambitious, disruptive, irreverent company looking to fundamentally change the game for the better—need more than a playbook to drive customer satisfaction and retention.

Business process outsourcers (or BPOs) that work on a playbook basis struggle to stay the course when it comes to meeting challenger brand customer needs.

There’s space for fintech disruptors to take a new approach and drive consistent and better customer experiences in the process.

It’s an approach we call Relationship-based Outsourcing (RBO for short). Here’s how it helps fintechs build the foundations for CX that drive long-term customer value.

Like banks, fintechs have to navigate a landscape full of compliance-shaped pitfalls and regulatory hoops. But unlike banks, they might not be used to them. That means service agents need clear guidance—so they don’t fall foul of their legal obligations and risk potentially terminal reputational damage.

But you need more than rigorous training to prepare service agents for outstanding CX that’s also compliant—service agents need to be embedded into the culture of a fintech.

Because when that happens, the level of service on offer changes.

By getting into the mindset of a fintech employee and becoming a true brand ambassador, service agents build empathy with the real nuances, foibles and frustrations of fintech customers. Crucially, they also get familiar with the key moves to resolve those specific gnarly problems—moves that drive AHT down and CSAT up.

Advanced outsourcing for fintechs puts a premium on empathy. Truly empathetic service starts from a place of understanding the customer’s unique context, where you fit into their world and the ways you can improve it.

Plus, truly effective CX is mutually beneficial. RBO builds a constant feedback loop that drives process improvements across your CX capability. So customer and agent feedback isn’t just logged—it’s proactively fed back into your operation as fuel to take your CX to new levels.

As a challenger fintech, you’re growing fast—testing, breaking and honing at a canter, sometimes a gallop. And the entire time, you’re balancing onboarding new customers with keeping existing customers happy.

It’s a serious juggling act that can fundamentally affect the long-term viability of a challenger brand—financially and reputationally.

That’s why RBO works best when your BPO provider has already been where you’re headed.

On a maiden voyage, it’s invaluable to have a guide that’s made the trip before—so you can leverage all the hard-won experience without going through the storms needed to earn it.

It’s this perspective that allows advanced outsourcing for fintechs to combine big-picture strategy with the flexibility to make in-flight changes quickly and effectively.

Without decades of brand equity in the bank, fintechs need to get creative when it comes to enticing customers from their long-standing competitors.

As a result, a lot of disruptors offer heavily incentivized deals to lure customers away from their more established rivals—deals that benefit new customers, but don’t drive significant revenue for the more fresh-faced challenger brands.

Which means the real value comes from driving long-term loyalty. Compounding Customer Lifetime Value is the bedrock on which successful fintechs are built.

RBO makes this happen through an end-to-end consultative service—from compliant, rigorous and error-free solution setup to adept brand ambassadors who manage every CX challenge across the front, middle and back office.

It’s this commitment to continuous CX improvement that leads to higher NPS scores, disputes solved faster and more loyal customers delivering a higher lifetime value.

It’s CX built on empathetic interactions between immersed, empowered service agents and customers who feel understood. It’s the dexterity and know-how to make the right strategic moves at the right time in service of better outcomes for customers and greater value for you.

It’s the new approach for customer-obsessed companies.

Want to learn more about game-changing CX for fintech disruptors?

Corey Besaw is a Ubiquity co-founder and president of Banking Operations, where works with fintechs and financial services firms of all sizes to design and deliver cost-efficient and compliant dispute and chargeback management, fraud investigation and identity verification services.