How Airfox accelerates financial inclusion through a customer-centric approach

Keeping our customer support team consistent in a whirlwind startup environment

Startups experience change. A lot of it.

With Airfox’s recent rebranded app, new product features, and new hires, there have been many changes around us. Among all of the new, the user success team has maintained a consistent front for customers.

A bad rep. Many people only interact with a company’s customer service department when they have tried every other possible method to solve problems on their own. Connecting with customer service often means long wait-times listening to elevator music, hoping the voice that picks up isn’t a robot.

banQi users don’t have to dread having to interact with our customer success team. Blending the fast-paced and technology-focused mindset of our startup with a people-friendly, problem-solving demeanor, the user success team represents Airfox’s values directly to the people using our app. When users experience an issue or have a question about the app, our team responds quickly and provides human-centered solutions for every problem.

Airfox employees enjoy working together to provide human-centered solutions to users.

The pillars to Airfox success

What makes our user success team different? Our director of user success Felipe Cine describes the three pillars the Airfox team embodies in their work with users: “The banQi recipe for engaging users through customer support includes building relationships through efficiency, proactiveness, and empathy”.

Director of user success Felipe Cine prides himself on the determination and heart of his team. Felipe joined Airfox after working on the user success team at banking competitor Nubank. He has also worked on multiple product and pricing teams at IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Uber.

Efficiency. Nothing can make a customer feel more important to a company than receiving a quick response to their question. Airfox chose to focus on fast and reliable customer service as one of our main pillars of support, giving the user confidence that their questions will be answered by our support system 24/7, wherever they need it.

“Efficiency gets you closer to your user,” says Cine. “Being ready to serve them by their preferred means, at their preferred time is crucial”.

The user success team prides themselves in the responsiveness of their agents, and currently responds to users through our Zendesk chat service in an average time of less than five minutes.

Graph depicts the response times within the chat system from June 30th to July 10th

Proactive. Instead of waiting for users to report issues within the app, our user success team actively brainstorms potential problems. Using data and testing app features gives the team a leg up on potential problem spots. “Proactiveness will allow our team to detect any troubles or help the users may need ahead of time, allowing us solve issues before users even know about them,” says Cine.

Airfox user success employee working first-hand with a Casas Bahia employee to test the app from a user perspective.

Of course it is impossible to predict every potential error or questions a user will run in to. The user success team remains proactive with complaints they receive by turning them into improvements.

For example, when a user contacted the customer support team about an unsuccessful transfer of money from their Airfox account to their bank account, the customer support team went through two main steps to handle the user’s error. The team paid the user back for the money they attempted to send to their bank. The user, Lucas, thanked the support staff who helped him: “I had never experienced a customer service as good as yours! From the moment I first got in touch until the very end you were very good! I wish that all customer service was as good as yours,” says Lucas.

Even after Lucas’ problem has been solved, user success then tackles the issue proactively by finding the specific source of the error within the engineering side. Airfox is not only concerned about pleasing users who report errors, but also preventing users from experiencing errors they may never know existed.

Empathy: Defined in the dictionary as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”, empathy is very important to the user success team and all of us at Airfox. We understand and accommodate to our customer’s needs and struggles instead of assuming the error is user-based.

banQi users can trust that the customer service members will take the time to find the best solution for them, no matter how long it takes.

We are patient and charismatic, and value building a relationship with our users. “Empathy helps us communicate with users and understand what they really mean and want,” says Cine. “We interact with users in the most human and least automated possible way.”

Internal transparency

Everyone at Airfox values transparent communication among teams. Meeting rooms contain whiteboard walls to promote open brainstorming and interactive group work. Problems are shared not just among the upper-level executives, but with the entire team during weekly meetings, promoting group problem-solving techniques. Everyone contributes their ideas, from our CEO Victor Santos to summer interns that might have only joined the team in the past week.

User success team members communicate user cases to the entire team, as well as the methods chosen to solve the problem.

Keeping communication open through the whole company and not just specific to the user success team allows problems to be solved in a shorter timespan. Employees who look at an issue through a different lens can produce solutions others may never think of. Even as our company continues to grow the user success team remains transparent with issues facing customers each week, creating an environment of unity against problems that arise.

Find call centers that fit your company

To accommodate our growing user base following the launch of our newly rebranded app, Airfox is working with a call center in Brazil. The BPO, or business processing outsourcer, are from CSU, a company based out of São Paulo. The employees from the BPO will help our user success team respond to and solve customer queries through our support chat.

Our user success team worked hard to prevent any level of disconnect between the Airfox user success team and the employees at the call center. By choosing a BPO in Brazil, our team members were able to train the call center agents in person. The agents could ask questions directly to our user success team and gain a real-feel for the style and voice we use with our users.

Felipe Cine leading an interactive training session.

Selecting CSU to provide call center agents was also important to Airfox because of their location right in Brazil. Living in Brazil, the agents were immediately drawn to Airfox’s mission and how it could change lives right in their own backyard.

The group of call center trainees selected to support banQi users.

Airfox user success associate Alexandre worked directly with the BPO agents during their training. “Seeing so many people engaged and happy with the opportunity to be an agent of change was one of my favorite moments so far with Airfox” said Alexandre of his time with the BPO. “ It motivates me to continue giving my best every day.”

Join us!

If you’re interested in joining our driven user success team, please visit our website for job postings.