Finyard: How to Build a Customer Success Team in FinTech

The ever-growing FinTech industry has led to many important innovations and changes in what clients expect from the companies they engage with.

One of the major changes in recent years is how companies’ Customer Support teams have evolved into Customer Success teams, with users now expecting to have deeper relationships with brands than just getting answers to their questions.

Finyard, an innovative software solutions provider in the FinTech space, has focused on Customer Success since being founded in 2018. As a people-centric company, it understands the importance of building and maintaining positive relationships with customers, and how to achieve it.

In this interview, we will be speaking with Irina Kutkova, Head of Customer Success at Finyard, to see how the company built its Customer Success Team and its importance in the modern world of FinTech.

Q: What defines Customer Success?

Irina: Customer Success is a proactive approach. Rather than waiting for clients to ask questions like with traditional Customer Support, we focus on anticipating their needs and fulfilling them. I would say, treating every client as if they are our only client is key to Customer Success. It’s about building long-lasting relationships with clients from the moment they are onboarded and helping them have a positive experience with our product. We try to solve any possible issues ahead of time and ensure prompt communication.

Q: What is the best way to build a Customer Success Team?

Irina: We need to start by analysing the current situation. What does the client journey look like? What are the problems clients are facing? What changes are needed? By answering these questions, we can get a better understanding of the resources we will need. We may need to hire more people or make some technical upgrades to help improve the client experience. It’s also important to develop a clear communication strategy detailing how we speak to clients. This allows us to keep our messaging and tone consistent, which helps make clients feel more comfortable and confident. Finally, we must set up correct procedures, as these will help us address client concerns more efficiently and effectively.

Q: What skills are most important for a Customer Success Team?

Irina: There are various hard and soft skills we look for when hiring for our Customer Success Team. For hard skills, past experience with similar products is always important due to the complex nature of our industry. The knowledge of additional languages is needed, due to how we operate on a global scale. We also want our team members to have an understanding of the modern client experience, so they can better help our clients. We’ve always been a client-first company, so this mentality is one of the key soft skills we look for. We also think the ability to self-educate and be self-motivated are really important, as being able to quickly find the answers to questions helps improve the service we offer our clients. Finally, being detail-oriented and attentive are both key, as they help us anticipate our clients’ needs and offer solutions ahead of time. That being said, we also offer comprehensive training to the new members of the Customer Support team, including a range of courses, webinars, and tests.

Q: How has AI Impacted Client Interactions?

Irina: Like with machine learning, AI is a great tool to help Customer Success Teams map the customer journey and identify bottlenecks in the services and products we offer. We use it to effectively analyse client behaviour, allowing us to better categorise them, as well as to highlight areas where support is needed most, to help better assist and retain clients. So, technology like bots and AI can be great for simple tasks and offering basic support, as long as they are monitored and updated regularly. But, for more complex questions, people tend to want to talk to other people, which is why it’s important for us to offer human support.

Q: Why are Customer Success Teams important?

Irina: Customer Success Teams are really important when it comes to keeping clients satisfied. They play a key role in driving client retention by building strong relationships and ensuring customers continue to derive value from the product. They can also help increase a company’s revenue by identifying new growth opportunities within existing accounts. This can then lead to upsells, cross-sells, and the addition of new revenue streams. At the same time, Customer Success Teams contribute to other areas like product development. By communicating directly with clients we gain additional insights that can be useful in other areas. We hear first-hand the challenges clients are facing with the product, which helps us provide feedback for changes to the development team. By taking a proactive approach, we are also able to reduce overall support costs, as identifying and resolving potential issues early helps keep the number of support requests low.