When products are built with technology at the core of the value proposition, the customer interactions tend to be digital as well. A human experience can’t be faked and delivering a personalized interaction through a mobile app becomes all the more difficult. At Finnova, we believe that as a financial institution, it’s vital for us to be there during our customer’s time of need and to truly feel what the customer feels. This would not be possible without a culture that is distinctively customer centric and without all employees collectively believing in not compromising on our user’s experience.
Another very strong belief we have is that customer experience success goes beyond quantifiable metrics. We care about putting ourselves in our user’s shoes and focusing on how we make them feel on a deeply human level. And this way of thinking isn’t just restricted to the experience team, it runs across the entire organization. From marketing teams to engineering and product teams where all employees collectively and individually prioritize customer needs in everything that they do.
If our customer is unhappy with our services and their needs are not being met on time, it doesn’t matter if our product is the best in the world, we are not doing a good job! The more we can understand what people value, the more we can engage them with the stories and experiences that will resonate most. Here are a few unconventional approaches we’ve taken at Finnova while building our experience vertical:
Human Experience > Customer Experience
One way to make sure that your customers remain happy is to ensure that when they talk to you, they actually feel like they’re talking to someone real, someone human. In the 21st century, everything has become automated and this is exactly where big companies are missing the plot. It doesn’t matter if you have the best technology or the best machines in place, no one can understand humans better than humans! So, make sure the next time your customer reaches out to you via email, chat or even through call, do not leave them hanging with a bot! At the end of the day what really matters is that the customer doesn’t feel like they’re talking to a wall. Be responsive, be agile, be human because nothing beats “Human Experience” and this is exactly what the team at Finnova is focused on doing: staying human.
Keep it Easy!
In today’s world where businesses are becoming extremely fast, busy, global and complex, companies often overlook the importance of simplicity and therefore customers end up dealing with a lot of complexity. A lot of the companies that are thriving in today’s world are only doing so because they know what to do and they know what they want from their customers. This, however, is only possible because they know what their customers want in return as well. It is indeed true that some products are preferred over others only because they are simple to use. One of the hardest things to do today is to achieve simplicity. All the efforts you put in should be focused primarily on creating seamless experience through executing simple yet innovative ideas into a market that already has a lot on its plate. Finnova aims to keep finances as simple as possible because the philosophy of the brand is clear and concise: Keep it Easy!
Deliver a ‘Wow’ experience
Exceeding customer expectations is not common practice in Pakistan. This is very true especially in case of banks, for example. Usually, you need to fill in a whole lot of paperwork, sign about 10 times on the same document and then wait for days before your account is opened. While the world is moving fast, why is it that the 5th most populous country in the world is still adhering to standards that have been discarded almost 8 to 10 years ago? We’ve built our on-boarding to take less than 2 minutes and if something goes wrong during the process, we’re right there on our toes to put things right for you. Similarly, we try to go above and beyond when it comes to transparency. When someone asks for the calculation of their foreign currency transaction, we break it down, explaining every component and our users really appreciate that.
What’s next?
So far we’ve only worked with a few hundred users and most of our effort goes into getting the processes right, troubleshooting new kinds of issues and finding ways to be more efficient. The next challenge will be to scale to thousands and tens of thousands of users, while maintaining the same level of responsiveness and empathy.
There’s a long way to go before we as a team can confidently say we’ve achieved what we set out to do but playing a part in setting up this foundation has been an incredible experience for us. We certainly hope Finnova users will appreciate our take on customer support and can’t wait to talk to all of you through our app! ?
About Finnova
Finnova is bringing modern financial services to Pakistan in partnership with MasterCard. By removing the high costs of managing the physical infrastructure of traditional banks from the equation, we can pass those savings onto the customer to provide free financial services. Our mission is to eliminate the complexity of banking and make money so simple that any other way would become unthinkable. Finnova is now operational and in its pilot phase under supervision of the regulator. The public rollout will begin once the pilot is completed.